Mpofu Elias, Zhan Rong-Fang, Yin Cheng, Brock Kaye
Department of Rehabilitation and Health Services, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311456, Denton, TX 76203, USA.
School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia.
Geriatrics (Basel). 2024 Apr 10;9(2):49. doi: 10.3390/geriatrics9020049.
While family and friendship relationship qualities are associated with life satisfaction, evidence on how these types of relationships interact to contribute to older adults' life satisfaction is sparse. This study examined how family and friendship relationship qualities may be supportive of (compensatory) or conflict with (competing) older adults' life satisfaction. We adopted a cross-sectional design to analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 1178, females = 54.8%, mean age = 67.9 years, SD = 9.3 years) to examine compensatory (as in social support) and competing (as in social strain) qualities of family and friendship social relationships and their association with life satisfaction in older adults. For greater explanatory power, we also controlled for life satisfaction by sociodemographic variables of age, gender, education, self-reported general health, physical health and activity, depression, and personality traits. Our findings indicate that the spouse/partner support relationship contributes to older adults' life satisfaction overall and is associated with greater social support and less social strain. Friendship support is associated with improved life satisfaction for older adults reporting spouse/partner strain. Relationship support for the life satisfaction of older adults should consider their need for social support from their social network while minimizing the risk of social strain from adversarial relationships in life situations.
虽然家庭和友谊关系质量与生活满意度相关，但关于这些类型的关系如何相互作用以促进老年人生活满意度的证据却很少。本研究考察了家庭和友谊关系质量如何支持（补偿性）或与老年人的生活满意度产生冲突（竞争性）。我们采用横断面设计，分析来自健康与退休研究的数据（n = 1178，女性 = 54.8%，平均年龄 = 67.9岁，标准差 = 9.3岁），以检验家庭和友谊社会关系的补偿性（如社会支持）和竞争性（如社会压力）特质及其与老年人生活满意度的关联。为了获得更强的解释力，我们还通过年龄、性别、教育程度、自我报告的总体健康状况、身体健康和活动、抑郁以及人格特质等社会人口学变量来控制生活满意度。我们的研究结果表明，配偶/伴侣支持关系总体上有助于老年人的生活满意度，并且与更多的社会支持和更少的社会压力相关。对于报告有配偶/伴侣压力的老年人来说，友谊支持与生活满意度的提高相关。对老年人生活满意度的关系支持应考虑他们从社会网络中获得社会支持的需求，同时将生活情境中敌对关系带来的社会压力风险降至最低。
