Intergenerational Caregiving: The Role of Attachment and Mental Representation of Caregiving in Filial Anxiety of Middle-Aged Children

Abstract

Adult children may experience filial anxiety when anticipating the need to care for their aging parents. To investigate the extent to which attachment and mental representation of caregiving predict filial anxiety, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 304 middle-age adults with at least one living parent aged 65 or more. Results suggest that the variance in filial anxiety is mainly accounted for by the mental representation of caregiving and then by attachment. These findings suggest that mental representation of caregiving and attachment are important dimensions to consider when adult children feel unprepared and worried with the need to care for their aging parents.