However, the model of three-generational family as living arrangement particularly for the elderly may not be a perfect solution and the many problems arising from such a mode of living are already well documented. The conflict between mother and daughter-in-law is a classical one, and differences between generations are enormous in respect to taste of food, bio-rhythm, wake-up and sleeping time, susceptibility to different temperature, and more generally, way of thinking and behaving. Elderly suicide rates were reported higher among the three-generational settings rather than otherwise (Ueno, 1981). Yet, when the elderly get older and more frail or one of the elderly couple dies, then in many cases the remaining elderly person tends to give up living by himself or herself and bring their relatives in their home or join the relative's household.
In the Western as well as in the Eastern societies, many studies have pointed to the significant role that families play in caring for the elderly. Even though the society and the Government can prepare expenditure budgets to pay to the elderly a decent amount of social security installment and medical expenses, the role of the family in making a linkage between the Government and the elderly would never be lessened. While only a minority of the elderly routinely require help from others at any one time, where help is needed much of it is provided by family members, either inside or outside the household. Suppose that an old person gets physically and mentally weak and bedridden, the public assistance and institutional help together with the Government's financial aid may not be sufficient to support and maintain their decent life. In many cases the person providing support will be the spouse. However, as the support and care that required gradually become more extensive with increasing age, the more likely it is to be provided by other relatives, principally daughters or daughters-in-law. Such relatives play a role in sustaining the elderly and helping those who require assistance in preparing food, shopping, doing the laundry and toileting.
Allan (1985) stresses in the advent of the aged society the family care increases in its cost, not only monetarily but also non-monetarily. First, the real costs of providing care can be very high. With increasing frailty, when survival chances increase in the elderly, health and medical services increase. The consequence is that the support they require fits less easily with all other activities family members normally expect to engage in. Gradually, the tending they need becomes far more demanding and time-consuming which is the equivalent of a full-time job. It becomes hard work especially for those who are themselves no longer young. Often the sons and daughters in their sixties take care of their parent in their eighties.
