Intergenerational Obligations Research Articles

A call for intergenerational solidarity in climate change education: Outlining a strategy to manage climate anxiety and facilitate action

AbstractAs youth psychological distress grows regarding climate change, educators are in an important position to provide support. In working with youth, educators are tasked with balancing the psychological distress associated with climate change knowledge against the ability to educate for positive outcomes such as hope, agency, and action. This theoretical essay pulls from philosophical and social psychological literature to make the case that educators have an intergenerational obligation to educate youth on climate change and that solidarity between educators and students represents a fruitful path forward. Solidarity in climate change education may help youth better manage their climate anxiety and channel this emotion into action. Solidarity expands upon current climate change teaching efforts by advocating for meaningful dialogue between students and educators, grounding action in the unique social‐ecological systems within which the learning process is occurring, and fostering realistic hope and agency within students.

Self-identified culturally related stressors that influence self-care in older adults with multiple chronic conditions: A qualitative study.

To identify culturally related stressors that influence self-care in Chinese older adults with multiple chronic conditions. Effective self-care can improve health outcomes for chronic conditions, but implementing self-care is challenging. Individuals with multiple chronic conditions face even more self-care complexity than those with single chronic conditions, generating additional stressors. Although stressors have been found to negatively influence self-care in multiple chronic conditions, the role of culture in generating stressors has been neglected. This paper reports on the qualitative component of a larger mixed-methods study. Two free-response items in a survey were used to identify culturally related stressors that influence self-care. This report adhered to the SRQR guideline checklist. Data were collected between January and April 2022. One hundred and thirty-eight free text responses asking participants to identify stressors that influenced their self-care effectiveness were analysed sequentially using deductive content analysis and thematic analysis. Findings from deductive content analysis largely confirmed published work in Western literature on stressors complicating self-care, including symptom burdens, financial strains, social disconnection, caregiving responsibilities and major life events. Findings from reflexive thematic analysis extended current literature by identifying three culturally relevant stressors: intergenerational obligations and commitments, ambivalence about receiving care and worries about potential problems. Chinese older adults with multiple chronic conditions identified a wide range of stressors that impacted their day-to-day self-care. This study provided valuable insights into culturally related stressors in older adults with multiple chronic conditions. Findings deepened our knowledge of cultural influences on the success of self-care in older adults with multiple chronic conditions, suggesting the potential for reaching populations across different cultures and regions. Stressors that might influence self-care ability are important for nurses to assess in people with multiple chronic conditions. The design of self-care interventions should take a culturally tailored intergenerational family-centred approach to help mitigate the impact of stressors and ultimately improve patient outcomes. What problem did the study address? Stressors documented in older adults with MCCs have all been generated from research with Western populations. China is now home to the largest population of older people in the world. Understanding the influence of culturally relevant stressors on self-care in Chinese older adults with MCCs is lacking. What were the main findings? Findings from deductive content analysis largely confirmed published work in Western literature on stressors that complicated self-care, including symptom burdens, financial strains, social disconnection, caregiving responsibilities and major life events. Findings from reflexive thematic analysis extended current literature by identifying three culturally relevant stressors in older adults with MCCs in China: intergenerational obligations and commitments, ambivalence about receiving care and worries about potential problems. Where and on whom will the research have an impact? The research will have an impact on guiding nurses' assessment of culturally relevant stressors' impact on self-care for older adults with MCCs. In addition, findings could inform research and policy development to aim at mitigating the impact of culturally based stressors on self-care. This study adhered to the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) guideline checklist. During the member-checking process, the validation of findings for accuracy was carried out by 10 participants, who also found resonance between these findings and their own experiences.

When the Generational Overlap Is the Challenge Rather Than the Solution. On Some Problematic Versions of Transgenerational Justice

Abstract While in the realm of scholarly debate on intergenerational justice the mechanism of a transgenerational intertwinement has been often adopted as a chief conceptual device in view of overcoming ethical short-termism and legitimizing duties towards future generations, this paper aims at showing that there are good reasons for considering the opposite outcome. Drawing on three paradigmatic examples taken from three mainstream approaches in the debate—Rawls’s contractualism, Gauthier’s contractarianism, and indirect reciprocity—I will show how the grammar of presentism is still largely operative under the surface of theories explicitly recurring to such a device and thereby advocating a chain of duties capable to reach the remote future. A short closing section will be devoted to endorsing a radical reorientation in ethics, such that a direct link to future invocations will be considered as a promising strategy for genuinely justifying intergenerational obligations.

