Is older adult happier with more filial piety children? The role of filial responsibility expectation of older adult

Filial piety is an essential variable influencing the intergenerational interaction in the context of Chinese culture. Filial piety is a model of China's refined traditional culture which guides family interactions based on blood relationships. It is, therefore, a social moral and normative behavior standard. Filial piety plays a vital role in older adults' lives. However, conclusions from previous studies concerning the relationship between filial responsibility expectation and older adults' quality of life are not consistent. This is partly because the studies did not consider filial support behaviors from adult children and filial discrepancy. Few studies have investigated whether older adults' filial responsibility expectations match filial support from children and the effects of filial discrepancy on their life satisfaction and loneliness. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to test whether filial discrepancy affects older adults' life satisfaction and loneliness using a quadratic polynomial regression with response surface analysis. Our results showed that older adults' life satisfaction was higher when emotional expectation and support, as well as contact expectation and support matched compared with when these expectations and supports did not match. The slope of the matching line was significantly positive (beta = 3.23, p < 0.001). Specifically, a good match between emotional expectation and support linearly increased life satisfaction. Life satisfaction was higher when contact expectation and support matched than when they did not match. Moreover, the slope of the matching line was significantly positive (beta = 1.74, p = 0.010). Specifically, when the contact expectation and support matched, life satisfaction increased with the increase in these two variables. Notably, older adults' high life satisfaction was associated with children's high instrumental support, but not the instrumental expectation. It was found that when emotional expectation and emotional support were mismatched, older adults felt lonelier when the emotional expectation was higher than emotional support compared with when the emotional expectation was lower than emotional support. Low loneliness was associated with high contact support and information support. However, loneliness was not related to contact expectation, information expectation, instrumental expectation, or instrumental support. In summary, our study found significant differences in the impact of filial discrepancy on the positive indicator of happiness in older adults (life satisfaction) and the negative indicator (loneliness). For life satisfaction, matching emotional expectation and emotional support, as well as contact expectation and contact support, are critical factors which improve older adults' life satisfaction. In terms of loneliness, higher emotional expectation compared with emotional support increases older adults' loneliness.