This contribution is focused on emotional dimension of intergenerational solidarity in elderly care. Caring for an aging family member is a difficult life situations for a caring person but also for the elderly.
In the quantitative research of prof. Hynek Jerabek et al. "Family Cohesion 2010" we asked 400 families with seniors which need daily care and analyzed the mutual relationship between the one who cares and elderly family member who need help.
How they cope with the situation, largely depends on the quality of their relationship. To find the factors that affect relationships, is used linear regression analysis and factors are currently being compared to the situation of home care and for care with help of the institutions.
The conclusions of the analysis confirm the assumption that emotional solidarity is most often provided kind of help. Emotional relationships between caring persons and the elderly are characterized by relatively high degree of reciprocity, which increases when they are caring of their own mother, and if they had harmonic emotional relationships with senior in the past.
The relationship is colder with senior´s level of dependence and duration of care. The caring persons characterize emotional relationships through different dimensions of relationships, most often through love and family ties.
But they also often characterize emotional relationships through their problems and negative emotions related with care. In these cases is the reciprocity in the relationship between the one who cares and the senior at the lowest level.