Mothers and Fathers of Adults With Mental Retardation: Feelings of Intergenerational Closeness*

• Author: Elizabeth Lehr Essex
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2002.00156.x
• Published date: 01 April 2002
• Date: 01 April 2002

156 Family Relations

Mothers and Fathers of Adults With Mental Retardation:

Feelings of Intergenerational Closeness*

Elizabeth Lehr Essex**

On the basis of a sample of 96 married mothers and fathers, this study investigated older parents’ feelings of closeness with acoresident

son or daughter with mental retardation. Mothers felt closer to the adult child than fathers did. For mothers, feelings of closeness to

the adult child were related to their level of education and the adult child’s functional skills. For fathers, feelings of closeness were

associated with their own personality characteristics, marital satisfaction, and the behavior problems and functional skills of the adult

child. Implications for practice are discussed in relation to the unique experiences of these older parents.

Closeness and intimacy with adult children can be a re-

warding aspect of parenthood for older mothers and fa-

thers. In several studies of parental expectations of adult

children, Blieszner and colleagues found an emphasis on

warmth, affection, and emotional support (Blieszner & Mancini,

1987; Hamon & Blieszner, 1990). In addition, affection was

identified as an important motivation for intergenerational inter-

action and aid (Hess & Waring, 1978), and strong affective ties

with children can have a positive effect on parental well-being

(Lawrence, Bennett, & Markides, 1992; Silverstein & Bengtson,

1991).

This study focused on a unique population—aging mothers

and fathers who have coresident adult children with mental re-

tardation. For parents caring for adult children with mental re-

tardation, affective components of the parent-child relationship

may be especially important. Unlike most men and women, these

aging parents have continued to maintain active parenting, re-

maining more on the giving than the receiving end in intergen-

erational exchange. The special needs of a son or daughter with

mental retardation place ongoing demands on parents that may

become sources of distress (Roberto, 1993). On the other hand,

research suggests that older parents also derive considerable sat-

isfaction from their relationship with a coresident son or daugh-

ter with mental retardation (Grant, 1986). In fact, because most

individuals with mental retardation live with their parents

through most of their life (Fujiura & Braddock, 1992), greater

understanding of the parent-child affective bond is especially

warranted.

The framework for this study was drawn from two bodies

of literature. One is literature on affective closeness between par-

ents and adult children in the general population, with particular

emphasis on the concept of affective solidarity. The basic pur-

pose was to explore the generalizability of these findings to par-

ents of adults with mental retardation. The second body of lit-

erature is research on families of minor or adult children with

disabilities, which is important for understanding contextual el-

ements specific to these families. The latter literature, especially

*Support for this research was provided by Grant R01 AG08768 from the National

Institute on Aging to Marsha Mailick Seltzer and Marty Wyngaarden Krauss. The author

gratefully acknowledges Dr. Seltzer and Dr.Krauss for sharing their data with her, reviewing

her manuscript, and providing her the opportunity to work with them on their project.

**Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 West

Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607 (essex@uic.edu).

Key Words: affective solidarity, families, intergenerational relations, mental retar-

dation.

(Family Relations, 2002, 51, 156–165)

on older families, has primarily focused on mothers and their

children. However, research on the general population suggests

affective relationships between parents and their children differ

by parental gender. Including fathers and mothers in the present

study provided the opportunity to learn more about gendered

processes in family relationships. In building and testing hy-

potheses about affective closeness between parents and adult

children with mental retardation, a comparative approach was

used, comparing mothers and fathers on mean differences in their

feelings of affective closeness with their adult children and on

the factors associated with those feelings.

Intergenerational Research

In intergenerational research, affective ties between parents

and children often have been viewed as a component of soli-

darity (e.g., Hess & Waring, 1978; Rossi & Rossi, 1990)—‘‘the

multiple, complex, and sometimes contradictory ways that par-

ents and children are socially connected to each other’’ (Lawton,

Silverstein, & Bengtson, 1994, p. 59). Affective solidarity has

been defined by Bengtson and Roberts (1991) as ‘‘type and de-

gree of positive sentiments held about family members, and the

degree of reciprocity of these sentiments’’ (p. 857). Empirical

indicators of this construct include ratings of qualities, such as

‘‘affection, warmth, closeness, understanding, trust, respect,’’be-

tween family members (Bengtson & Roberts, p. 857).

Gender appears to play an important role in intergeneration-

al solidarity, with kinship ties stronger for women than men (e.g.,

Atkinson, Kivett, & Campbell, 1986; Rossi & Rossi, 1990).

Tracing affective ties over the life course, Rossi and Rossi found

that from the child’s adolescence, mothers reported greater af-

fective closeness with children than did fathers, with mother-

daughter closeness rated more highly than all other parent-child

combinations. Fathers reported somewhat closer relationships

with daughters than with sons after the primary childhood years.

In addition, Rossi and Rossi noted a more conditional quality to

fathers’ relationships with adult children than to mother-child

relationships. For fathers, feelings of closeness with adult chil-

dren were positively related to (a) their closeness to the child at

age 16, (b) the adult child having children of his or her own, (c)

younger age of the father, (d) and the father’s current marital

happiness. Mothers’ feelings of closeness with their adult chil-

dren were not related to these factors and there were no factors

unique to mothers (i.e., the only influences on mothers’ feelings

of closeness also were influences for fathers). Both mothers and

fathers felt closer to adult children who shared similar values to

their own.

Rossi and Rossi (1990) found that part but not all of the

gender-related difference in parent-child closeness was related to