Challenges and Solutions for Rural Mutual-Support Elderly Care: A Perspective of Embeddedness Theory

Abstract

In rural China, the trend of population aging and family hollowing is becoming increasingly severe. Traditional elderly care methods are no longer adequate to meet the growing demand for elderly care, leading to the emergence of mutual-support elderly care as a new approach to elderly care. Mutual support has gained widespread practice and has become a vital component of the rural elderly service system. However, rural mutual-support elderly care encounters development bottlenecks, including local cultural resilience, disembedding of social relationships, gaps in policies and regulations, and multiple coordination challenges. Embeddedness theory emphasizes the need for social behavior to be embedded in the network of social connections, providing a valuable theoretical framework for mutual-support elderly care. Drawing on embeddedness theory, this paper investigates the accessibility of mutual-support elderly care in rural areas by examining cognitive embeddedness, relational embeddedness, systemic embeddedness, and structural embeddedness. By addressing the development bottlenecks of mutual-support elderly care in rural China, this paper aims to propose ideas for achieving high quality development in rural mutual-support elderly care.

Keywords

mutual-support elderly care / cognitive embeddedness / relational embeddedness / institutional embeddedness / structural embeddedness

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Higher Education Press