Whilst much research has been undertaken to explore the experiences of older people and how to improve their quality of life, far less attention has been paid to the psychosocial experiences of their adult children who are often tasked with difficult decisions about care provision and arranging a parent's affairs. Emerging from this research is a complexity of emotional responses to the caregiving experience for adult children. Adult children can feel a sense of responsibility and duty towards the care of parents, along with compassion, commitment, and increased emotional bonds. However, there can also be conflicting, and painful, emotional responses such as frustration, resentment, guilt, and loss which also need to be acknowledged.

The psychosocial research methodology underpinning this research has been used to uncover some of the more difficult or taboo discussions about the relationship with older parents. I once gave a conference presentation in which I introduced Jeff's story about his difficult relationship with his mother. Some audience members were aghast at Jeff's admission that he had sometimes wished for his mother's death in order to live a more fulfilled life. This was not something to be talked about. Yet he was not the first, nor the last to admit such difficult emotions when faced with very challenging care relationships. Although it was a difficult thing for Jeff to admit, it also highlighted the psychologically conflicting care role that he and many other adult children face. This is not to deny the love and care in those relationships, but instead it highlights the emotional struggles, or ambivalence, that adult children can feel in their caregiving experiences.

This book introduced the concept of the ‘generational shift’, which sees the upward movement of the generations, which for the midlife adult child means the ageing and loss of the generations above, as well as changes in the generations below. There are competing demands from multiple directions – children, career, own psychical and mental health, marriage, managing a home and the affairs of a parent's home, as well as loss, grief, and anxiety about a parent's ageing, choosing a care home, coping with guilt, and arbitrating other family and sibling relationships; all gather pace at this point in the life course. But it is this generational shift that, I argue, can raise existential anxiety and increase personal mortality awareness.