Abstract
Aging parents usually fall into the responsibility of their children, who become their caregivers. While in the process of carrying for their elderly parents, the adult children may deal with various changes, ranging from the feebleness of their parents to their changing behaviors, modes, forgetting estate and so on. Moreover, they might even be experiencing the fact that their parents are permanently unsatisfied and continuously requesting for more attention and more choruses to be done for them. While dealing with this, the children also have to handle and to organize their own lives and many of them are still employed and have to mingle their work with being caregivers for their aging parents. The research paper proposed will initially be identifying the recent literature regarding this subject. For the practical part, by employing an experiment, the study will be assessing the level of self – confidence of 50 adult children, aged between 50 and 60. Their self – confidence will be assed in relation with them being caregivers for their parents. Using two independent variables (behavioral therapy and person-centered therapy) the experiment used in the research paper will be testing the dependent variable: the children’s self – respect. The classical experiment employed in the research paper will be using the double – blind procedure, which supposes that neither the researchers, nor the subjects of the study will know about the dependent and independent variables, avoiding like this the risk for any of the groups to interfere with the research by manipulating the results. The coordinator of the research, however, will be the only one knowing which is the experimental and which is the control group.
Key Words: aging parents, responsibility, children, caregivers, experiment, independent variable, dependent variable, behavioral therapy, person – centered therapy, self – respect.
Self – Confidence in Children with Aging Parents
Introduction
Dealing with elderly parents is a responsibility that everybody has to face at one time in life. It can be time consuming, it can affect the current lifestyle of the caregiver, it can be frustrating, it can be depressive and yes, it can be leading to low – self-confidence and it can diminish the self-respect (Aronson & Bakur Veiner, 2007). Watching parents going into a deeper and deeper slipping estate, forgetting familiar places, regular things that were part of their daily life, falling into Alzheimer disease or dementia and watching their confusion suffering for not knowing what is happening with them can be very painful for the caregiver children.
Besides the feelings of confusion, which appear in the adult children’s mind as a result of watching parents becoming more fable every day and not able to take care for their children, grandchildren, there also appear the frustration feelings mentioned above, because they are in the position where they need to fit their parents into their daily activities, providing various chorus for them, or assisting them with eating, toileting, cleaning the house, etc. (Bertini, 2010).
Moreover, aging comes with changes in mood and behavior (Greenberg, 1999) and this puts another pressure on the caregiver children, to indulge their old parents’ changing and capricious moods, when nothing is good for them and their requests are increasing as their needs are more and more evident and they become each day more dependent on receiving help and care (Newman & Newman, 2010; Warner Scaie & Willis, 2011).
Scholars discuss about a filial responsibility when it comes to aging parents, which consists in caring for the elderly parents as a way of giving back for the effort and time that they, the parents, offered while raising the current adult children when they were babies or growing up (Newman & Newman, 2010).
Adults carrying for their aging parents often deal with their bad behavior, manifested through yelling, offensive language, malicious comments, abuse, their reluctance to their children’s care and compassion, their refusal to eat, to shower, to change clothes, etc., with their obsessions, forgetting things, paranoiac behavior, hallucinations, demand of all the time and attention of their children (Berman & Shulman, 2009).
Other authors observe that in taking care of aging parents, their demands keep increasing and nothing seem to satisfy them, as they become more cranky, selfish, requesting for the entire attention, permanently and when they believe that they are being ignored they place the silent treatment or verbally abuse their adult children, making them feel guilty that they failed with their responsibilities towards their parents, or worse, guilty for wishing their parents to die and not having to face their sometimes ridiculous demands (Berman & Shulman, 2012).
Moreover, as aging parents are reproaching their adult children that they do not care enough for them, although the adult children make all efforts to help their aging parents, and adding to this the fact that the parents can develop a brutal behavior towards their children (by swearing, not listening to any of their advices, or even physically abusing them), the adult children can develop resentful feelings for their elderly parents (Bertini, 2012).
This guilt – blame cycle determines the adult child to fall into depression, to lose their self confidence and to manifest a low self – esteem, considering that they fail to be good children and take proper care of their aging parents (Lewis Alexander, LaRosa, Bader & Garfied, 2007). In providing care for their aging parents, relevant factors for the children’s self – respect seem to be the gender, the existence (or lack) of siblings, the financial possibilities (Fontaine, Gramain & Wittwer, 2010).
Based on these data retrieved from the existent literature related to the adult children’s care for their elderly parents, there can be advanced the following hypothesis: Children who are caregivers for their elderly parents usually consider them a burden, as they have reached a phase in their life where they desire to enjoy their freedom and independence, and their parents’ changing behaviors (that come with the aging phase) underline their resentment for their permanently unsatisfied parents, which drive them towards a guilt feeling and depression, negatively influencing their self – confidence, as they will tend to consider themselves bad children.
The current paper represents a research proposal for a study that will examine how the self – respect of adult children is affected by their relationship with their aging, elderly parents. The study will use an experiment as a research methodology, for assessing this relationship, which will be further developed on in the upcoming section.
Method Section
- Overview of the Design
This research proposal recommends the classical experiment, as the method to be utilized for the research that will be conducted within the actual study that will be developed for assessing the adult children’s self – respect as they care for their elderly parents.
The experiment defines the control of an independent variable by an experimenter, and the specific modality of structuring research is usually known as the classical experiment (Maxfield & Babbie, 2012). The classical experiment consists of three main elements: “(1) independent and dependent variables, (2) pretesting and post-testing, and (3) experimental and control groups (Babbie, 2012, p. 230).
