Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

In this presentation, we discuss the relationship between rapid aging and unique family structural changes in Thailand. Previous research argued that the “socialization of care” advanced alongside modernization and the aging progress. Similar to other Asian countries, Thai society has modernized and aged. However, in Thailand, over the last 30 years, the proportion of nuclear family households has decreased, and extended family households containing three generations and skipped generation families, have increased. This is in contrast to the modernization of Thailand. Why has the proportion of extended families increased? From an analysis of the Survey of Older Persons in Thailand (SOPT) census, the proportion of care by skipped family members such as nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, has increased as the number of children people have has decreased. In addition, from fieldwork research in the Bang Si Thong District, on the outskirts of Bangkok, we discovered that because some older people do not have children or their children cannot take care of them (People do not expect public care systems in Thailand), they were cared for by other relatives. These relatives did not live together in the past but lived together to take care of their older relatives. From the analyses, we discovered this phenomenon of “extended familiarization of care,” where relatives who are not nuclear family members actively take care of older people as a substitute for children because of undeveloped public care systems. As such, we assume that this is leading to unique family structural changes in Thailand.