Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy; Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Florida, United States.
Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
Soc Sci Res. 2024 Mar;119:102991. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2024.102991. Epub 2024 Feb 13.
Relationships between family members from different generations have long been described as a source of solidarity and support in aging populations and, more recently, as a potential risk factor for COVID-19 contagion. Personal or egocentric network research offers a powerful kit of conceptual and methodological tools to study these relationships, but this has not yet been employed to its full potential in the literature. We investigate the heterogeneity, social integration, and individual correlates of intergenerational relationships in old age analyzing highly granular data on the personal networks of 230 older adults (2747 social ties) from a local survey in one of the areas of the world at the forefront of global aging trends (northern Italy). Using information on different layers in broad egocentric networks and on the structure of connectivity among the social contacts of aging people, we propose multiple conceptualizations and measures of intergenerational connectedness. Results show that intergenerational relationships are strongly integrated, but also highly diverse and variable, in older adults' social networks. Different types of intergenerational ties exist in different network layers, with various relational roles, degrees of tie strength, and patterns of association with individual and tie characteristics. We discuss how new and existing personal network data can be leveraged to consider novel questions and hypotheses about intergenerational relationships in contemporary aging families.
代际家庭成员之间的关系长期以来一直被描述为老龄化人口中团结和支持的源泉，最近也被描述为 COVID-19 传播的潜在风险因素。个人或自我中心网络研究为研究这些关系提供了一套强大的概念和方法工具，但在文献中尚未充分发挥其潜力。我们通过对来自世界老龄化趋势前沿地区之一（意大利北部）的一项本地调查中 230 名老年人（2747 个社交关系）的个人网络进行高度详细的数据分析，研究了老年时期代际关系的异质性、社会融合和个体相关性。利用广泛的自我中心网络中不同层次的信息以及老年人社交联系之间的连接结构，我们提出了多种代际联系的概念化和衡量方法。结果表明，代际关系在老年人的社交网络中是紧密融合的，但也具有高度的多样性和可变性。不同类型的代际关系存在于不同的网络层次中，具有不同的关系角色、关系强度程度以及与个体和关系特征的关联模式。我们讨论了如何利用新的和现有的个人网络数据来考虑关于当代老龄化家庭中代际关系的新问题和假设。
