Intergenerational Communication

The Lifespan Approach

A lifespan approach posits that growth is a life-long process and individuals continue to change over the course of the life cycle. These changes are multidimensional (e.g., physical, cognitive, emotional, psychological, social) and vary from person to person. Thus, one’s aging process is a configuration of personal experiences shaped by specific historical and social contexts. From a lifespan perspective, quality and quantity of IC are constantly changing, with both parties feeling intimacy and/or distant simultaneously and throughout the lifespan due to the influences internal and external to this relationship. For instance, grandparent–grandchild relationship may go through changes where a grandparent was actively involved in the grandchild’s life early on (e.g., attending events, taking family vacations together, celebrating holidays), and this close contact may decline after the grandchild enters college. Other changes such as parental divorce, grandparents’ health status, geographical distance, or grandchild’s attitudes toward old age may increase and/or challenge the bonding between the two throughout the lifespan. Thus, lifespan researchers, when examining IC, need to take individual developmental needs and processes into consideration and the ways these changes may affect IC. A lifespan perspective on IC emphasizes the continuity and changes that occur in a relationship over time and how these changes impact communication. Researchers taking this perspective are particularly interested in questions surrounding relationships in transition due to developmental changes in one and/or both parties (e.g., grandchild entering college, teenagers entering puberty) or relationship changes over time (e.g., parent–child relationship changes when parents enter older adulthood).

Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory (SIT) posits that the individual self consists of personal and social identities, with the former representing a person’s idiosyncratic characteristics and the latter representing a person’s identification and emotional attachment with meaningful social groups in society. Social groups, such as age, race, nationality, or religious beliefs, are socially constructed labels for individuals who are perceived to share certain traits. The relative status and treatment of a social group in society contributes to its members’ physical and psychological well-being and influences the ways in which they interact with people in the same group (in-group) and outside the group (out-group). Applying SIT to IC, one can treat IC in terms of “age group” and “generational cohort.”

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