Intergenerational Problems Research Articles

Cooperation and norm enforcement differ strongly across adult generations

Cooperation of different generations is crucial to meet many important societal challenges, including climate change or the sustainability of the welfare state. Little is known, however, about different generations’ ability to cooperate in social dilemma situations, and their willingness to enforce social norms of cooperation. We present an experiment with two generations – juniors in their 20ies, and seniors who are 50 years or older, with an average age of 67. They play a repeated prisoner's dilemma (PD) game with third-party punishment. The third party is either a person from the same generation as the players in the PD game or from the other generation, and this is common knowledge. We find that seniors cooperate twice as much as juniors do, irrespective of the generation of the third-party. Moreover, seniors are much stricter as third parties and punish norm violations much more frequently than juniors do. However, the cooperation levels of both generations react hardly to third party punishment, which means that both generations differ strongly in their attempts to enforce norms of cooperation and in their reaction to norm enforcement. These differences across generations may pose a serious threat for the solution of intergenerational problems.

Decolonial turn of collective occupations in post-apartheid South Africa: Young people's voices of occupational legacy

BACKGROUND: Collective occupations are a vital part of the post-apartheid South African context because they enable parents and grandparents to pass on their legacies to the young people in families and communities. However, there are social inter-generational problems such as corruption, unemployment, family conflicts and poverty that disrupt the actions of inculcating occupational legacy AIM: This study explored young people's voices of occupational legacy in a post-apartheid South African context METHOD: A socio-narratology qualitative inquiry was employed to gain insight from eight participants who were recruited using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically in a credible process RESULTS: Five themes that amalgamated collective occupations with occupational legacy were identified: decoloniality of 'knowledge generation and transfer', decoloniality of 'doing', decoloniality of 'being', decoloniality of 'becoming' and decoloniality of 'belonging' CONCLUSION: The findings add to our understanding of the power of occupational legacy in ameliorating the problematic situations that enabled the young people's continuity, social change and transformation through collective occupations. It is evident in the findings that the young people exerted maximal efforts to engage in occupational decision-making activities that were guided by the available opportunities so they may transition to the different contexts.

Insights from Social Media into Literacy Practice and Intergenerational Communication in Korea: Recent Cases of Illiteracy

Literacy has recently become a hot topic. Recent cases on social/news media in South Korea include simsimhan sakwa (sincere apology) and sahul (three days). To discuss literacy issues and provide feasible solutions, this study explores the insights from social media into literacy practice in South Korea with reference to recent cases of illiteracy. Based on the concepts of New Literacy Studies, Bakhtin’s dialogism, Bourdieu’s capital, and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, this study concludes that no case is directly applicable to social media literacy since the fundamental problems did not result from any personalized content or different perceptions of reality. However, cases on YouTube including chosengchey and yamincengum are consistent with social media literacy. The problems can be partially solved by emphasizing Sino-Korean morphemes and by raising students’ vocabulary level in any subject matter. More importantly, intergenerational problems in communication should be resolved through efforts to better understand each other. Without awareness, tolerance, appreciation, and appropriateness in literacy practices, the intergenerational gap in communication will not be eliminated; communication between generations is at the heart of the problem.

“My children,” “my grandchildren”: Navigating intergenerational ambivalence in grandparent childcare arrangements in Hong Kong

AbstractObjectiveThis study contributes in‐depth knowledge about informal childcare and family processes in East Asian families in Hong Kong in a time of rapid economic and social development. We explore how families negotiate grandparent childcare and how parents and grandparents manage intergenerational tensions and conflict.BackgroundThe common way of understanding intergenerational relationships in childcare is to focus on the positive experience of taking care of grandchildren, but there is limited discussion on the tension and conflicts that also occur between the generations.MethodThis qualitative study is based on in‐depth interviews with 14 parents and 12 grandparents about childcare arrangements for 53 children within East Asian families in Hong Kong.ResultsTensions are found among the parents and grandparents in childcare provision, and considerable negotiation and ongoing emotional management of relationships is required.ConclusionGrandparent childcare is an important resource for many families, but it might not suit all. The issues of autonomy, seniority, power, respect, and different expectations of care are embedded in established family dynamics. Some intergenerational problems are unable to be settled by the family members.ImplicationsGrandparent childcare should be a care option provided for families with young children. However, it should not be a substitute for childcare services and supports outside the home. Professional family services also should be sensitive to intergenerational family dynamics.