Intergenerational Solidarity Revisited: Migrant Families in the Dilemma of Providing Family or Elderly Care in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic and its Challenges

The assumption that people live in one place with their lives guided by a singular set of national and cultural norms no longer holds true. The same applies for migrating due to various reasons with the aim of finding a better place to live. Instead, contemporary transnational migrants are accustomed to operating in several contexts of employment, leisure and political interests that extend beyond national borders. Yet, state borders still cut through the very core of the family life, forcing migrants to take difficult decisions about leaving, separation or arranging care of children and elderly, but also creating a certain degree of choice between two or more socio-political social and cultural contexts. Events of recent years have shaken established beliefs about the potential of transnational care networks. As the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, what once seemed to be enduring rules can be suspended for long periods of time.
 For Poland, one of the countries affected by intense mobility to and from the country, discussions about the effects of migration on care networks are of paramount importance. As a direct consequence of mobility, the expectations and obligations that migrants (especially women) have towards the family they leave behind may change, shift or even remain unrestricted in spite of living abroad. Yet, establishing family care strategies for elderly family members in ageing societies is also based on the assumption of availability of migrant labour. Drawing on two sets of data, this article asks how intergenerational obligations were negotiated during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether the associated long-term restrictions on crossing national borders caused changes in patterns of care provision.
 * This article belongs to a special issue on “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”.

Narrating the caring fatigue: stories of the ambivalence of filial care in a caregivers’ self-help group in Italy

This article shows how, within a caregivers’ self-help group in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, the narrative of caring fatigue was mobilised to question and negotiate local normative discourses and social norms on affective states and family care responsibilities. The neoliberal discourse on family caregiving in Italy assumes that it comes from authentic affective states and mutual understanding. By showing how intergenerational obligations and shifting parent-child hierarchies constrained the building up of caregiving relations, the narrative of caring fatigue allowed participants to explain the ambivalence they perceived about their filial responsibilities. Therefore, this narrative legitimised the choice of preserving caregivers’ wellbeing and delegating aspects of care. This paper argues that stories of caring fatigue contradict the ideal model of family care that shapes academic and institutional discourses. Nevertheless, they play an important role in sustaining caregiver endurance.

5 THE WEALTH SHIELD: A MICROSIMULATION OF INEQUALITIES, INHERITANCE AND THE IRISH FAIR DEAL

Abstract Background The article analyses the inequalities resulting from the long-term funding scheme in Ireland with a unique focus on intergenerational obligations. With the Fair Deal scheme of 2009, officially the Nursing Homes Support Scheme (NHSS), Ireland introduced a unique inheritance clawback clause. The state covers long term care costs for those in need up-front and claims the costs back from the estate after the older person deceases. The article focusses on the emerging income and wealth inequalities and intergenerational redistributive effects. Methods We estimate micro simulations to show the distributional effects based on income and housing wealth. The simulations are based on aggregate data from the Central Statistics Office, Nursing Homes Ireland, Eurostat and the European Central Bank. Each simulation estimates the individual contributions based on 50, 100, 150 and 200 percent of average income and wealth, while keeping either income or wealth constant at the average. Based on average nursing home fees, the simulations show the relative contributions from the state, income and wealth. These simulations are contrasted to the funding gaps of the old subvention scheme in place until 2009. Results The Fair Deal has expanded eligibility to the middle class and shields property wealth after three years. Nursing home residents with above average pension income and housing wealth benefit disproportionately from the reform and can pass on more relative wealth to their kin. Overall, the wealth distribution of the Fair Deal scheme is regressive, despite the inclusion of the middle class. Conclusion The increased eligibility of the fair deal has the benefit of increased legitimacy for the welfare state. However, considerable inequalities of risks exposure remain as less than 50 percent of older people will need nursing home care. Estimations for a long-term care insurance scheme at 3 percent social contributions would reduce the lifetime wealth contribution of nursing home residents by about 35 percent.

