Intergenerational Bonding and Distancing among Indian Women: Changes in Mother-Daughter Relationships and Elderly Care

Abstract

Globalization and India’s recent economic development have led to the migration of young generations and diversification of lifestyles, dispersing families and weakening familism values. This has led to the restructuring of traditionally inherited ways of “care” for the elderly and the circumstances surrounding care. In fact, elderly’s lives and positioning have become so diverse that typical examples do not exist, and instead many “exceptions” have arisen. It is elderly women who have been considered as socially vulnerable in terms of gender and age. They may be more vulnerable in present Indian society where the realities of both familism and care are uncertain, however, they might also find the possibility to create new lifestyles of their own in a series of “exceptions” that deviate from conventional gender norms.  In this study, I will focus on the diversification of elderly women’s lifestyles based on individual cases collected through anthropological fieldwork in rural North India. Particularly, I will discuss a new trend in rural patriarchal societies, where traditionally daughters-in-law have long been the caretakers of the elderly, but recently how is becoming increasingly important is for old parents to have the presence of their own daughters. Finally, this paper will also examine changes in the way daughters live, their position within the society and the family, as well as changes in the interactions between daughters with their own parents and parents-in-law.