COLLEGE STATION, Pa., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Many parents ages 60 and older help out their grown children with both tangible and "nontangible" support. A new study by sociologists at Penn State University, University of Michigan and University of Texas shows how a parent feels about the act of giving, relative to the amount of help he or she provides to his or her offspring, corresponds with symptoms of depression.
Parents who viewed helping their children as a positive act were more likely to exhibit low rates of depression if they frequently provided their children with tangible support. Meanwhile those who gave help less often were more likely to show signs of depression.
The reverse held true for parents who tended to associate stress with the act of helping their grown children.
"We usually view the elderly as needy, but our research shows that parents ages 60 and over are giving help to their children, and this support is often associated with lower rates of depression among the older adults," said Lauren Bangerter, a postdoctoral student in human development and family studies at Penn State.
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Researchers analyzed data from 337 older-parent participants as part of The Family Exchanges Study. They compared amounts of giving and support with reported levels of depression. The study differentiated between tangible support, such as financial assistance or helping babysit for grandchildren, and non-tangible support, such as companionship or emotional comforting.
Higher levels of tangible giving were associated with feelings of reward, while low-levels of nontangible support were connected with depression.
"Although past research shows that giving support declines with age, our data show that parents frequently provide both tangible and nontangible support to their grown children," said Steven Zarit, human development and family studies professor at Penn State. "In addition, our results suggest that depressive symptoms are more frequent when the level of reward a parent feels regarding giving is inconsistent with the amount of tangible support that he or she actually gives."
The details of the study were published in the journal The Gerontologist.
[Penn State University] [The Gerontologist]