Do You See What I See? ‘Religion’ and Acculturation in Filipino–Japanese International Families

Catholicism prides itself on being a ‘global religion’. However, just how this ‘religion’ is contextualized into a specific culture has led to intercultural and intergenerational problems. In Japan, the Filipino–Japanese struggle to fit into a society that sees, in their Catholic upbringing, ‘religious’ activity that it deems un-Japanese. The concept of ‘religion’ (shūkyō) in Japan has been largely associated with congregational activity, an aspect that neither Shinto nor Buddhism stress. As a result, the Japanese people label acts such as the purchasing of lucky charms, temple and shrine pilgrimages, visits to power spots, and performing birth or death rituals as ‘non-religious’ (mushūkyō). On the other hand, they label similar Christian acts as ‘religious’. Associating Christianity with ‘religion’ has had consequences for Japan’s Filipino residents and their international families. This paper considers the role the concept of ‘religion’ plays in the acculturation of Filipino–Japanese children into Japanese society. Through qualitative interviews of four Filipino–Japanese young adults, it delineates, in eight sections, how the discourse of ‘religion’ isolates Filipino mothers from their ‘non-religious’ children and husbands. This begins at adolescence and culminates with the children’s absence from the Roman Catholic Church of Japan.

Intragenerational deliberation and intergenerational sustainability dilemma

Many sustainability problems have occurred because the current generation affects future generations, but the opposite is not true. This one-way nature may induce the current generation to take advantage of resources without considering future generations, which we refer to as intergenerational sustainability dilemma (ISD). While deliberation is known to bring a change in individual opinions and to lead to a good decision in some intragenerational problems, little is known about how intragenerational deliberation affects individual opinions and collective decisions for intergenerational problems, such as ISD, in societies. An ISD game (ISDG) along with interviews and questionnaires are instituted in rural and urban societies of Nepal. In ISDG, a sequence of generations, each of which consists of three people, is organized, and each generation chooses either to maintain intergenerational sustainability (sustainable option) or to maximize his or her own generation’s payoff by irreversibly imposing a cost on future generations (unsustainable option) under an intragenerational deliberative process. Our results demonstrate that urban subjects have a wider variety of individual initial opinions and support an unsustainable option more often than rural subjects do. It also shows that individual opinions change through deliberation when subjects in a generation do not share the same initial opinion, reflecting that urban subjects change opinions as compared to rural subjects. Such opinion changes are identified not to work in the direction to enhance intergenerational sustainability for urban generations. Overall, our experiments suggest that intragenerational deliberation does not necessarily influence individual opinions for resolving ISD.

Promoting New Psychological Understandings by Use of an Indigenous American Psychological Paradigm

Indigenous Americans are not well represented by mainstream psychology and its reductionistic tenets. As psychology developed, it could not help but to be implicitly biased by the surrounding hierarchical colonial culture—a culture in which Indigenous people and many others were conquered, oppressed, dehumanized, devalued, neglected, and excluded. An Indigenous worldview views humans as co-equal partners of an interdependent holistic system. Striving for healthy relationships with others is foundational to psychological health and well-being from an Indigenous perspective. Discrete entities (including self), independence, autonomy, and hierarchy are considered artificial mainstream conceptualizations that have negatively impacted the well-being of humans and the natural world. Indigenous American psychology appreciates the sacred nature of the whole and its entities, approaching professional psychology with the humility and respect that interacting with sacred entities warrants. Essential tenets of an Indigenous American Psychological Paradigm (IAPP) are discussed therein as an alternative to existing mainstream beliefs. An IAPP offers the ability to address intergenerational psychological problems holistically across time in ways that mainstream psychology has been unable. Psychology is ultimately strengthened by an ability to conceptualize psychology through the new lenses of alternative paradigms such as this one.

