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"Declining fertility rates and increased life expectancies over the last few decades have conspired to make China one of the more rapidly aging societies in the world. Aging Families in Chinese Society focuses on the accelerated social and demographic changes in China and examines their implications for family care and support for older adults. Contributors to this landmark volume portray various challenges facing aging families in China as a result of reduced family size, changing gender expectations, rapid economic development and urbanization, rural-to-urban migration, and an emerging but still underdeveloped long-term care system. Divided into four thematic areas - Disability and Family Support; Family Relationships and Mental Health; Filial Piety and Gender Norms; and Long-term Care Preferences - chapters in this volume confront these burgeoning issues and offer salient policy and practice considerations not just for today's aging population, but future generations to come. Combining quantitative data from social surveys in China, comparative surveys in Taiwan and Thailand, and qualitative data from in-depth interviews, Aging Families in Chinese Societies will be of significant interest to students and researchers in aging and gerontology, China and East Asian Studies and population studies"--

This volume examines the importance of time and place, as applied to aging families. In the first section, chapters focus on the temporal dimension of intergenerational relations using frameworks from human development, sociology, social history, and social psychology. The second section focuses on the social ecology of intergenerational relations in terms of the national contexts within which families are embedded. The contributors demonstrate how the social, cultural, historical, and institutional forces that orient older and younger family members toward each other in both structured and ad

This article investigated the relationship between religiosity and intergenerational solidarity in Germany, with a focus on differences between eastern and western regions that have maintained unique religious profiles that trace back to before unification. Based on data from Wave 6 (2013-2014) of the German Family Panel (pairfam), 8,637 reports from 4,622 adult children about their relationships with mothers and fathers were analyzed. Using an index comprising four dimensions of the intergenerational solidarity model (distance, contact, closeness, and support), hierarchical linear regression demonstrated general support for the hypothesis that having a religious denomination is positively associated with the strength of intergenerational relations in Germany. However, this positive association is stronger in the more religious western part of Germany than in the highly secularized eastern part. These results emphasize the importance of taking social context and political history into account when studying core institutions of religion and families.

Abstract
Increased life expectancy in China implies that adults increasingly survive long enough to see their grandchildren reach adulthood and take on elevated importance—even as smaller family size reduces the number of children and grandchildren available. This article examined the prevalence with which older adults received support and care from grandchildren and the family conditions under which the likelihood of this assistance is enhanced. The data for our analysis derived from the 2014 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Aging Social Survey, limited to 13.4% of respondents (n = 1,551) who reported requiring personal assistance to perform daily activities. Logistic regression revealed that grandparents were more likely to receive assistance from grandchildren when they had no son available or had daughters who did not provide assistance. Results were consistent across urban and rural regions. These findings support the compensatory or substitution role of grandchildren as sources of support and care for their grandparents within a gendered family system. Implications for policies and services serving older people in China are discussed.

Cong Z, Silverstein M. Parents' depressive symptoms and support from sons and daughters in rural ChinaInt J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: S4–S17 © 2011 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.This investigation examined how initial levels of elder parents' depressive symptoms influenced financial, instrumental, and emotional support from sons and from daughters in rural China. Data were derived from a two‐wave (2001, 2003) longitudinal survey of 1,324 parents aged 60 and over living in rural areas of Anhui Province, China. Structural equation modeling with latent difference score was used to estimate the reciprocal relationships between children's support and elder parents' depressive symptoms. Results showed that older parents who had higher levels of depressive symptoms at baseline experienced reduced financial, instrumental, and emotional support from sons, but not from daughters. In rural China where the patrilineal family system has distinguished sons and daughters with respect to their functions in elder parents' support networks, the roles of sons and daughters warrant further examination, particularly when elder parents have some depressive symptoms, that elevate the needs of the parents and puts a strain on intergenerational relationships.

Despite substantial changes in the family's structure over the past four decades, parents continue to exert a lasting imprint on the religious ideology and commitments of their children. However, research on the intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs, values and practices to younger generations has not included the ways in which grandparents-particularly grandmothers-influence the religiosity of youth. Drawing on the Longitudinal Study ofGenerations (LSOG), we examined the extent to which grandmothers and parents influence the religious beliefs of adolescent and young adult grandchildren. First, we asked whether grandmothers influence the religious beliefs oftheir grandchildren independently ofthe grandchildren's parents. Our results indicated that grandmothers and grandchildren resembled one another on a series of statements conveying conservative religious beliefs and attitudes. Second, we examined patterns ofreligious transmission from grandmothers and parents to their children. We found that grandmothers transmitted their religious beliefs to grandchildren more strongly when mothers were more religious. Our third research question asked whether parental divorce weakens religious continuity across generations. We found that divorce adversely affected religious transmission from mothers to their children, but not from fathers and grandmothers. In addressing our fourth research question about the role of gender in religious transmission, we found that religious similarity between grandmothers and granddaughters was particularly strong. In general, our study showed a significant degree ofreligious similarity across three generations in the family, and offers an expanded view of religious socialization by considering grandmothers as active contributors to the religious beliefs of contemporary young-adults.

Abstract: Drawing on family systems theory, this study examined whether social cohesion with grandparents moderated the intergenerational transmission of depressive symptoms from mothers to their adolescent and young adult children. We analyzed data from 2,280 grandchildren and their mothers who participated in two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Results revealed that grandchildren who were least integrated with their grandparents resembled their mothers in the severity of depressive symptoms. Grandchildren who were more integrated with their grandparents bore no such resemblance. We conclude that grandparents are consequential family actors who, by conditioning parent‐child dynamics, influence the long‐term emotional well‐being of their grandchildren. Results are discussed in terms of intergenerational interdependence and the untapped resource that older adults represent.