Intergenerational Solidarity

This volume analyzes intergenerational solidarity from diverse interdisciplinary angles within the social sciences. It provides analytical tools to advance research and documents how societies are adjusting to major changes that affect the core of the social fabric.

Winner of the 2023 Edited Book Award from the International Research Society for Children's Literature Contributions by Aneesh Barai, Clémentine Beauvais, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Terri Doughty, Aneta Dybska, Blanka Grzegorczyk, Zoe Jaques, Vanessa Joosen, Maria Nikolajeva, Marek Oziewicz, Ashley N. Reese, Malini Roy, Sabine Steels, Lucy Stone, Björn Sundmark, Michelle Superle, Nozomi Uematsu, Anastasia Ulanowicz, Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer, and Jean Webb Intergenerational solidarity is a vital element of societal relationships that ensures survival of humanity. It connects generations, fostering transfer of common values, cumulative knowledge, experience, and culture essential to human development. In the face of global aging, changing family structures, family separations, economic insecurity, and political trends pitting young and old against each other, intergenerational solidarity is now, more than ever, a pressing need. Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film argues that productions for young audiences can stimulate intellectual and emotional connections between generations by representing intergenerational solidarity. For example, one essayist focuses on Disney films, which have shown a long-time commitment to variously highlighting, and then conservatively healing, fissures between generations. However, Disney-Pixar’s Up and Coco instead portray intergenerational alliances—young collaborating with old, the living working alongside the dead—as necessary to achieving goals. The collection also testifies to the cultural, social, and political significance of children’s culture in the development of generational intelligence and empathy towards age-others and positions the field of children’s literature studies as a site of intergenerational solidarity, opening possibilities for a new socially consequential inquiry into the culture of childhood.

Almost all families will at some time have to make difficult decisions concerning aging family members, involving institutionalization, moving from medical interventions to palliative care, and even physician-assisted death. Yet, the historical transition from traditional to post-traditional society means that these decisions are no longer determined by strict rules and norms, and the growing role of the welfare state has been accompanied by changes in the nature of family and social solidarity. Advances in medical technology and greatly expanded life spans further complicate the decision-making process. Family, Intergenerational Solidarity, and Post-Traditional Society examines a range of difficult issues that families commonly face during the family life course within these contexts. The book explores both practical and ethical questions regarding filial responsibility and the roles of the state and adult children in providing financial and instrumental support to dependent parents. The book follows the experiences and deliberations of a fictional family through a series of vignettes in which its members must make difficult decisions about the treatment of a seriously ill parent. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in family studies, gerontology/aging, sociology, social work, health and social care, and nursing will find this essential reading.

This exciting book explores the exchange of societal support between generations. It also examines variations in contemporary practices and rationales in different regions and societies around the world. The book draws on theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis to discuss both newly emerging patterns of family reciprocity, as well as more established ones which are affected by changing opportunities and pressures in contemporary societies. It is highly international and comparative in nature, covering the US, Europe, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Thailand.

Designers provide creative solutions for user problems and identify the needs of users in a given environment. However, it is often difficult to understand the social design of a product or service. Practice and Progress in Social Design and Sustainability is a critical scholarly resource that provides groundbreaking research on social contributions to design. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as rural sustainability, ecological farmhouse designs, and community public spaces, this book is geared towards architects, designers, program planners, entrepreneurs, and engineers seeking information about design for resolving social issues.

This book addresses the universal and topical question of solidarity across generations from a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on the legal issues concerning retirement pensions, the poverty in the elderly, long-term care, as well as state interventions and family support for those at risk. Drawing on insights from the interface between family law, administrative law and social law, it examines 13 countries on different continents, and also briefly covers a number of additional countries in the introduction. This book is a based on the discussions and exchanges at the 20th General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, in Fukuoka, Japan.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- About the Authors -- Preface -- 1 Changing Intergenerational Family Dependence: A Difficult Family Decision -- 2 The Ties that Bind? Changing Family Options: A Long Way from Ozzie and Harriet -- 3 Socializing the Financial Support of the Elderly: Who Pays for Care at the End of Life? -- 4 Manufactured Risk and Reproductive Technology: There are Many Ways to Have a Baby -- 5 Where Will We Put Mimi? When Family Members Do Not Agree -- 6 Mandatory Support of Aging Parents: A Moral Obligation -- 7 Respect for Autonomy: Difficult Decisions Concerning Medical Care: Who Decides When Treatment is Useless? -- 8 Family Decisions at the End of Life: Une mort très douce -- 9 Physician-Assisted Death: I Am the Master of My Fate -- 10 Civil Society and the Family: If You Can't Be with the One You Love ... -- 11 The Future of Intergenerational Solidarity: Families Caring for an Aging America -- Index

This book provides a comprehensive review of how digital communication technology can help families network and communicate across generations, despite differences in family composition, residential location, cultural values and orientations. Covering the full spectrum of intergenerational relations (including child to parent, and parent to grandparent), it offers a positive view of the value of digital technology usage within families. The author focuses on three European countries: Finland, Italy and Slovenia, but also touches on other European countries and parts of the United States, revealing evidence that challenges ideas of universal adoption of information communication technology (ICT) and consistency in the social effects of such adoption in different regions and cultures. Further, the book discusses numerous other challenges and issues, such as: • the social transformations and technological developments that have made digital families possible; • the resulting changes in family roles, responsibilities, and practices; and • the theoretical and conceptual implications of digital communication-technology use in families. The author illustrates how ICT can facilitate family solidarity and how it helps to provide new ways of being together, and they discuss how social media, particularly instant messaging applications, helps develop affinity between family members better than traditional one-to-one personal communication tools. Combining highly nuanced material with fresh sociological thinking, it enhances readers’ theoretical understanding of the meaning of the ‘digital family’, making it a powerful resource for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as academics. Thanks to its structured format with easy-to-understand explanations, it appeals to practitioners and researchers alike.