The elderly family solidarity: The case study of the urbanized elderly couple in Bangkok

Abstract

© 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved. The objectives of the qualitative study on the elderly family solidarity as a case study of a transitional urban community in Bangkok were to study the effectiveness of their communication with their community, the essence of the elderly family solidarity and approaches to promote the elderly family solidarity. The urbanized elderly couple families were selected through specifically theoretical sampling method. Through the grounded theory and the in-depth interviews, an integrated process of data collection and analysis was undertaken and descriptively presented. The findings showed the effective communications either verbal communication face to face or through modern communicative technological instruments as well as good relations have forged a close and strong bond among them. This directly entails the essence of the elderly family solidarity in forms of: affectional solidarity, consensual solidarity, functional solidarity, normative solidarity, gratefulness and good memory. The appropriate approaches to strengthen the urbanized elderly couple families could be managed at three levels. At an individual level, each person needed to learn and adjust his behaviors, applying good memory and religious principles in his daily life. At the family level, the elderly couple conflicts need to be effectively resolved with learning roles of each other and at the community level, the urbanized elderly couples have neighbors in the community happily living in harmony like a member of their families.