A visual narrative for taking future generations’ perspectives

Intergenerational problems occur when current generations choose actions that benefit them, without fully considering future generations’ needs. This study posits that the public has a general tendency to serve as the proxy of future generations willingly, and aims to develop a visual narrative intervention measure to accelerate this willingness. The narrative was created based on an interview survey with a participant in a Future Design workshop as an “imaginary future generation.” Next, a laboratory experiment was designed using this visual narrative as an intervention tool, to assess the impact of this intervention on the experimental subjects’ political preferences and their concerns for future generations. A total of 186 subjects chose their most preferred option among four options prevalent in the life of the present generation, before and after the exposure to this intervention. The exposure to this visual narrative significantly changed the participants’ preferences as the proxies for future generations. After this intervention, the subjects wished that the present generation had chosen sustainable options more different from the status quo so that future generations would not experience regret from inaction (i.e., the regret of not having performed certain actions in the present), indicating that the intervention was effective in acquiring the perspective of future generations. This study demonstrates that individuals in the present generation can be motivated to take the perspective of those in future generations.

Multi‐problem families in intensive specialised multi‐family therapy: Theoretical description and case study report

AbstractSome families experience chronic, severe and intergenerational problems across multiple domains in their lives. These multi‐problem families do not seem to benefit from standard treatment. For them, Intensive Specialized Multi‐Family Therapy (ISMFT) was developed at the Department of Family Psychiatry (DFP) of a mental health organization in the Netherlands. ISMFT is an integrative treatment based on multiple family therapy with added elements of solution‐focused therapy and a focus on the working alliance between families and therapists. This kind of intensive treatment for multi‐problem families is rare across Europe, and is often seen as a ‘last resort’ before a decision on out‐of‐home placement of the children is made. This paper describes the theoretical principles used in ISMFT and uses a case study of an anonymized family to describe the course of treatment and illustrate treatment principles. Practitioner points Offering multi‐family therapy helps families overcome feelings of isolation, maximises their own resources and provides opportunities for support and constructive criticism. Therapists have an important role in facilitating a safe group atmosphere, as well as challenging parents by voicing different perspectives and reflecting on parental behaviour. By making parents the expert on their own families, good treatment results can be achieved in therapy‐resistant multi‐problem families.

The Role of Intergenerational Relationships: Applying the Family Stress Model to Grandfamilies

The Family Stress Model (FSM) of Economic Hardship (Conger, Rueter, & Conger, 2000) was developed to explain the impact of financial stress on families through links between economic difficulties, parental emotional distress, marital conflict, disrupted parenting behaviors, and child maladjustment. The FSM has been cross validated in samples of custodial grandparents (i.e., grandparents who provide substantial care for their grandchildren; Smith et al., 2017). The current study modified the FSM by replacing inter-parent relationship difficulties with inter-generational relationship problems between the custodial grandparents and their children to ultimately examine the adjustment of the grandchildren. This change to the model is supported by prior research conducted on intergenerational stress impacting the parenting and subsequent development of children in grandfamilies (Barnett, Mills-Koonce, Gustafsson, & Cox, 2012). Using a nationwide sample of 317 custodial grandparents aged 40 and older (M = 61 yr) the fit of the modified model was tested using AMOS 26. Latent variables in the model included Economic Pressure, Caregiver Distress, Disrupted Parenting, Intergenerational Relationship, and Child Adjustment. Moderate fit was achieved (χ2(308) = 574.88; CFI = .896; RMSEA = .052). All pathways were significant with the exception of Disrupted Parenting to Child Adjustment. These results indicate that intergenerational relationships are an important predictor of child adjustment, and an applicable substitute for inter-partner relationships when modeling family stress in custodial grandfamilies. Details and clinical implications will be discussed.

