The longer people live, the more opportunity they have to enjoy, annoy, love, exasperate, worry, give to and take from their families. Extended life span can mean more time to lavish affection on grandchildren. Or it can mean unwittingly competing with them for the attention and resources of their parents.
Seniors help younger family members with finances, child care and advice.
Whatever the particulars, a wide-ranging national survey of people 70 and older shows that children continue to stay engaged with their parents to the fullest extent they can manage, and vice versa, over the long haul. When the older woman needed to get out of her wheelchair, the younger one would leave her sleeping infant locked in the house, dash across the street to her mother's with a toddler clinging to her leg, assist her mom and then dash back home before the baby awakened. After living most of their lives in New York City, they moved to a senior citizens high rise in Squirrel Hill, even though they knew no one in town but their son, who wanted them to be close-by. In her lucid moments, she looks at her adult child and her face lights up. But most days, the daughter feels as if her mother is the baby.