A Research Agenda for Family Communication

Abstract

With increasing life spans, relationships between spouses, parents, and children may extend for 50, 60, or more years. Yet the communication challenges faced in the later years of these relationships have received relatively little attention in the family communication literature. In this article, I outline why attention to communication within families later in the life span is essential, both for its theoretical and applied value to family communication scholarship. The article reviews literature on age stereotyping and communication, my own area of research, highlighting its implications for the study of family communication. The article concludes with suggestions for fruitful directions for family communication research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author's research discussed in this article was supported by Grants AG09433 and AG16352 from the National Institute on Aging and National Institutes of Health.