Planning for later life: Transnational and inter-generational care among Papua New Guineans in Australia

Drawing on qualitative research conducted among Papua New Guineans living in North Queensland, Australia, this paper explores how people imagine and plan for later life in transnational contexts. We present ‘planning’ for old age as a socially embedded practice with specific spatial and temporal properties that emerge in everyday interaction. At issue are representations of difference in the cultures of care found in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Australia and the problem of intergenerational changes in care practices among Papua New Guineans resident in Australia. We argue that growing tensions in intergenerational relationships in Australia and PNG play a crucial role in changing the social relations of the transnational moral economy of care. These intergenerational problems are understood by PNG research participants, in their own critical analysis of their care relationships, as related to other concerns about estrangement from place, loss of culture and the difficulties of planning for later life. We conclude that transnational households are dynamically defined and transformed in terms of tensions central to their very operation.

Collaboration of different generations in the digital environment of the economy

This article discusses the features of personnel adaptation in modern organizations, taking into account domestic and foreign experience. A variety of approaches to personnel management, its productive work is caused by the need to take into account a set of qualitative characteristics, an important among which is the age of the participants in labor activity. The authors of the article focus on intergenerational problems that arise in the organization during the period of innovative transformations associated with the introduction of digital technologies. A retrospective of the theory and practice of updating adaptation processes in domestic and foreign organizations allows us to identify patterns and trends inherent in this area of the work with people. The authors also consistently explore the specifics of adaptation in the context of the digitalization of the economy and society, and propose a system of measures to overcome barriers and minimize threats and risks associated with changes in the organizational environment in these conditions. The suggestions and recommendations presented in this paper allow us to coordinate approaches to the organization of adaptation, which will ensure harmonization in the field of social and labor relations and will increase the efficiency of joint activities of workers of different generations. In conclusion, the study presents the main findings and results of the work.

Revolution and Its Inverted Image: A Dialogue with Ai Wei

In this dialogue, Professor Zhang Qinghua engages Ai Wei in an intensive dicusssion of Ai Wei’s literary creations. First, they trace cultural south and southern writing and discuss legacy and defects in “avant-garde fiction.” Then they talk about the intergenerational problems among Chinese writers during two opposite eras, one being the other’s inverted image. Following that, they talk about Ai Wei’s three novels. In Comrade Lover, Ai Wei was willing to explore the story behind a disabled hero and an innocent girl. He wrote from where the fairytale ended, restoring people’s blurred faces during social transformation. In Beautiful Days, Ai Wei described the complicated feelings that men had when they went through revolution—which is the key to his writing. Ai Wei also explained what he means by a “botanical novel.” In The South, they discuss the relationship between allegory and novels, along with the recurrent themes of flying, death, and suffering. Finally he ends on the topic of three important structural personal pronouns and the innovation of language.

Kijk naar jezelf! Reflectie op beeldmateriaal in onderzoek en praktijk

Look at yourself! A reflection on images in research and in practice Social workers play an important role in helping multiproblem families to deal with multiple, interrelated and often intergenerational problems. Social workers indicate that effective collaboration – with clients, their family members and other professionals – is crucial. Defective collaboration can have major consequences for effective support. In this study, six social workers were followed intensively in their collaborative relationships with families, families’ social network and other professionals providing services to these families. Video recordings and stimulated recall interviews were used to explore the behavioral indicators of this collaboration. The value of the method for research and practice is described.

Planning for the long run: Programming with patient, Pareto responsive preferences

Respect for first order distributional overtaking guarantees that social welfare functions for intergenerational problems treat present and future people equally and respect the Pareto criterion, modulo null sets. For weakly ergodic optimization problems, this class of social welfare functions yields solutions that respect welfare concerns, sharply contrasting with extant patient criteria. For problems in which the evolution of future paths hinges on early events and decisions, the curvature of our social welfare functions determines the risks that society is willing to undertake and leads to a variant of the precautionary principle.

