My thesis deals with three generations living together in families in the context of past and present, with possible applications into social work. It focuses on an intergenerational solidarity and a mutual help among members of three-generational families which are adequate indicators of mutual relationships. Using ideas of Christian ethics and results of sociological researches it tries to answer the question about the importance of three generations living together within a family and using the theory of social behavior it tries to specify bases of three-generational families living together in cooparation with a social worker.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research focuses on the displacement of families in the Western Cape during apartheid within the context of its slave past.The transmission of intergenerational trauma has been based on research on holocaust survivors. Aboriginal academic writers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US found that initial studies of intergenerational trauma did not take into the account the historical trauma of colonialism which they believe has left its mark on aboriginal communities today. In South Africa writers from the Apartheid Archives Project have started to focus on the intergenerational trauma of apartheid. These are mainly academics from psychology and not social work. The Apartheid Archives Project and social work discourse do not focus on the historical trauma of slavery. Historians believe that slavery has still left a mark on its descendants in the Western Cape. The families in this research are descendants of slaves and they were also displaced as a result of the Group Areas Act during apartheid. Qualitative research using a postcolonial indigenous paradigm was adopted in this study. Life histories, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were the primary sources of data collection. The research design was a multiple case study which consisted of 7 families where each family was a case and 3 generations in each family were interviewed. The families had typical slave surnames and at least one generation was displaced as a result of the forced removals when the Group Areas Act (1950-1985) was implemented during apartheid. Thematic analysis, narrative thematic analysis and case study analysis was adopted .In addition narrative therapy theory and collective narrative practice was used to decolonise the conceptual framework and methodology. The trauma of displacement and historical trauma of slavery was not acknowledged as traumatic by the dominant society because South African society was based on institutional racism. The grief and loss of the trauma therefore became unresolved and disenfranchised. The findings indicate that disenfranchised grief, silence, socialisation in institutional racism and shame have been the main mechanisms in which the historical trauma of slavery and trauma of displacement has been transmitted within the families. The effects such as intimate partner violence and substance abuse and community violence in the form of gang violence are forms of internalised oppression which has also been transmitted intergenerationally. In addition overcrowding, poor housing and poverty has been transmitted via socialisation which is a societal mechanism of trauma transmission. vi The research findings indicate that the trauma of displacement and historical trauma of slavery was transmitted because the trauma was not included in the social discourse of society. In order to prevent the transmission of the historical trauma of slavery and displacement, the real effects of institutional , cultural and interpersonal racism need to be understood and the counter-memories and counter-histories of slaves and their descendants need to be included in social discourse. A framework to assist social workers in engaging with trauma transmission in families has been proposed in order to interrupt the trauma transmission in families.

This diploma thesis deals with youth volunteering in organizations for the elderly. The theoretical part defines volunteering as well as describes its main incentives and predictors. Further, it elaborates on youth volunteering in the context of public policy. The last issue discussed is the intergenerational aspect, intergenerational gap, ageism, intergenerational learning and intergenerational volunteering and programs. The methodological part analyses how is this activity perceived by your volunteers and how they end up being involved in volunteering while using qualitative research methods. Lastly, it investigates what this activity brings into their life and their relationship towards the elderly.

The diploma thesis deals with volunteering of seniors in intergenerational programs. In my work I deal with the phenomenon of volunteering as a beneficial civic activity, together with the phenomenon of an ever-growing post-productive group of our population, the elderly. I connect these two phenomena in my work and put them into interaction with intergenerational issues. The aim of the research part is to map the possibilities of volunteer involvement of seniors in intergenerational programs in the Czech Republic, where senior volunteers act as service providers to the younger generation. I focus on various programs in which the oldest and youngest generation interact directly through various activities. The specific objectives are to find out how senior volunteers are addressed in these intergenerational programs from the perspective of program coordinators and to clarify the causes of the small number of senior volunteers involved in these programs.

