Chapter 8: Emotional Ambivalence In Adult Children Of Care-Dependent Older Parents: Heuristic Impulses From CognitiveMotivational Emotion Theories

This chapter focuses on the psychological ambivalence in adult children facing their older parent’s dependency on care, who may or may not provide care to them. More specifically, I focus on emotional ambivalence as the copresence of the children’s negative and positive emotions toward various aspects of this specific situation. Co-occurring, opposite-valenced emotions (e.g., fear and hope or happiness and pity) related to the parent produce the emotional ambivalence toward the parent. Similarly, the copresence of self-related happiness and unhappiness, fear and hope, and moral pride and guilt constitutes likely emotional ambivalence toward oneself (adult child) as the actual or potential caregiver. Figure 8.1 provides an initial illustration. Each of the opposite-directed vectors represents a phenomenon of emotional ambivalence.¹