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 Widowed
elders have less stress living closer to children, but social life
may suffer
Newswise — Living near your
children enhances psychological well-being, but widowed elderly
living with children may find that their social life suffers, a new
University of Michigan study showed.
Older adults reported
significantly lower levels of psychological distress when their
children lived within an hour's drive, said Jung-Hwa Ha, a doctoral
student in the U-M School of Social Work and co-author of "The
Effect of Parent-Child Geographic Proximity on Widowed Parents'
Psychological Adjustment and Social Integration."
The study, co-written by Deborah
Carr of Rutgers University, appears in the September issue of
Research on Aging.
While geographic proximity is good
for widowed parents, living in the same household with their
children can be a detriment to their social integration, the
research indicated. Parents who live with their children are less
likely to be integrated into informal networks of friends, neighbors
and relatives, Ha said.
"Living with adult children may
create hassles in the parent-child relationship, yet it also brings
important psychological benefits as older adults cope with
widowhood," she said.
The researchers used data from the
"Changing Lives of Older Couples" study, which compiled responses
from 1,532 married individuals aged 65 and older. This bereavement
study was conducted by U-M's Institute for Social Research, the
world's largest academic survey and research institution. After the
spouses' death, participants were asked how frequently they had
certain symptoms, such as depression, restless sleeping, loss of
appetite and anxiety. Based on the parents' residential status six
months following the spousal loss, the study's findings included:
--Living with or near one's adult
children is associated with lower levels of psychological distress
among bereaved elders, yet this protective effect is apparent only
after parents' perceptions of dependence on their children are taken
into account. Parental well-being may be compromised if they feel
overly dependent on their children.
--Living with an adult child
significantly decreases the amount of interaction a bereaved older
adult has with friends, neighbors and relatives. One factor could be
that older adults living with their children have more household
responsibilities, such as caring for grandchildren, and may not have
much free time to interact with people outside the immediate family.
--Parent-child proximity did not
affect despair and yearning, which involves the bereaved parent's
attachment to the deceased spouse.
"Our findings suggest that no one
living arrangement is uniformly and unequivocally positive for
bereaved older adults," Ha said.
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