Untaming aid through action research: Seeking transformative reflective action

Planned international development—Official Development Assistance—pretends to address complex, intergenerational problems. The pretense is endemic to, and necessary for, the continuation of the development enterprise, frequently leading to docile projects. Official Development Assistance’s methodologies and methods are ill-matched for confronting such problems, while those of action research are well-suited to the task. Yet Official Development Assistance and action research are only infrequent and ephemeral bedmates. Research from five sites on three continents reveals five lessons for untaming aid through action research: (1) plan and develop programming iteratively and over long time frames to offer meaningful support to people’s lives, (2) develop new connective tissue and relational capital, (3) commit to inquiry and learning in specific contexts, (4) incrementally confront culturally embedded practice in a safe and feasible manner, and (5) use methodology to develop safe and participatory spaces that engage tacit and explicit perspectives and ways of knowing. This article, the introductory essay to the Action Research Journal’s special issue, “Development, Aid, and Social Transformation,” argues that adoption of these five practices could help untame Official Development Assistance and make it more powerful, ethical, and transformative.

Irreversibility and uncertainty cause an intergenerational equity-efficiency trade-off

Two important policy goals in intergenerational problems are Pareto-efficiency and sustainability, i.e. intergenerational equity. We demonstrate that the pursuit of these goals is subject to an intergenerational equity-efficiency trade-off. Our analysis highlights two salient characteristics of intergenerational problems and policy: (i) temporal irreversibility, i.e. the inability to revise one's past actions; and (ii) uncertainty of future consequences of present actions in human-environment systems. We employ a two-non-overlapping-generations model that combines an intragenerational production decision on the use of circulating capital and a non-renewable resource, with a negative intergenerational externality as an unforeseen contingency. If initially unknown problems become apparent and policy is enacted after irreversible actions were taken, policy-making faces a fundamental trade-off between ex-post Pareto-efficiency and sustainability. That is, one can achieve either one of these two goals, but not both.

Contextualizing Afghan refugee views of depression through narratives of trauma, resettlement stress, and coping.

This qualitative study explored how Afghan refugees conceptualize frames of mind that may reflect depression in general and as it relates to trauma they experienced. We performed in-depth interviews with 18 Afghans residing in the San Diego area. Views regarding the causes, symptoms, and perceived treatments of depression were gathered through free-listing techniques, and supplemented with narratives relating to pre- and post-resettlement stressors and coping mechanisms. Data were analyzed with standard qualitative content analysis methods. Items endorsed with relation to depression causality included pre-migration war traumas, notably separation from family, and post-migration stressors including status dissonance and cultural conflicts that ranged from linguistic challenges to intergenerational problems. Depressive symptoms were viewed as highly debilitating, and included changes in temperament, altered cognitions, avoidance and dissociative behaviors, and somatic complaints. Relief was sought through family reunification and community support, reliance on prayer, and the academic success of their children in the US. The findings underscore the need for practitioners to take into account situational stressors, cultural aspects of mourning and symptomatology, and existing coping mechanisms in developing interventions that are based on refugees' articulated needs.

“Thanks to the Internet, We Remain a Family”: ICT Domestication by Elderly Immigrants and their Families in Israel

ABSTRACTIn addition to coping with intergenerational and spousal problems related to aging and/or immigration, elderly immigrants in Israel are also often burdened with domesticating information and communication technologies (ICTs). Thus, the goal of this study is to explore how relationships within the elderly immigrant’s family are manifested in a home computer context and to determine the roles that domestication of the relevant technologies plays in their family life. This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews with 26 elderly users who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Israel about 20 years ago. The findings show that ICT domestication and family dynamics are complex, interrelated processes: Technologies have dramatically changed the elderly immigrants’ family situations, yet immigrants have accorded these technologies unique meaning, adapting them to respond to their family needs and negotiating ICT domestication as a means of discussing and rebuilding family communication.

Taboo Teens and Ancient Adults: Overpopulation Motifs in Fictional Literature for Children and Young People

Literature for children and young people is uniquely positioned in terms of intended readership and literary genres such as the young adult dystopian novel to scrutinise intergenerational and human fertility issues associated with overpopulation. However, fictional texts that explore overpopulation have a narrative form that is unstable and unreliable due to prevailing conventions of subjectivity and optimism in children's and young adult literature. Derrida's last interview, Learning to Live, is pertinent to an understanding of motifs of overpopulation in literature for children and young people. Derrida's recognition of the ‘rights’ of future and present generations, and of the temporal intergenerational problems between parent as child, and child as parent, are explored in recent fictional texts for children and young people.