Werewolf fighting grandmas & 16-year-old chauffeurs:Analysis of intergenerational dyads in adolescent fiction

Background

Shannon Jarrott, Ph.D., Brianna Saby, B.S., Brandy McCann, M.A., Aaron Weintraub, M.S., & Becky Jackson, B.S.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Discussion

Selection & Coding

Coding Criteria

Implications

Results

t@vt.eduhttp://www.intergenerational.clahs.vt.edu/ Presented at the Gerontological Society of America's 61st Annual Conference, National Harbor, MD November 2008 sjarrott@vt.edu

We analyzed the stories for presence of Allport’s four Contact Theory tenets. To code the tenets, we answered the following questions:

Authority support: Did other characters, tradition, or custom support the intergenerational relationship?Equal group status: Did each member of the dyad perceive themselves as contributing to and benefiting from the relationship?Cooperation: Did the characters cooperate with one another during the course of the story?Common goal: Did the characters share a common goal in the story?

Additional information we noted about the child and elder dyad members included socio-economic status, family relations, physical & mental health, and circumstances leading to the intergenerational relationship.

Finally, for each intergenerational dyad we coded the child’s overall attitude towards older adults as negative, neutral, or positive based on the overall portrayal of the character’s words, actions, and thoughts regarding aging and older adults.

We coded 38 dyads from 20 books found in the Books in Print database using the following criteria:

•Most dyads demonstrate all tenets of contact theory, suggesting the potential to positively change readers’ attitudes towards the other’s outgroup.

•The young characters’ behaviors reflect positive attitudes towards elders, even when the older adult was impaired or experienced conflict with the child. In some instances, young characters experienced a positive attitudinal change while in others they began with a positive attitude, which was maintained through the story.

•Across a range of circumstances, including the fantastical and mythical, the stories’ themes reflected the importance of children and elders to each other as sources of instrumental and emotional support.

•IG counterparts proved key to children’s and adults’ success coping with difficult personal and family situations and common developmental dilemmas.

•Our selection criteria may have biased our findings:

•Limiting our criteria to books with keywords of “grandparent” or “older adult” may have positively biased our sample; an author portraying older adults negatively may have been less likely to select such keywords.

•Still, we did find negative and peripheral portrayals of older adult characters in books with these key terms, which may suggest an author’s age bias.

•Given the potential for media to shape ideas about experiences one has not had, such as being old, adolescent fiction should be considered for its capacity to support children’s exploration of the diverse experiences of aging.

•Our findings indicate the potential for media to positively and realistically shape young readers’ attitudes towards the outgroup of older adults.

•A logical next step is to engage a group of targeted readers with these stories to explore how they affect attitudes towards older adults and the reader’s own aging.

•Practitioners and educators may find that curriculum integrating intergenerational contact with fiction spotlighting intergenerational relationships provides valuable learning opportunities.

•Together or separately, opportunities to explore intergenerational relationships can foster positive development by exposing children to the range of aging experiences.

•Recent research findings associate elders’ attitudes towards aging with their health. Thus, forces such as the media that shape attitudes should be considered for their potential to realistically portray the challenges and opportunities that influence one’s experiences as an old character!

Descriptive Characteristics • 67% of the older adult and 63% of the child characters were female.•89% of the children and 68% of the elderly characters were physically healthy. •85% of the children and 95% of the elderly characters were mentally healthy.•Minimal health changes were observed in either age group.•Ten older characters and one child character died during the course of the story.

Circumstances leading to the Relationship

Presence of Contact Theory Tenets across Dyads (N=38):

• The most commonly absent tenet was Equal Status between older adult and child.

Child’s Overall Attitude Children’s overall attitude was positive (M=1.87; Max=2) and highly correlated with the number of theory tenets present (r=.54, p<.05).

IG Themes•Transmission of history (34.8%)•IG relationship substitutes for poor nuclear family relations (26.1%)•Family works together to solve problems (21.7%)•Conflict between older & younger generation (8.7%)•IG partners rebelling again middle generation (8.7%)

•Ideas about aging and older persons have been associated with interest in working with older adults and individual health and well being in late life.

•Children's ideas and attitudes about older adults and their own aging are influenced by many sources.

•Studies have addressed the influence of intergenerational contact as well as media, such as TV and movies, on children’s attitudes about aging and elders.

•Interventions that connect young and old to improve attitudes frequently involve social contact, collaboration on community service projects, and elders mentoring youth. Evaluations reveal generally positive effects on targeted outcomes.

•Other scholars have explored the role of media and literature in shaping children's attitudes towards older adults; most focused on media for young children. Authors report stereotypically negative portrayals in video and TV content with a more even distribution of realistic and stereotypical portrayals of elderly characters in young children’s literature. No recent studies have addressed adolescent media.

•Our work is informed by Allport’s Contact Theory, which describes essential conditions to foster positive attitudinal change and associated behavioral outcomes between outgroup members.

•We addressed the following research questions: What are the characteristics of intergenerational relationships as portrayed in contemporary juvenile literature, and how might these relationships affect attitudes about aging with the juvenile reader?

We analyzed the literature in teams of two. Partners read and coded each book individually, comparing and discussing codes until reaching consensus.