As Babbie (2012) continues to describe, the experiment evaluates the effect of the independent variable(s) on a dependent variable, wherein the independent variable is the stimulus (a dichotomous variable with two attributes: present or not present) and the dependent variable is the consequence. Nevertheless, a variable might be an independent variable in one study and a dependent variable in another study (Babbie, 2012).
The experiment that will be used in the study will consist of two independent variables and one dependent variable. The independent variables are behavioral therapy and the person – centered therapy. The dependent variable consists in measuring the subjects’ self – confidence. Briefly, the structure bellow defines the method of research:
Figure 1 – Research method model
- Characteristics of the Participants
The participants of the study will be adult children of aging/elderly parents, in their 50s – 60s, carrying for parents in their 70s – 80s and above, living in the urban areas, who have families of their own, implicitly adult children of their own (with ages ranging from 20 to 40 years old), out of which some also have families of their own.
There will be a total of 50 adult children investigated, residing in the urban area. They will be identified from the local hospitals data basis, found in relation to their aging parents who have files in the local hospitals. The studied respondents should live solely with their partners, as their children have moved out of the family house hold, to start their own families or have independent lives. The investigated subjects will be still employed at the time of the study and offering their support to their children or to their grandchildren. Therefore, the study will be assessing 50 subjects who take care of their elderly parents, both males and females. The gender percentage is to be defined during the investigation process, but as for now, the study aims to obtain an even participation rate (50% of respondents males and 50% of respondents females), for observing if there are particular gender patterns regarding the elderly parents’ care.
- Procedures Used in the Study
Research papers require for specific procedures to be applied for studying in order for the research to be accurate and reliable. The procedure to be used in this study is the double blind experiment. The double blind experiment implies that in a research context, neither the experimenter nor the researched subject(s) do not know about the condition in which the subject is investigated, nor about what are the expected outcomes, therefore, both parties are “blind” and neither of them can manipulate the research (Jackson, 2011).
Babbie (2010) also confirms that in a double – blind experiment, both the experimenters and the subjects are unaware about which is the experimental and which is the control group. Jackson (2011) notes that if the subjects would have been aware of these aspects, they would have changed their behavior, which would determine the manipulation of the experiment.
The subjects will be submitted to actual behavior and people centered – therapy, which will measure their self – respect. These procedures will be taking place in specialized psychological cabinets and professional psychologists will be conducting the investigations. The experimenters will not be informed on the fact that the subjects are examined for identifying their self – respect, as a response to their involvement in taking care of their elderly parents. Neither the subjects should not know that this is the objective of the study. However, for avoiding the ethical constraints, the subjects of the study will be informed that they will be contributing to a sociological investigation that asses adults’ self – respect.
While the experimenters and the subjects will not know what the experiment follows, and will simply convey with the proposed therapies (behavior and self - centered) that will be evaluating their self – respect, solely the coordinator of the research will be aware of this goal, and follow it through the evolution of experiment, without interfering with the results.
Results
- Description of Results
In this phase, there cannot be any estimation regarding the results that will be obtained based on the research design and procedures applied. There can only be specified the statistical test used for analyzing the collected data. The data will be analyzed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) statistical test.
The clinical evaluation that uses the behavioral and the person centered – therapy (the independent variables) for evaluating the subjects’ self – confidence (the dependent variable) will be applied as a part of the experimental methodology. In the pretest phase the respondents will be examined based on the independent variables, and in the post – testing phase the dependent variable will be examined. The results gathered from the post – testing phase, from the beginning till the end will be attributed to the independent variables (Babbie, 2010).
Statistical Description
This section implies a technical discussion which will be elaborated in the actual research paper. For the moment, succinct information can be provided. The SPSS will be examining the categorical variables (such as gender, age category of elderly parents, age category of the subject, family relationship, siblings or other relatives that can care for the elderly parents, employment, proximity or income). All the categorical variables will be introduced in a SPSS table and next the statistical procedure of generating the results will be applied, which will generate tables and graphics that will make the interpretation of the results more visible and the discussion more facile.
- Material Depicted in Tables and Graphs
The material that will be provided after applying the SPSS test will facilitate the interpretation of the results. There will be identified various perspectives from the SPSS analysis, in concordance with the categorical variables used. This will allow for a discussion about what the different categorical variables have to say regarding the investigated problem.
Regarding the experiment developed as part of the research, this will be providing figures from the pretesting and from the post – testing phases, in the latest phase showing also how the dependent variable was affected in various levels by the independent variables. These materials will be relevant for showing how (and if) the independent variables affect the dependent variable and it will only remain for these results to be translated into the context of the problem investigated in the study. The translation of the results will be elaborated within the discussion section.
Discussion Section
This section will be reflecting on the obtained results. As there will be identified multiple variables, based on the SPSS results, each of these variables will be individually analyzed and subjected to a frame investigation, which in the end, corroborating all the issued variables, will be merging towards the objective of the research, which is to assess how is the adult children’s self – respect influenced by their filial obligations of carrying for their elderly parents.
This section should test the proposed hypothesis and this will be possible by applying an epistemylogic approach. Base on the proposed epistemylogic approach, the identified variables, obtained following the experiment applied in the study, will converge towards elaborating a coherent and logical thinking regarding their significance in relationship with the proposed hypothesis.
In this section, the researcher will have the needed information, gathered through practical research and backed up by the existent literature, for identifying whether the elaborated hypothesis will be sustained, or if, on the contrary it will be infirmed, based on the interpretation of the obtained results.
With this, the objective of the research paper, to assess whether the self-respect of the children that take care of their elderly parents is impacted or not, and if indeed the study will indicate that their self-respect is impacted by their carrying for their aging parents, how precisely is it impacting them.
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