The Role of Local Knowledge in Multigenerational Caregiving for Older People

ABSTRACT Little is known about how local knowledge informs the way that families provide care for older people beyond the role played by the cultural values of obligation and reciprocity. Better understanding of the role of local knowledge in caregiving practices can contribute to the improvement of support for family caregiving in particular contexts. Addressing this knowledge gap, this study identifies forms of local knowledge that play a role in the way care is provided for older family members in multigenerational Balinese households. Narrative interviews were conducted with 49 members of 11 multigenerational households in Bali. Using thematic analysis, four important forms of local knowledge were identified: (i) caring as intergenerational obligation; (ii) caring to meet needs; (iii) caring in harmony; and (iv) caring through social connections. These local findings contribute to the global discussion on family relationships, the role of social networks, and medical practices on aging and policy.

Who’s to Act? Perceptions of Intergenerational Obligation and Pro-Environmental Behaviours among Youth

“We are all in the same boat” are words heard from young climate activists, suggesting that all generations must engage together in the fight against climate change. However, because of their age and life situation, some young people may feel unable to change the situation and attribute the moral obligation to do so to older generations. Whether such attributions restrict young people from engaging in pro-environmental behaviours remains largely unstudied. To fill this gap, the present study incorporated perceptions of self-efficacy, feelings of external control, and intergenerational obligation (i.e., believing that all generations should act) into the Value–Belief–Norm model. Data from high school (n = 639) and bachelor (n = 1509) students in French-speaking Switzerland showed that perceptions of self-efficacy and intergenerational obligation predicted the probability of engaging in both an actual behaviour (Study 1) and a costly educational commitment (Study 2), while perceiving that the fate of the Earth lies in the hands of powerful others did not. These results suggest that educational programs on climate change should integrate intergenerational components.

Family houses – building an intergenerational space in post-apartheid Namibia

ABSTRACT This qualitative study presents how intergenerational relationships have spatially shaped the former apartheid township Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The apartheid housing, which was designed for nuclear families, now accommodates multiple generations. People in different age cohorts are distributed differently in space. People in late later life lived in the former township housing units, whilst people in early later life lived in backyard shacks or other rentals. Certain patterns of cohabitation with younger relatives were discernible. It is highly likely that the extended family will be an important facet of Namibian urban life in the foreseeable future, since traditional family patterns have been interpreted in an urbanised form. It is of great importance that housing can accommodate various versions of the extended family, necessary for family existence and intergenerational obligations of resource pooling.

Gambian educational migration, care and the persistence of the domestic moral economy

ABSTRACT This article examines Gambians’ experiences of educational migration to the UK, social reproduction and care, as they organize and map out educational futures transnationally. They do so in order to be in a position to invest in their children's education, with the aim of consolidating and enhancing the family's accumulated wealth and resources across the generations. Access to social, economic and cultural resources can facilitate migration and affect the nature of educational decision-making. Similarly, grandparents may, through transnational care arrangements, look after children who are separated from their parents. Building on the literature, I highlight the way in which parents’ educational and migratory trajectories are entangled with those of their children. It is argued that this entanglement reveals the persistence of the domestic moral economy, informed by intergenerational reciprocity and obligation towards kin. In addition, children's educational futures may be contingent on their parents’ educational strategies and migratory trajectories.

Reflecting on Sacrifices Made by Past Generations Increases a Sense of Obligation Towards Future Generations.

Tackling climate change presents an intergenerational dilemma: People must make sacrifices today, to benefit future generations. What causes people to feel an obligation to benefit future generations? Past research has suggested "intergenerational reciprocity" as a potential driver, but this research is quite domain specific, and it is unknown how well it applies to climate change. We explored a novel means of invoking a sense of intergenerational reciprocity: inducing reflection on the sacrifices made by previous generations. Our studies revealed that such reflection predicts and causes a heightened sense of moral obligation towards future generations, mediated by gratitude. However, there are also some downsides (e.g., feelings of unworthiness), and perceptions of obligation do not substantially affect pro-environmental attitudes or motivations. Thus, while reflecting on past generations' sacrifices can generate a sense of intergenerational obligation, it is limited in the extent to which it can increase pro-environmental concern.

Crisis, recession and social resilience: A biographical life course analysis.

This article examines social resilience to the economic crisis and recession across three 'generational cohorts' of Irish people, using a mixed biographical life course approach. Drawing on narrative interviews and individual lifelines conducted as part of a cross-national European study, we describe and explain how age-differentiated lives and times intersected with ill-timed transitions and patterns of inter-generational relations, leading to variations in resilient future orientations. Our analysis yields three key findings. First, failed expectations for intra-generational social mobility, combined with inter-generational obligations, gave rise to negative future orientations amongst those in mid-life. Second, the crisis created multiple negative life changes that compounded the accumulated costs of poorly timed transitions and adverse experiences within biographies. The effect of this varied by generational cohort, life course stage (with its implications for inter-generational obligations), gender and social class. Third, both life course stage and biographical experience affected peoples' orientations towards the future, with implications for their resilience.

