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Shin Min Daily: Study finds 'filial piety paradox': Help from more children may not be helpful for elderly parents

更多子女帮做家务,老妈或感空间受侵入

研究发现，更多子女介入帮年长妈妈做家务，可能会降低她们眼中的生活品质。

这是因为许多女性可能一生中都是家庭主妇，更多子女帮忙做家务会让她们感觉，她们习惯控制的空间被侵入。其次，子女们可能按照自己的方式，而不是按照母亲的指示或喜欢的方式做家务。

这项名为“孝道悖论:接受子女的社会支持可能与生活质量呈负面关系”的研究中，共有近3000名60岁及以上的男女年长者参与调查，他们从2016年至2019年之间接受了两次访问。

这是本地首个针对“子女支持可能影响年长父母生活品质”的研究，报告刊登在今年6月的《社会科学和医药期刊》。

这项研究是由新加坡南洋理工大学社会科学院社会学助理教授洪嘉伟和杜克—新加坡国立大学医学院老年学研究及教育中心首席研究员马合达(Rahul Malhotra)助理教授完成。

洪嘉伟告诉《海峡时报星期天》，我们普遍认为帮忙家务是件好事，但其实帮忙做家务不是一个问题，问题是通过什么方式帮忙，以及有多少名子女介入才是关键。

他指出，这项研究强调了年长父母想要独立的意愿，其中一项就是他们希望子女能和他们一起做一些事情，而非代替他们去做。 “社会支持要产生效益，就应该想办法去尊重和促进年长者的自我和自主意识。”

他建议，在做家务方面，子女可询问母亲希望怎么做家务，并遵循她的意愿。

 

Older women may feel an intrusion when receiving housework help from more children

Older women's quality of life is eroded when they received housework help from more children, new research has found.

This could be because most older women spent much of their lives homemaking, having more children help with housework can seem like an intrusion into a space where older women are used to having control over. In addition, Children may also take liberties to do housework in a certain manner that older adults are not used to.

Nearly 3000 respondents aged 60 years and above participated in both the baseline and follow-up survey from 2016 to 2019 in this study, titled “The filial piety paradox: Receiving social support from children can be negatively associated with quality of life”.

This is the first local study focusing on the impact of support from children on quality of life of parents, published in Social Science & Medicine Journal in June this year.

The study was led by Assistant Professor Shannon Ang of School of Social Sciences at the Nanyang Technological University, and Assistant Professor Rahul Malhotra of Centre for Ageing Research and Education at Duke-NUS Medical School.

Dr Ang said, “we usually think that providing help to housework is beneficial. The debate is not about providing help to older adults, but the source of help and the number of children involved.”

“This study highlights the older adults’ desire to be independence. They wish to accomplish tasks together with their children, rather than their children alone. Effectiveness of social support is dependent on how we respect and promote self-reliance and independence of older adults”, Ang said.

Ang suggested, “children can follow their parents’ desire on the way they need the help of housework.”

 

更多子女经济支持，年长男性安全感越高

年长男性接受更多子女的经济支持，经济安全感就越高。 研究发现经济支持是最常见的支持方式，有72%的年长者接受至少一名孩子的经济支持，另有29%的年长者接受至少一名孩子帮忙做家务，帮忙家务也是最少见的支持方式。

研究发现，男性接受越多子女们的经济支持，生活质量的感受就越好，但没有足够证据表明女性也是如此。

洪嘉伟说，年长父亲得到更多子女们的经济支持，会提升他们的经济安全感，改善他们的生活自主意识。 但年长母亲由于没有工作多年，已经习惯在经济上依赖另一半，因此她们 接受经济支持，并不会显著增加她们的晚年自主意识。

 

Receiving financial assistance from more children promoted a measure of economic security among older men

Receiving financial assistance from more children promoted a measure of economic security among older men. The research found that financial assistance is the most common form of social support from children, with 72% of the older adults in the sample had at least one child providing financial assistance. Whereas housework help is the least common, with about 29.1% receiving housework help from at least one child.

The research findings showed that receiving financial assistance from more children promoted quality of life among older men, but there is not enough evidence to conclude the same for women.

Ang said, financial assistance from children can provide older men a measure of economic security, thus improving their personal mastery. On the other hand, most older women did not have a working career, thus are more used to be dependent on financial assistance, rendering it less efficacious in promoting a sense of personal mastery from receiving financial assistance compared to men.