Rural "empty Nesters" Elderly Spirit Of The Maintenance Status Of Analysis

With the continuous process of aging of the population, the issue of pensions has become increasingly prominent, and it has gradually become one of the hottest issues of concern in today's society. This paper's concern is the spiritual support to the elderly in rural empty nest family, partly because, of the studies on pensions, attentions are more concerned about the economic support, and less about the spiritual support. As the economy develops, however, the needs of the elderly about spiritual support are getting more and more prominent, especially the elders of the empty nest family. On the other hand, more attention is paid to the elderly in urban empty nest family, comparative to the elderly in rural empty nest family. This paper employed a paradigm of social constructivism, using a qualitative research methodology. Based on empirical data collected by in-depth interviews of the elderly in rural empty nest families, the author successfully listened to the voices of the interviewees, and thus found out the true meaning of the so called spiritual support from the perspective of their own. Thus, a true reality of spiritual support was constructed between the researcher and the interviewees, who were interacting based on the inter-subjectivity.The first part of this paper is introduce the background, the content and the significance of the study. The reason to take this topic as the subject matter, first of all, is that I was touched by the seemingly trivial, but virtually significant events in my life. With inspiration triggered by these events, and influenced by of the related researches, I finally took this topic as the subject matter. This paper focused on the spiritual support to the elderly living in empty nest families in a village in rural China. According to the definition of the so called spiritual support, we need to understand the concept in three dimensions, i.e., the respect to the self claiming of the elderly, the care to their needs for self-achievements and the care to their desires for the sense of comfort. Theoretically, the significance of this research is to contribute to the literatures in the related fields which have proved underdeveloped; practically, the study wants to push to build a rural old-age pension system, and thus contribute to the development of society as a whole. In one word, I wish this study would do something to promote "a harmonious society".The second part of this paper is literature review. Though there are few literatures on empty nest family and spiritual support, and literatures concerning the issue in question in rural China are even less, a summary of the existing research results has been made and I tried to sort out the main ideas, and thus developed an innovative and unique framework for this study.The third part of this paper is about the methodology and the methods employed. This paper employed a paradigm of constructivism, using qualitative research methods, i.e., in-depth interview and participatory observation. The selection of the interviewees has followed a theoretical sampling model, and its actual process has been based on a pilot study of the village in which the research was conducted, and thus was influenced by the specific circumstances in the village.The forth part of this paper, firstly introduces the overall situation about the empty nest families in the village, then a brief introduction to each case family was made; after that, an analysis of the empirical data was provided. Local concepts were extracted from the interviewees' significant statements.The fifth part of the paper is the findings. By listening to the voices of the local elderly, and analyzing of the interview data, several findings regarding the spiritual support were made; and these findings are supported by the interviewees' own statement. Finally, a discussion of the research, including the structure of the paper, the validity and limitation of the research, and the issue of the ethics of the research is provided; and such a discussion can guarantee the integrity of the papers, and the integrity of the study itself as well.