Should I want to live to 100?

Is it virtuous for someone to try to live to 100? Casting aside questions of intergenerational justice and internal obligations in families, what about the basic desire itself? Discussions of longevity and aging in bioethics are skewed to controversial end-of-life decisions, largely avoiding questions of how to age well before such decisions arise. Respected writers such as Atul Gawande, Daniel Callahan, and Ezekiel Emanuel champion accepting a natural life span and not trying to live beyond it. The Stoic Seneca says a desire to live to 100 is foolish because, however long people live, they waste most of their lives, so if they lived a thousand years, they would still waste most of it. Against Seneca and Emanuel, we argue that a functional, not a chronological, view of aging should guide us and that for some seniors, hoping to be centenarians may be neither foolish nor misguided. Using Cicero, we argue that the pleasures of seniors are not necessarily inferior to those of youth and may even surpass them. Finally, we agree with Emanuel that the "symptom burden" of some lives makes living to 100 unpalatable and with Seneca that, given life's vicissitudes, we should not plan on living to 100, but heeding his wisdom, try to make the most of the time given to us.

Filial Daughter? Filial Son? How China’s Young Urban Elite Negotiate Intergenerational Obligations

ABSTRACTThis article deploys narrative method to explore how young adults in China enrolled in higher education negotiate future intergenerational obligations. The study finds that the process through which filial piety is being renegotiated is complex and sometimes contradictory, and norms and values do not always align with practices, as intergenerational obligations need to be managed in tandem with obligations envisioned towards future spouses, as well as work opportunities. Although no longer explicitly son-centred, the intergenerational contract is highly gendered, and patrilineality and patrilocality have not simply become attenuated through some general process of modernization. Rather, there are many ways in which they have become renegotiated, revealing both continuity and change in intergenerational relations. The article illustrates ways in which both patrilineality and patrilocality—whether endorsed, resisted, or negotiated—are still important organizing principles for how intergenerational relations play out. It introduces the concept of “neo-patrilocality” to denote the practice of families channelling resources along the patriline to organize housing for sons in order to enhance their prospect of getting married and having children, a central aspect of filial piety. While filial sons may be involved in more complex relations of reciprocity due to both cultural imperatives and material investments, filial daughters appear to have more leeway in negotiating intergenerational relations. This may reflect a watered-down, but still implicit, understanding that daughters and grandchildren by daughters are outside of the lineage. It seems that, for filial daughters, the parent–adult-child relation is both more intense and more central to filial piety, while for filial sons, intergenerational relations extend beyond the parent–child relation—to grandparents and future children—more than they do for young women. The article concludes that gender relations and intergenerational relations interact and mutually reinforce one another, and that there are differences in class. Patrilineality and neo-patrilocality were more central for affluent and less privileged families than for families belonging to the middle class.

Interrelated Treaty Orders Across the Generations: Autonomy, Obligation and Confederacy in the Wabanaki Compact (1725-26)

Throughout the 18thcentury, the eastern Wabanakipeoples and the British Crown negotiated several Peace and Friendship Treaties, as well as Compacts, to properly situate the Crown among the WabankiConfederacy (Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, Wulstukwiuk, Passamaqoddy). One treaty was the Wabanaki Compactof 1725-26. The agreements that comprised the Wabanaki Compactwere negotiated in the years succeeding the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Indigenous - Crown skirmishes and raids that culminated in Dummer’s War (1722 – 25). This paper asserts the Wabanaki Compact(specifically Mascarene’s Treaty) maintains legal import by showing that many components of the agreement actually contained Crown obligation to preserve customary religious observance and generational hunting, fishing and trapping rights. The Compact also builds up interdependent relations between the Crown and the Wabanakithat were premised on a strong responsibility to preserve and assist the well being of adjoined communities or nations.These assertions will be analyzed through the lens of Wabanaki legal teaching related to interrelatedness, generational obligation, linguistic protocols and gift giving ceremonies. Legal judgments like R v. Sappier & Polchiesand R v. Sappier; R v. Greyshow that the Crown is tied to these relations by recognizing their role in affirming their fidelity to the treaty order well into the future. Analyzing the Compactwith these principles in mind implies that partners individually hold normative autonomy while also collectively holding obligation to preserve living treaty partnerships throughout future generations.It is argued that theWabanaki Compactalsoretains legal relevance by tying the Crown and the Wabanaki(specifically the Mi’kmaqand Wulstukwiuk) in intergenerational obligation through respecting and preserving the autonomy which brought them to the Compactin the first place.

