The Influence Of Children's Intergenerational Support On The Mental Health Of Rural Empty Nesters

This article focuses on great amount of Chinese rural empty-nest elderly people's living conditions,especially their prevailing mental health problems.A lot of their adult children go to city for work or live,in the context of China's modernization and urbanization.This paper will analyze the influence of adult children's intergenerational support on elderly people's mental health,and then explore feasible coping strategies from the perspective of both family and society,which has really important practical significance.This article mainly adopts the quantitative research method,supplemented with relevant theoretical analysis.First of all,based on previous detailed theories and literature analysis,this paper takes use of CHARLS(China Health and Aged Follow-up Survey)cross-sectional data,2011 Edition,to analyze specific effects of the intergenerational support provided by children to rural empty nesters' mental health,by multivariate linear regression analysis model(OLS).The results show that the financial support and emotional support provided by children have significant positive impacts on the mental health of the empty-nest elderly in rural areas,among which,the emotional support's influence is particularly strong.While the care service provided by children has no significant effect on the mental health of the empty-nest elderly in rural areas.In addition,marital status,educational status,occupational nature,and health status also have some impact on the mental health of empty nest elderly in rural areas,more or less.On the basis of empirical analysis,this paper seizes the most important variable,children's emotional support to the elderly,and conducts concrete analysis of the spiritual social support for the old people in Chinese rural area.On the perspectives of family(children)and society(government,community,social organizations),this paper tries to explore the responsibilities of each party and the specific implementation recommendationsRegarding children,we starts with the old people's support needs and the Chinese traditional"filial piety" culture.After affirming the children's irreplaceable responsibility for the elderly(especially the "spiritual support" responsibility),We put forward some feasible suggestions,such as paying more attention to adopting parents,increasing the frequency of visits to the elderly,using social networking tools to maintain real-time contact with parents,and trying to pull in the distance from the elderly if possible.As for the other part,government,community,and social organizations,We also clarify the obligations and responsibilities of each subject to the well-being of the vast majority of rural empty-nesters,and provide four concrete and feasible recommendations for building a comprehensive social support system for the elderly:Raise the family and social status of rural empty nesters;Improve the spiritual and cultural living environment of the community;Improve the legal system of "spiritual support" for empty nesters;Speed up the establishment of the database and information archives for rural empty elderly people in China.