New Living Arrangements: Are They Re-Defining the Situations for the Elderly?

The past two decades have seen an increase in the number of women entering India’s paid work force. The diversification of the job market and the unprecedented impact of consumer oriented culture in the age of economic liberalization opened up opportunities for women to take up gainful employment outside their homes. While this development resulted in a large number of women gaining economic independence, it also brought up the need to make new child care arrangements. Given the fact that child support services are becoming not only expensive, but there is an increasing incidence of violence against children in many child care centres,many parents are entering into a new type of living arrangement with their elderly parents or parents-in-law for taking care of their children. The twin benefit of this arrangement is that there is ‘cost cutting’ on the one hand, and on the other there is an assurance that because of the emotional bonding between the grandparents and their grandchildren, children are in a safe ambience. But how do the elderly perceive their situations? Though it is believed that they are enjoying their life with their grandchildren and children and their needs are well ‘taken care of ’, in the case of how many is this really true? Are parents who are in this type of living arrangement less prone to abuse than those who are living with their children under compelling circumstances? Is the inter-generational divide and conflict that is a typical characteristic of the times in which we live, less intense in the case of elderly who are in this new living arrangement? The paper seeks to find answers to these questions based on primary data generated from personal interviews and focus group discussions with elderly living in different types of family setups.