中年期から老年期に至る世代継承性の変容

Generativity involves the following themes: creativity, offering something for the next generation, and maintaining. The theme of maintaining means leaving something of value for the next generation and is especially important for old age. We have thus investigated maintaining in old age and how this process changes from middle to old age. We carried out semi-structured interviews of 20 participants aged between 65 and 86 (mean age=74.15). The questions focused on their life story and generativity, and on maintaining in particular. The main findings were as follows. First, maintaining in old age involves some restraint in maintaining for young generation; on the other hand, maintaining in middle age accompanies taking direct responsibility for the young generation. Second, the process of maintaining consisted of ten stages, when it was not possible to take direct responsibility for maintaining for the younger generation, for example, when forced into retirement or when children cut themselves loose from their family, many participants desired to do this.