The growing number of video gamers over the age of fifty has sparked new interests in the transformative power of play and consequently, video games, for a larger demographic of citizens. Researchers have found that digital gaming can have positive effects on the physical, psychological and cognitive well-being of older adults. Of particular interest to this thesis is the potential of games to facilitate social connections between different generations of players. Intergenerational games have focused on improving relations between younger people and older adults by providing enjoyable interactions that can impart cognitive and physical benefits. While previous work has focused on enhancing intergenerational social connections between relatives, non-familial intergenerational encounters have scarcely been explored. Games often feature asymmetrical participation and require long term interest, all factors that can prove challenging to implement for public non-kin intergenerational gameplay. Previous works have shown that the successful use of games is dependent on a number of psychosocial and contextual factors that shape the player experience. One of them is the degree of familiarity between players. Familiarity has been linked to many of the core motivations associated with intergenerational play, exposing doubts of whether the same motivations can be used to inform the design of intergenerational games between strangers of different ages. In addition, for most socio-technical interventions designed for older adults, the characteristics of seniors have predominantly been framed around accessibility and decline. This limited perspective also tends to be true when discussing games designed for seniors. Finally, existing research on games for seniors has mainly focused on seniors who play conventional video games and self-identify as gamers, further marginalizing seniors who do not fit these descriptions. The current design of intergenerational games might not be ready for adoption by the broader society. In response to these gaps, this thesis presents a research through design project aimed to investigate how a general population of older people (who may not be composed of video-gamers) perceive and experience game and play, and map this knowledge to promising playful approaches of intergenerational encounters while at the same time promoting a positive image of older adults as active and sociable members of society. The methodology featured a participatory approach that involved interview studies, co-design workshops, and playtests that helped to articulate the general requirements for an intergenerational game to be played in public spaces. The result of these formative exercises produced Klang Verbindet (“Sound Connects”), an interactive playful system that supports embodied interaction and group exploration of spaces. Designed to be played through body movements, the system employs vision-based algorithms and sound synthesis to provide an age- agnostic space for public play. Interactions with the system were evaluated in two different public contexts, using direct observations, semi-structured group interviews, and post-game questionnaires. Based on these data and the design and implementation of the system, the thesis describes a number of important factors to be considered when designing and evaluating games for non-familial intergenerational interaction. The most important being, to design for short-term and low-entry engagements which are defined as “low-threshold intergenerational encounters”. Within this space, the thesis discusses the distinctive value of - ambiguity, appropriation, and curiosity as drivers of gameplay for rapid mixed-aged encounters in the public context.

Time raises a host of difficult ethical questions. This doctoral project focuses on two: 1. How are "static" comparative principles (e.g. equality, desert) to be understood over time? (The Problem of Fairness & Time) 2. How might separation (in time) between agents, objects, and threats affect claims to the relevant resources? (The New Problem of Temporal Distance) My work begins with a simple observation: our prima facie intuitions about the value of simple distributions change depending on whether such cases are presented as static (occurring at one time) or dynamic (extended over time). Further examination of more complicated distributions leads to the proposal of a new theory, Weighted Progressive Egalitarianism. This theory has two features: only past-regarding complaints matter (a scope restriction), and a comparative complaint between persons located at a great temporal distance matters less than a complaint between contemporaries (a weighting restriction). This theory provides one plausible answer to the first question, the Problem of Fairness & Time. The evaluation of this theory relies on and reveals some non-standard answers to the second question, the New Problem of Temporal Distance. I conclude by arguing that the theory’s application to a few puzzles in population axiology merits further investigation.

This doctoral thesis provides a set of studies of social influences on fertility timing. Swedish register data are used to link individuals to their parents and siblings, thereby allowing the study of impacts of family of origin, social background, and parental death on fertility. The Swedish Medical Birth Register is used to investigate the effect of mode of delivery on higher order births. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter with an overview of the consequences and predictors of the timing of childbearing, and a theoretical framework to explain these relationships. This chapter also includes a section where the contribution to existing knowledge, the relation of the findings to life course theory, and suggestion for further research are discussed. This chapter is followed by four original empirical studies. The first study applies sister and brother correlations to investigate and estimate the impact of family of origin on fertility. It shows that family of origin matters for fertility timing and final family size. The study also shows that the overall importance of family of origin has not changed over the approximately twenty birth cohorts that were studied. The second study introduces three dimensions of social background - occupational class, status, and education - into fertility research. It suggests that social background, independent of individuals’ own characteristics, matters for the timing of first birth and the risk of childlessness. The study also shows that different dimensions of social background should not be used interchangeably. The third study uses the Swedish Medical Birth Register to investigate the effect of mode of delivery on the propensity and birth interval of subsequent childbearing. It demonstrates that mode of delivery has an impact on the progression to the second and third births but that a first delivery by vacuum extraction does not reduce the propensity of subsequent childbearing to the same extent as a first delivery by emergency or elective caesarean section. The fourth study explores the effects of parental death on adult children's fertility. The findings reveal that parental death during reproductive ages can affect children’s fertility. The effects are moderated by the gender of the child and when in the life course bereavement occurs. The combined output of these four studies provides evidence that human fertility behavior is embedded in social relationships with kin and friends throughout life. Family of origin, social background, an older sibling's birth, and bereavement following parental death influence the adult child's fertility. These findings add knowledge to previous research on intergenerational and social network influences in fertility.

Learning relationships between intergenerational students in an after school art program provided mutual benefits for participants in Denton, Texas. This qualitative case study of older, active adults and elementary students involved in visual art experiences gives insight to a contextual learning environment that fosters lifelong learning and addresses the interpersonal issues of an aging society.

Yan Chau Wai Elsie. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-90). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / LIST OF TABLES --- p.i / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.iii / ABSTRACT --- p.iv / CHAPTERS / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Method --- p.17 / Chapter 3. --- Results --- p.25 / Chapter 4. --- Discussions --- p.75 / REFERENCES --- p.85

Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-58).