At first glance, the articles and reviews in this issue of the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships have little in common other than focusing on some aspect of intergenerational relations. With more inspection, the reader discovers that what they do share is a focus on “space”—that is, the physical and social gaps between each generation that inhibit understanding, engagement, and interaction. In toto, these articles illustrate the implications of the physical and social space that exists whether it be in the workplace, in shared intergenerational programing in families, or in the thoughts of young children.
Tay K. McNamara and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, in “Relative Age, Supervisor Support and Perceived Work Group Inclusion: The Role of Core Self-Evaluations” examine shared work space and work groups. They are interested in understanding whether age similarity leads to better work-related outcomes. Is the age of one’s supervisor associated with feelings of support? Do workers feel more or less included in a work group depending on the similarity of group members’ ages? Does the extent to which employees positively assess themselves and their abilities moderate their feelings of supervisor support and work-group inclusion? Age relational norms may indeed play a role as employees with lower self-evaluations report feeling less supported if their supervisors are younger in age but having an older supervisor is unrelated to support. And while younger workers feel less included in work groups with older workers, older workers do not feel this way when their work-group colleagues are younger. The authors conclude that these are useful findings for workplaces that are more and more age diverse, as age diversity does not threaten feelings of support or inclusion among older workers.
Two articles examine physical and social spaces and the impact on older adults and children or adolescents. Weeks and her colleagues, in “Planning an Intergenerational Shared Site: Nursing Home Staff Perspectives,” describe staff perceptions about the opportunity to locate a child-care center at a nursing home. The authors asked current nursing-home staff what they believed would be the benefits and challenges associated with colocation. While a few staff opposed bringing a child-care center into the nursing home, the majority supported colocation, at least in concept. As might be expected, staff members identified benefits typically associated with intergenerational programs, such as increased engagement, improved attitudes, and social engagement, but were concerned about illness and how children might respond to residents with cognitive issues. Staff with their own children found that having on-site child care would reduce their personal stress; whereas staff without young children felt that the children might be a work distraction. Weeks and her colleagues stress the importance of discussing such a shift with all staff and of designing a child-care program that all staff could benefit from.
In “An Intergenerational Program Connecting Children and Older Adults With Emotional, Behavioral, Cognitive, or Physical Challenges: Gift of Mutual Understanding,” Carol B. Burgman and Elizabeth A. Mulvaney describe a program bringing school children with emotional and behavioral needs together with older nursing-home residents who require assistance with activities of daily living and medical care. One lesson was the importance of familiarizing children with age-related changes using an age-appropriate, experiential-sensitivity training program; such a program was deemed necessary to reduce their anxieties. Second, school personnel carefully screened each child, given concerns about safety and ability to follow directions. The program was so successful that what was intended to be a one-time event expanded to four meetings, three at the nursing home and one at the school. Burgman and Mulvaney found that the success was due to cooperative planning and programming that reflected the needs of each group. The authors urge readers not to “underestimate the capacity and power for people to help one another.”
Two articles consider generational space and what binds families together. Daniel Hans Mansson in “American Grandchildren’s Use of Relational Maintenance Behaviors With Their Grandparents” examines the factors associated with activities used by related members to sustain their relationships—that is, relational maintenance behaviors. He posits that variation in using relational maintenance behaviors is associated with gender of the grandchild, gender of the grandparent, maternal versus paternal lineage of the grandparent, perceived trust, commitment to maintaining the relationship, and mutual control and decision making. Mansson finds that there are no differences in these behaviors based on the gender of the grandchild, on the gender of the grandparent, or on whether the grandparent is from the matrilineal versus the patrilineal line. It is the very human feelings of trust, commitment, and mutual control that are related to increased relational maintenance behaviors.
Rongjun Sun, using a family systems perspective that views family members as interdependent, asks whether the age gaps between generations are associated with health, depression, and well-being in “Intergenerational Age Gaps and a Family Member’s Well-Being: A Family Systems Approach.” Sun suggests that while close intergenerational relationships have many benefits, they may also be a source of stress for family members as stressful events impacting one member may have ramifications for other family members. Sun suggests that families with shorter age gaps between the generations are more likely to have more stressful events than families with inconsistent age gaps across generations. Sun found both to be the case: older adults in multigenerational families with shorter age gaps and in families with inconsistent age gaps report poorer health, more depression, and lower overall well-being.
Babcock, MaloneBeach, and Woodworth-Hou in “Intergenerational Intervention to Mitigate Children’s Bias Against the Elderly,” address the impact of an intergenerational program with young children on their attitudes toward older adults. They use a creative approach to distinguish between explicit manifestations of ageism and implicit ageism, or biases that people have that are unconscious biases or that they are unwilling to report (their measurement approach appeared in the previous issue of the journal). The program, which involved lessons and experiential simulations taught by college students, had no impact on implicit bias. What was surprising was that by fifth grade these biases were already present and ingrained.
Narrowing the gap between generations is manifested in both the media reviews. This is evident in Rose Capp’s description of the comedy, St. Vincent, a story of an older man and a younger boy and how they both grow while learning from each other. Similarly, Lynn Johnston describes Old School, a story of how pairing older adults with school pupils is not without challenges and difficulties. Johnston notes that it was these challenges that ultimately led to the success of the program.
Jenny Barlow provides a telling review of a child’s book, No One but You. While this picture book is about youth, Barlow suggests that it transcends time and place and is of value to all people going through transitions. And finally, Willem van Vliet brings us back to the concept of space and its importance in intergenerational programming and relationships in his review Intergenerational Space, edited by Robert M. Vanderbeck and Nancy Worth. This book is about physical space and its importance in social relationships.
Thanks to all the authors who contributed articles and reviews to this issue. And thanks to the readers of this journal and their interest in highlighting and developing strategies to narrow the space that exists between the generations.