Ethnic discrimination during pregnancy is linked to maternal psychological distress, adverse birth outcomes and increased offspring morbidity and mortality. An evolutionary perspective reframes offspring health issues as a risk to maternal fitness. We argue that kin may be evolutionarily motivated to buffer psychosocial stressors for the mother during pregnancy. Previously, we found that the relationship of a pregnant woman with her own mother (fetus’ maternal grandmother) had a positive association on maternal prenatal psychology, above and beyond her relationship with her fetus’ father. Here, we ask if grandmothers buffer mothers’ prenatal psychological distress from ethnic discrimination. Using self-report data collected from 216 pregnant Latina women living in Southern California, we found discrimination to be significantly, positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress in linear regression models. Maternal grandmother communication attenuated the association of discrimination and all three psychological distress measures, adjusting for the mother's relationship with the father. Maternal grandmother emotional support similarly significantly moderated the relationship of discrimination with depression and anxiety. We did not observe any significant interactions for paternal grandmother relationships. Geographic proximity was not a significant stress buffer. Results suggest the important role maternal grandmothers play in perinatal mental health, and that these benefits exist uncoupled from geographic proximity.

Although the literature on social capital, social support and social networks uses the concept of emotional support, studies rarely recognise nuances of the emotional relationships in late life. Using a personal communities framework, we examine the subjective meaning of family and friendship ties that form the network of emotionally close relationships of a cohort of Chilean people between 60 and 74 years of age. Chile is an interesting case to investigate personal communities, as the country is facing both a rapid process of population ageing and the consequences of abrupt socio-cultural changes triggered by a military government. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews using personal communities diagrams that enabled study participants to reflect on what and how different types of personal ties were important to them. Data analysis included thematic analysis of interview transcripts and classification of identified personal communities using Pahl and Spencer's typology. The personal communities framework proved useful in capturing the composition of older people's networks of close relationships and in reflecting the diverse ways different ties are relevant in late life. We further developed a complementary typology based on the distinction between ‘clustered’ and ‘hierarchical’ personal communities. This complementary typology adds a cultural dimension to understand better emotional closeness in late life in a context of rapid socio-cultural changes affecting levels of social trust.

Genetic risk is particularly salient for families and testing for genetic conditions is necessarily a family-level process. Thus, risk for genetic disease represents a collective stressor shared by family members. According to communal coping theory, families may adapt to such risk vis-a-vis interpersonal exchange of support resources. We propose that communal coping is operationalized through the pattern of supportive relationships observed between family members. In this study, we take a social network perspective to map communal coping mechanisms to their underlying social interactions and include those who declined testing or were not at risk for Lynch Syndrome. Specifically, we examine the exchange of emotional support resources in families at risk of Lynch Syndrome, a dominantly inherited cancer susceptibility syndrome. Our results show that emotional support resources depend on the testing-status of individual family members and are not limited to the bounds of the family. Network members from within and outside the family system are an important coping resource in this patient population. This work illustrates how social network approaches can be used to test structural hypotheses related to communal coping within a broader system and identifies structural features that characterize coping processes in families affected by Lynch Syndrome.

As the world undergoes rapid ageing, informal support from friends and relatives is becoming especially important among older adults in middle- and low-income countries, where formalised social protections may be limited. We use new data from a cohort of adults aged 40 and older in rural South Africa to explore how receipt of emotional support differs by gender and marital status. Our findings suggest that women are more likely to get emotional support than men and have more sources of support. Moreover, women are more likely to get emotional support from relatives, whereas men are more likely to get support from friends. In regard to marital status, married people are more likely to get emotional support and have more sources of support than people who are not married. However, separated/divorced and widowed people are more likely to get emotional support from relatives and have more sources of non-spousal support than married people. These findings point towards gaps in informal systems of support, and the particular importance of considering men and unmarried (especially never-married) people when designing policies to offer social protections to older populations.

Previous research has shown that exchanges of support within social networks reduce the loneliness of older adults. However, there is no consistent evidence on how types of support (instrumental and emotional) and the direction of that support (giving and receiving) are related to loneliness, and whether the effects are culture-specific. The aim of this study was to investigate support exchanges and their effects on loneliness in Spain and the Netherlands. We suggest that cultural differences, such as more interdependent cultural values in Southern Europe and more independence-related values in Northern Europe, influence social realities such as the social support exchanged. In Spain relationships with family members are determined by mutual obligations; older people expect to receive instrumental support from them. However, in Northern Europe independence is highly valued and intimacy and closeness are shown primarily by confiding about personal matters. This paper examined data from two comparable surveys, one in Spain (N=646) and one in the Netherlands (N=656). Older adults in Spain provide for, and receive, high amounts of instrumental support and this proved to be a protective factor against loneliness. An alternative pattern was found in the Netherlands where respondents provided more and received more emotional support than Spanish older adults; emotional support is a protective factor in the Netherlands (but only for support received).

