Abstract
The chapter makes an empirically grounded contribution to advancing and integrating the concept of ambivalence in ways that are useful for social scientific research. I also seek to produce a nuanced understanding of the ambivalences that many adult children encounter in the course of dealing with their parents potential needs for care.
The first section highlights some important conceptual dimensions of ambivalence as personal and structural, as psychosocial and achieved, and as performative and contextual. I then outline my research strategy and method of analysis.
The next two sections analyze and contextualize multiple articulations of ambivalence by young adults in Germany with regard to its generation and management. The chapter concludes with an outline of implications and repercussions of the analysis for socio-scientific conceptions of intergenerational ambivalence.