Intergenerational relationships in families influenced by war: A study of Vietnamese war survivors

• Main Authors: KORINEK, Kim, TEERAWICHITCHAINAN, Bussarawan Puk
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Family, Life Course, and Society
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2450
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Research conducted among U.S. veterans demonstrates that war exposure and PTSD can strain the very family relationships that lend support for post-conflict readjustment, but can also generate uniquely supportive service-based friendships. We need to better understand how military service and war exposure influence intergenerational relationships in less developed, post-conflict settings where war’s violence has concentrated, and where family systems are central to old-age support. We contribute to scholarship on military service and older adult wellbeing by assessing structures and quality of family relationships among Vietnamese older adult war survivors, a population whose widely diverse war exposures has received scant scholarly attention. Our analyses of 405 older adults surveyed in the Vietnam Health and Aging Study (2010), provide evidence to suggest that particularly stressful war exposures tend to visit lasting strain upon intergenerational relationships, especially in less-developed countries that have experienced war.