This investigation examines how support from adult children is affected by their parents' involvement in grandchild care. Instead of focusing on dyadic interactions, we adopt a gendered extended family perspective to examine how financial and emotional support from children was influenced when their siblings received help with child care from their elder parents. The data were from a two-wave (2001, 2003) longitudinal study of 4,791 parent–child dyads with 1,162 parents, aged 60 and older, living in rural areas of Anhui Province, China. Random effects regression showed that emotional support from both sons and daughters was strengthened when parents provided more child care for their other adult children; in addition, daughters were more emotionally responsive than sons under this situation. Concerning dyadic parent–child relationships, daughter and sons increased their financial support, and sons increased their emotional support when they themselves received help with child care from parents. We suggest taking a gendered extended family perspective when studying intergenerational relationships in rural China.

This paper presents a novel conceptualization of emotional support in intergenerational families. In a stratified random sample of 458 adults in Hamilton, Ontario, over half the respondents said that there was currently, or had been in the past, a person in their family to whom other family members turned for emotional support and personal advice. In the paper, this person is referred to as the “comforter.” Many people also identified the person who provided emotional support prior to the present comforter. On the basis of the data, a “position” of family comforter is inferred. The paper investigates the social correlates of the position, the type of activities associated with being the family comforter, and the pattern of succession as different generations in the family move in and out of the position. The paper demonstrates the family provision of emotional support at the level of the extended family. It is shown that occupancy, activities and succession of the comforter position are patterned by gender. Further, the data suggest that people seek emotional support from a generational peer.

This paper examines the associations between different forms of support, who provides the support and the wellbeing of older adults in Germany. Particular attention is paid to the wellbeing differences associated with kin and non-kin providers and with emotional support and instrumental support. In addition, the quality of relationships with kin and non-kin is examined as a moderator of the association between social support and wellbeing. Data for 1,146 respondents to the German Ageing Survey in 2002 were analysed to determine the combinations of emotional or instrumental support, kin or non-kin providers and relationship quality that best predicted wellbeing. Emotional support from kin and instrumental support from non-kin were both found to associate positively with wellbeing. Emotional support from non-kin providers did not associate with wellbeing, whereas instrumental support from kin providers had a negative association with one aspect of wellbeing. Higher relationship quality, whether with kin or non-kin, positively related to wellbeing. Interestingly, the negative impact of instrumental kin support was qualified by relationship quality. In other words, for people with high-quality relationships, receiving instrumental support from kin did not decrease wellbeing. When the relationship with a family carer or supporter is characterised by high quality, the challenges of frailties in old age, such as decreasing capacities and an increasing need for social support, can be met without compromising wellbeing.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between traumatic events that arise across the lifecourse and a sense of meaning in later life. In the process, three important issues are evaluated. First, analyses are performed to see if traumatic events at six different points in the lifecourse are associated with a sense of meaning in life. Second, an effort is made to see if current emotional support helps reduce the deleterious effects of trauma on meaning, and whether current levels of negative inter-personal contacts exacerbate the effects of trauma on meaning in life. Third, the relationship between trauma and meaning is assessed in three age cohorts: the young-old, the old-old and oldest-old. Findings from a nationwide United States survey reveal that trauma arising between the ages of 18 and 30 years is associated with a diminished sense of meaning in life, and that current emotional support reduces the effects of trauma on meaning, whereas negative inter-personal contacts tend to intensify the pernicious effects of trauma on meaning in life. Further analyses suggest that the relationships among trauma, emotional support, and negative inter-personal contacts emerge primarily in the oldest-old cohort.

The assumption that social and economic transitions in a country pose a threat to the provision of support to older people is questioned in this study. The study investigates the availability and sources of such material, practical and emotional support in urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. The support provided by older people towards household functioning is also explored. It was found from an interview survey of 701 individuals aged 60 years and older that the propensity to receive support was greater among rural older people than their urban counterparts. Gender differences were also observed, in that men were mainly providers of material support, and women of practical and emotional support. Among married older people, spouses were reported as important sources of emotional support for both elderly men and women, and some regional differences were observed. The data show mutuality in the provision of support between older people and their family members. It is evident that support to elderly people from their families is strong in Bangladesh, and that the socio-cultural dynamics of the society influence its provision.