Social support: The leaven in a changing world

Abstract

Ail the articles in this issue deal with aspects of social support. However, they are also concerned with aging as a process in the context of social or personal change. Earlier versions of the articles were prepared for presentation in symposia organized by the Commission of Aging and the Aged at the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, July, 1988. The first article by Coleman and McCullogh relates the aging endeavor to modernization theory in a study of the impact of rapid social change-particularly of values-on the psychological development of elderly people with low levels of social support, who feel they no longer understand society. The authors identify two dominant adaptations which they call “moral siege” and “questioning.” In the latter case doubt or loss of previously held religious beliefs are common and the authors discuss the implications for the clergy working with elderly people with low levels of integration in society. While Coleman and McCullogh’s article focuses on the impact of social change on the individual, Synak discusses the impact of social change on family structure in Poland and the way in which such changes have affected the lives of elderly people. He suggests that in the absence of a developed welfare state, the family is virtually the only resource for the care of the elderly. However, economic change in recent decades has resulted in a shift from a situation where the elderly received more help from children to a situation where children receive as much help from elderly parents as they provide to parents. The young elderly have important economic and instrumental contribution’s to make to young families, thus enhancing reciprocity and creating added roles for the older generation reinforcing family obligations in the face of subsequent dependency. The contributions of elderly people to social support are also evident in the article by Bury and Holme, on people over ninety, most of whom were supported