Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Department of Sociology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
Pain Med. 2017 Dec 1;18(12):2316-2324. doi: 10.1093/pm/pnw320.
Not only is persistent pain a debilitating health problem for older adults, it also may have negative effects on family relationships. Studies have documented the effects of pain on spouses and on parents of young children. However, research has not extended this line of inquiry to later life, and specifically to the impact of older parents' pain symptoms on adult children. This study addresses the question: Does older mothers' pain affect the quality of relations with offspring?
Using data from a survey of 678 adult children of older mothers, this article presents two analyses examining the impact of mothers' self-reported pain on emotional closeness and on tension in the adult child-parent relationship.
Contrary to research conducted on younger families, multilevel models showed no effects on emotional closeness or tension in relationships with adult children when mothers experienced higher levels of persistent pain. This surprising finding suggests that mechanisms may exist that protect adult child caregivers from stressors that result from a relative's chronic pain.
Based on the findings of this article, further exploration of the impact of chronic pain on relations between adult children and their parents is justified. Of interest is exploration of factors that may insulate later-life intergenerational relationships from the effects of pain.
持续性疼痛不仅是老年人健康受损的一个严重问题，还可能对家庭关系产生负面影响。已有研究记录了疼痛对配偶和幼儿父母的影响。然而，研究尚未将这一探究延伸到老年人群体，特别是老年人的疼痛症状对成年子女的影响。本研究探讨了以下问题：老年母亲的疼痛是否会影响与子女的关系质量？
本研究利用对 678 名老年母亲成年子女的调查数据，进行了两项分析，检验了母亲自述的疼痛对子女与母亲的情感亲密程度和紧张关系的影响。
与针对年轻家庭开展的研究相反，当母亲经历更高水平的持续性疼痛时，多水平模型并未显示出对与成年子女关系的情感亲密程度或紧张关系产生影响。这一令人惊讶的发现表明，可能存在一些机制，可以保护成年子女照顾者免受亲属慢性疼痛带来的压力。
基于本文的研究结果，有理由进一步探讨慢性疼痛对成年子女与其父母之间关系的影响。有趣的是，应该探索可能使代际关系免受疼痛影响的因素。
