| At present, adult attachment has become a hot topic in psychology research, Bowlby believes that attachment is "From the cradle to the grave" the developmental proposition of the entire life, but the majority of adult attachment researches focused on young people, less concerned about the elderly attachment, especially older adults attachment with their children and spouse. Compared with other adulthood stage, old age stage has unique development characteristics; therefore, this study selected elderly subjects, to explore the elderly attachment deeply.The purpose of this study is to know attachment style distribution status of older adults with their children and spouse and to explore the relationship among attachment of older adults with their children and spouse and intergenerational social support, subjective well-being through investigation questionnaire, and then through the interview research to further understand the characteristics of older adults with different attachment types, to analyze the elderly main factors of forming different attachment styles and to explore the elderly attachment is how to influence the intergenerational social support and subjective well-being.Study 1 is the questionnaire survey of the elderly attachment, With the questionnaires of The Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) questionnaire、Parents adult children Social Support Scale and subjective well-being questionnaire(1985) designed by Diener to investigated 444 elderly people in Nanjing city. The questionnaire study reached the following main results:(1)The elderly with adult children attachment style distribution is as follows:secure attachment older adults accounted for 69.4%; dismissing older adults accounted for 15.6%; preoccupied older adults accounted for 10.9% of fearful older adults accounted for 4.2%. The elderly with spouse attachment style distribution is as follows:secure attachment older adults accounted for 70.5%; dismissing older adults accounted for 10.3%; preoccupied accounted for 15.9%; fearful accounted for 3.3%, and they are different from the results of foreign elderly’s attachment style distribution. In addition, It has a gender and age differences on attachment type distribution of older adults with their children:the proportion of dismissing style elderly male is greater than the proportion of elderly women; to old age of older adults most of them is dismissing attachment, while to young and middle age of older adults, most of them is secure attachment. (2)Older adults differing in attachment styles with children varied significantly in intergenerational social support Secure Subjects and preoccupied Subjects got higher scores in the supports they gave to their children and the supports they gained from the children than dismissive Subjects and fearful Subjects. (3)Older adults differing in attachment styles with children and attachment styles with partner varied significantly in subjective well-being.Secure Subjects and preoccupied Subjects got higher scores in subjective well-being than dismissive Subjects and fearful Subjects. (4)Attachment of older adults, social support and subjective well-being had potential relationship among the three variables; There is an impact on relations for attachment avoidance and subjective well-being with intergenerational social support as an intermediary.Study 2 is interview study of the elderly attachment; researcher selected 7 elderly people who have participated in the questionnaire survey as interviewee. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with 7 older adults, and for each interviewee there was a 1.5 hour interview. With each interviewee’s permission, a tape-recording facility was used in each conversation. After interviews, all tape-recorded sound was transcribed into texts which were then processed through the procedures of reading, explaining, landing, coding, categorizing, analyzing and writing. And the main results are as follows:(1)The main factors of forming different attachment styles are old adults’s children and spouse to their need’s sensitivity, the elderly of reflection ability about past insecure attachment experience and other relations interference. (2)old adult attachment is through the following three aspects influence the subjective well-being: first, attachment to affect older adults receiving child support by older adults seeking child support motivation intensity and attachment objects on its sensitivity, thereby affecting older adults subjective well-being; second, attachment through older adults children give strength support on demand motivation and children are sensitive to affect older adults give children to support, thereby affecting the elderly subjective well-being; in addition, attachment through affect older adults self-reflection ability, cognitive flexibility and the ability of emotion regulation affects old adults’s subjective well-being. |
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