| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 106 === In an aged society, most of adult children are facing the stress of caring for elderly parents and of inter-role conflict in family domain. Those adult children who lack preparation for becoming their parents‘ caregivers more often encounter difficulties to cope with the role transition, thus increasing their risks of psychological maladaptation. By contrast, those who are sensitive to their ageing parents‘ psychosocial needs during the transition period often maintain a good intergenerational relationship through positive experiences of interaction with parents, which is fostering their resilience to deal with various challenges in caring for ageing parents. Hence, it is better for adult children to understand and accept their role- reversal from care-receiver to caregiver in advance. In order to facilitate adult children‘s awareness of the above transition in the family life cycle, it is important for researchers to clarify the mechanism or characteristics of the role-reversal process from care-receiver to caregiver and to investigate its potential antecedent factors. In Chinese culture, filial piety which often manifests as the family-centered informal care for ageing parents may closely connect with the caregiver role-reversal of adult children. The goal of this study is to explore how adult children‘s beliefs toward filial piety (including reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety proposed by the Dual Filial Piety Model) and their filial anxiety (anxiety over one‘s own ability to take on a caregiving role and anxiety over one‘s aging parents‘ welfare) affect their tendency of caregiver role reversal when taking care of aging parents. The research participants are adult children who are older than 35 years old and have at least one alive parent. The final sample consisted a total of 503 valid questionnaires were collected (237 for the role-reversal between father-child dyad and 266 for mother- child dyad).The results indicated that (1) adult children‘s belief toward reciprocal filial piety had more positive influence (in contrast to authoritarian filial belief) on their tendency of role reversal and this positive influence of filial piety was more significant in mother-child than in father-child dyad; (2) adult children‘s anxiety over their aging parents‘ welfare had a positive influence on their tendency of role reversal while anxiety over their own ability to take on a caregiving role a negative influence. And the former kind of anxiety had a more significant influence on adult children‘s role-reversal than the later; (3) the negative influence of adult children‘s anxiety over their own caregiving ability on their tendency of role-reversal was buffered by their anxiety over parent‘ welfare and this buffering effect was more significant in mother-child than father-child dyad; (4) whether the adult children‘s caregiver role was evaluated in mother-child or father-child dyad, adult children‘s anxiety over aging parents‘ welfare consistently showed a mediating effect between their beliefs toward filial piety (both reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety) and role-reversal tendency ; (5) adult children‘s anxiety over their own ability to take on a caregiving role showed a moderating effect on the link between their beliefs toward filial piety (both reciprocal and authoritarian) and tendency of role reversal. The positive association between adult children respondents‘ reciprocal filial piety and role-reversal tendency was stronger for the respondents with low ability anxiety but weaker for those with high ability anxiety, and this difference was only found in the father-child dyad. On the other hand, the positive association between adult children respondents‘ authoritarian filial piety and role-reversal tendency was weaker for the respondents with low ability anxiety but stronger for those with high ability anxiety whether the adult children‘s caregiver role was evaluated in mother-child or father-child dyad. In sum, the filial belief and filial anxiety of adult children affect their tendency of role reversal. More, specifically, both the reciprocal filial piety of adult children and their anxiety over aging parents‘ welfare that are based on affection are likely to be the key factors for the role reversal. Future study should pay more attention to this role-reversal process and develop a practical intervention program to improve adult children‘s awareness of and coping skills for their caregiver role transition in advance.
|
|---|
