Older Adults’ Evaluations of Middle-Aged Children’s Attempts to Initiate Discussion of Care Needs

Abstract

We explored how older adults evaluated the strategies used by an adult child to initiate discussion of future care needs, and subsequently, whether these judgments affected older adults’ willingness to engage in discussions about eldercare if approached in a similar fashion by one of their own children. One hundred and thirty older adults were randomly assigned to read one of four scripts depicting efforts by a middle-aged daughter to raise the topic of future care needs with her mother by implementing a variety of facework behaviors. Scripts manipulated the degree to which the daughter conveyed respect for her mother’s desires for autonomy (negative face) and connection (positive face). The daughter’s facework significantly predicted older parents’ evaluation of her as supportive, which in turn predicted their willingness to discuss future care needs with one of their own children if they were to approach the conversation in a similar way.

H1:	=	Older adults’ perceptions of adult children’s positive and negative politeness will account for their ratings of children’s supportiveness.
H2:	=	Older adults’ perceptions of positive and negative politeness will affect their willingness to discuss future care needs.
H3:	=	Evaluations of supportiveness will mediate the relationship between perceptions of positive and negative politeness, and willingness to discuss future care needs.

Notes

1. ¹Copies of the scripts used may be obtained by contacting the corresponding author.