Mutuality of support provision is a necessary precondition of family solidarity. However, the exchange of care between grandparents and grandchildren has largely been neglected. Using data from the ...fourth wave of the Anhui Study in China, this study investigated determinants of support exchange between grandparents and grandchildren. Results showed that more grandparents received support from than provided support to their grandchildren. A higher percentage of older adults exchanged support with the grandchildren of their eldest child if that child was male rather than female. Older adults who had strong emotional bonds with the middle generation, especially with sons, or had experience caring for grandchildren were much more likely to receive support from and provide support to their grandchildren. This study confirms the intergenerational solidarity theory and norms of kinship obligation in rural China, where social services are limited.
This exploratory article aims to contribute to scholarship on migrants' experiences of bereavement and grief through the loss of a parent in their country of origin. It considers how transnational ...bereavement and grieving relate to the ever changing emotional geographies of migration and transnational families. Empirical material is drawn from a research project conducted with Latin American and Latino-British families living in the north of England, particularly from narratives presented by sons and daughters who had experienced such bereavements. Middle generation migrants may express: a continuing bond with a deceased parent as part of their emotional support network; regret at missing the death of the parent and the reinforcement of ambivalent emotions regarding their migration project; boundary ambiguity towards the transnational family; and a sense of physical distance from the family home as a geographical cure which allows working through the grieving process and troubling changes in family configurations.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the position of middle-aged women who are part of multigenerational households. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with these women, we investigate how ...middle-generation women understand their roles in the family and intergenerational relations, how they position themselves in relation to older and younger generations, and how they interpret the responsibilities and expectations and their fulfillment in the context of multigenerational living. What are the pressures, tensions, and advantages of being in the middle? We demonstrate several levels of being "in between" while analyzing the care demands, responsibilities, and expectations that these women experience in daily life. The article investigates three kinds of activities that women perform in multigenerational living: care for people, care for intergenerational family relationships, and care for homes. We conclude that middle-generation women struggle between the drive for independence and the appreciation of interdependency among the generations that is both a burden and a relief.
The article analyzes possibilities of individual self-provision of housing in Lithuania which are defined by a dualistic housing policy model. The model emerged after independence was restored, and ...is mainly characterised by a limited degree of responsibility of the state for housing needs of residents and a private housing fund controlled by the market players. In recent decades, many modern housing policy systems are undergoing intense changes due to the effects of financial crises and the challenges posed by a shrinking welfare state. A growing private housing sector and decreasing state support for housing are evident in dualistic and unitary housing systems. Structural changes in the labour market and demographic changes in society complicate the issue of self-provision of housing for representatives of younger generations. Researchers agree that older generations were more privileged in the housing sector and had better possibilities to self-provide housing. The article aims at disclosing the context of possibilities for private self-provision of housing for representatives of the middle generation (born in 1970–1984) in Lithuania. Since this generation, as a separate cohort, has not received sufficient attention yet, it is worth distinguishing it because this generation, in the active period of their marital life, has experienced a rapid change in the society and structural, economic and political changes, as well as changes in the housing policy. All these changes make this generation different from older generations that lived in the environment of the Soviet housing provision system and the youngest generations that were socialized under conditions of liberal economics and dominating private housing ownership.
There is a need to determine the extent to which Malaysian employees reconcile both paid employment and informal care provision. We examined data from the Malaysia's Healthiest Workplace via AIA ...Vitality Online Survey 2019 (N = 17,286). A multivariate multinomial regression was conducted to examine characteristics for the following groups: primary caregiver of a child or disabled child, primary caregiver of a disabled adult or elderly individual, primary caregiver for both children and elderly, as well as secondary caregivers. Respondent mean age ± SD was 34.76 ± 9.31, with 49.6% (
= 8573), identifying as either a primary or secondary caregiver to at least one child under 18 years, an elderly individual, or both. Males (
= 6957; 40.2%) had higher odds of being primary caregivers to children (OR 2.06; 95% CI 1.85-2.30), elderly (OR 1.24; 95% CI 1.09-1.41) and both children and elderly (OR 1.87; 95% CI 1.57-2.22). However, males were less likely to be secondary caregivers than females (OR 0.61; 95% CI 0.53-0.71). Our results highlight the differences in characteristics of employees engaged in informal care provision, and to a lesser degree, the extent to which mid-life individual employees are sandwiched into caring for children and/or the elderly.
James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Books, was also a poet whose artistic evolution ran almost precisely counter to that of the modernism he did so much to promote. Originally a juvenile ...imitator of Pound and Eliot, Laughlin abruptly rejected their model while studying under adamant anti-modernists at Harvard, and developed a style much closer to that of Williams or even Catullus. Ironically, even as he swerved away from their influence, Laughlin's teachers still could only see in his poetry the taint of the high modernists. At the same time, Laughlin had begun working with and publishing the writing of nascent “Middle Generation” poets such as John Berryman and Randall Jarrell. Reading Laughlin's work in the context of the 1950s modernist vs. anti-modernist struggle shows that Laughlin should be considered a part of the Middle Generation, rather than a belated modernist imitator and impresario.
Writers Wiles, Ellen
Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts,
09/2015
Book Chapter
This chapter explores the lives and literary work of the middle generation of contemporary writers in Myanmar through three writers: Ye Shan, short story writer and railway superintendent; Ma Thida, ...journalist, editor, short story writer, non-fiction writer, novelist, surgeon and former political prisoner; and Zeyar Lynn, poet and English language teacher.
This chapter focuses on grandparenting in families where members of the middle generation have divorced or separated. Grandparents’ roles in divorced and separated families range from intensive ...co-parenting to situations where they experience a drastic reduction or complete withdrawal of contact with grandchildren. The findings are in line with the argument that paternal grandparents tend to experience greater difficulties than maternal grandparents in securing what they see as an adequate level of contact with grandchildren following divorce (the ‘matrilineal advantage’ or the ‘matrifocal bias’). The influence of the middle generation was strongly evident, corroborating the parent-as-mediator theory. Grandparents’ feelings of affective solidarity, their protective parenting style, and unstinting practical support of their adult children support the argument that some grandparents revert to earlier parenting roles when their adult child divorces. However, the chapter also argues that grandparents seek to actively influence the extent to which they are involved in the lives of grandchildren and the middle generation. Grandparents make choices and develop strategies to shape their involvement in the lives of younger family generations. Some (paternal) grandparents are able to use their agency to forge positive relationships with the custodial parent. The main motive for exercising grandparental agency is the wellbeing of and contact with their grandchildren, but agency can also be used in the interest of their own wellbeing for instance to reduce involvement in grandchild care. The chapter concludes by encouraging research into what shapes grandparental agency and conjectures that the main determinants of agency are gender, education, income and wealth, and the characteristics of the separating couple in the middle generation.
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