Indigenizing military citizenship: remaking state responsibility and care towards Māori veterans’ health through the Treaty of Waitangi

How does militarism reshape indigenous peoples’ relationships with settler states? In this article, we explore how military service both opens up and forecloses avenues for indigenous groups to claim new modes of responsibility, care and relationality from the state. Through a discussion of New Zealand Māori nuclear test veterans’ recent legal claims through the Waitangi Tribunal, we detail the range of ways that Māori veterans utilize and rework ethnic identity categories to encompass wider notions of citizenship, care and responsibility, and challenge neoliberal models of reparations. Claimants argue that their ongoing wellbeing sits at the centre of their partnership with the state, revealing how uneasily the Māori military body fits within mainstream logics of Treaty claim-making. Seeking healthcare and wellbeing here does not demand greater autonomy or independence, but requires ongoing interdependence, practices of care and attention to ongoing intergenerational obligations that, like radiation harm, have no clear endpoints.

After development? In defence of sustainability

The Paris Agreement was a success only for the carbon traders, sequestrators and geoengineers who are now expected to ‘balance emissions with removals’ by 2050, against a background of continued economic growth. If this is sustainable development, it is indeed discredited. But the problem is with the ‘sustainable development’ paradigm, not with the idea of sustainability. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals explicitly call for intensified economic growth and are clearly incompatible with the allegedly overarching goal of ecological sustainability. To aim at this very different goal is simply to aim at living in a way that does not contain the seeds of its own destruction. Far from invalidating this objective, diagnoses of crisis make its pursuit more urgent than ever. ‘Why aim at sustainability?’ is an odd question to pose, but one that may nonetheless produce illuminating answers. One answer derives from intergenerational obligations, but this may not even be the most important. An orientation towards sustainability is also beneficial in its own right, since it is a key part of aiming at the good life.

The ethics of intergenerational relationships

AbstractAccording to the relational approach we have obligations to members of future generations not because of their interests or properties but because, and only because, they are our descendants or successors. Common accounts of relational duties do not explain how we can have obligations to people who do not yet exist. In this defence of the relational approach I examine three sources of intergenerational obligations: the concern of parents for their children, including their future children; the desire of community members to pass on a heritage to their descendants; and the relationship of citizens in an intergenerational polity.

Female employment and elderly care: the role of care policies and culture in 21 European countries

To what extent and in what ways do welfare state policies and cultural values affect the employment patterns of mid-life women with care responsibilities toward a frail parent? The study draws on Eurobarometer micro-data integrated with country-level information to respond to this question. Performing a multilevel analysis across 21 European countries, it considers macro factors that influence the decisions of mid-life women to give up or reduce paid work in order to care for a frail elderly parent. The results show that, while the overall level of expenditure on long-term care is not influential, settings characterized by limited formal care services, and strong norms with regard to intergenerational obligations, have a negative impact on women’s attachment to the labour market. Policies and cultural factors also influence the extent to which women are polarized: in more defamilialized countries, regardless of their level of education, female carers rarely reduce their level of employment.

Parental Migration, Intergenerational Obligations and the Paradox for Left-Behind Boys in Rural China

ABSTRACTDrawing on in-depth interviews with caregivers of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China, this article seeks to explore their understanding of migration motives and the social process of taking on care-giving roles for LBC. The authors argue that there are underlying socio-cultural explanations pertaining to economic motives for migration; such as, making contributions to social events (weddings and funerals) in village life, and fulfilling social obligations for left-behind sons’ futures. Parents migrate to save for sons’, but not daughters’, adult lives. Grandparents, particularly on the paternal side, are expected to fulfil social obligations to care for left-behind grandchildren, even without immediate financial returns. These suggest that left-behind boys, and in particular boys cared for by paternal grandparents, may be at greater risk than other LBC, as they may receive even fewer resources in the form of remittances from migrant parents in their early childhood.