Post-recession, middle-aged parents may provide various types of support to their grown children and parents. In the current study, parents age 40 to 60 (N =92) reported on a survey the support and affection they exchange with each child over age 18 (N =169) and each parent (N=185). The middle-aged generation (G2) differentiated among children (G3) and parents (G1) within families, and provided emotional, financial, and practical help on average to their children. The more dependent the child (G3), the more support was exchanged. Dependence was measured on normative status like education, employment, disability, and crisis as well as the emotional support and the overall affection. Parents (G1) received as a function of their dependence upon their children. Findings support contingency theory; downstream flow is more common in both physical and emotional support. Furthermore, the motivation the phenomenon is explained based on developmental stake theory and developmental schism to assure support later in life and progeny success. Finally, additional analysis of the upstream support found that a function of the existing relationship and individual factors based on caregiver burden, filial maturity, and appraisal impact the support exchange.

International migration flows have increased at a rapid pace over the past decade and are often accompanied by emergent and evolving global realities, fluid and permeable borders, (re)negotiation of identities and familial bonds, anticipated challenges, as well as unforeseen exigencies. Concomitantly, advances in public health and chronic disease management have resulted in longer lives with an increasing proportion of the global population now 65 years and older. While these demographic shifts have received considerable research attention over the past few decades, little attention has been paid to aging Muslim families and the ways in which they adjust and adapt to shifting global realities and social circumstances. Of the roughly 3.45 million Muslims in the US, nearly six-in-ten US Muslim adults are first-generation Americans. And among US Muslim adults who were born abroad, more immigrate from South Asia (35%) than any other region. This demographic trend, along with the aging of the US population, implies that South Asian Muslims will comprise a large segment of the US population aged 65 years and older in the coming years and greater attention needs to be paid to the lived experiences of mid- to late-life South Asian Muslim families in the US in order to better support their health and social care needs. This qualitative study addresses these issues, specifically focusing on the intersections of faith, culture, gender, age, and immigrant status, as well as intergenerational care and support exchanges within the family, and the ways in which everyday lived experiences and seminal life course events shape processes of meaning-making and sense of self in immigrant South Asian Muslim families. Building on findings from 30 in-depth narrative interviews with three generations of South Asian Muslim women living in the US, and using an intersectional lifecourse perspective, I explore the re-negotiation of familial bonds and the enactment of religious beliefs and practices such as those around filial expectations in a transnational Islamic context. In so doing, I highlight how, for the women in my study, their Islamic faith was a part of both the public sphere and a collective ideology as well as a deeply personal and intimate attachment that provided structure and continuity in their everyday lives. I suggest how attitudes, behaviors, and meaning-making processes related to kin-work and exchanges of support between generations may be shaped by categories of gender, age, time of and since immigration, and degree of religiosity. Finally, I situate these attitudes and behaviors within the broader framework of Islamophobia and salient structural barriers to accessing available health and social support services for immigrant South Asian Muslim women and their families. / Graduate / 2021-12-07

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Using qualitative analysis, this thesis analyzes intergenerational support, conflict, and ambivalence between aging mothers and their middle aged adult daughters. In-depth interviews with 30 mother-daughter pairs explored respondents&amp / #8217 / relationship history, changes in the relationship over the life course (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage of daughter, parenthood of daughter, widowhood of mother), social network composition, frequency of contact, expectations, type and frequency of intergenerational support, intimacy, compliance, conflict or disagreement, and comparison of self with the other party in terms of parenting styles and filial behaviors. Moreover, similarities and differences in the personalities of mother-daughter dyads were investigated from both mothers and daughters perspective. Participants reported that, there is an ample amount of intergenerational support between aging mothers and their adult daughters. Conflicts between mother-daughter pairs arise from interference, irritating personality traits and behaviors and differing views. Daughters experience more ambivalent feelings than mothers in their relationship. Both parties employ passive and secondary relationship maintenance tactics with the goal of preserving relationship harmony. Three distinct types of mother-daughter relationship emerged: close/peaceful, ambivalent and distant. Mother-daughter relationships have undergone transformations with life stages: daughters&amp / #8217 / marriage, daughters&amp / #8217 / parenthood, mothers&amp / #8217 / aging and declining health and mothers&amp / #8217 / widowhood. Effects of certain historical events and social changes emerged from the study. The research findings were discussed with reference to Turkish cultural characteristics and they were compared with Western research findings.