Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of children’s support in elders’ decisions to live in a yanglaoyuan (residential long-term care) in Shanghai based on their intentions and actual experiences, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data. The 2005 Shanghai Elderly Citizen Longitudinal Tracking Study (SECLTS) examines a stratified sample of community-dwelling elders and their intention to live in a yanglaoyuan (N = 1,512). Eleven semi-structured, retrospective interviews described how children participated in residents’ decision-making to live in a yanglaoyuan. Logistic regression analyses reveal that satisfaction with children’s support—financial, instrumental, and emotional—is negatively associated with respondents’ intention to live in a yanglaoyuan. Higher levels of respondents’ satisfaction with their children’s support are associated with lower levels of intention to live in a yanglaoyuan. Such support, however, does not necessarily determine elders’ decision to live in a yanglaoyuan. Qualitative analyses suggest that children participated throughout residents’ actual process of deciding to live in a yanglaoyuan. Children helped residents to make the decision to live in a yanglaoyuan. Residents reported how their children contributed to instrumental support to face family caregiving challenges and how they experienced and shared the emotional process in the decision-making. Quantitative and qualitative findings complement each other to provide a holistic understanding of the role of children’s support in elders’ intention to live in a yanglaoyuan, as well as in their actual decision-making experiences. These findings also suggest the evolving nature of children’s support in family caregiving in contemporary Chinese society.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the individuals who graciously agreed to participate in both studies. We thank the following individuals for their guidance: Dr. Lené Levy-Storms in designing and conducting the qualitative study, and Dr. Gilbert C. Gee in revising the manuscript. We thank Dr. Alfred DeMaris, and Mr. Hsueh-Sheng Wu for their suggestions on data analysis, and Dr. Gary Lee for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We also thank Shanghai Research Center on Aging and Mr. Pengbiao Sun for the permission of using the dataset.
The qualitative study received 2009 Pre-Dissertation Fellowship from Asia Institute, UCLA.
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Chen, L., Ye, M. The Role of Children’s Support in Elders’ Decisions to Live in a Yanglaoyuan (Residential Long-Term Care). J Cross Cult Gerontol 28, 75–87 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-012-9185-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-012-9185-y