Les travaux sur le conflit travail-famille montrent que les difficultés de conciliation sont plus fréquentes aux âges de la parentalité et chez les femmes, et qu'elles sont associées négativement à la santé. Les désavantages de la conciliation des rôles professionnel et familial pour les mères, souvent pointés du doigt, doivent toutefois être mis en perspective avec les gains économiques et de santé habituellement liés à une insertion professionnelle durable des femmes. Dans cette étude, nous comparons la Suisse – un pays largement dépourvu de dispositif soutenant la conciliation travail-famille - avec des pays de niveau socioéconomique comparable - la Belgique, la France, l'Allemagne et la Suède, dotés d'une diversité de politiques de conciliation. Grâce aux données de l'Enquête sur les Familles et les Générations 2013 pour la Suisse et des Enquêtes Genre et Générations pour les autres pays, nous montrons qu'en Suisse les parents d'enfants de moins de 13 ans à deux temps pleins ("dual earners") déclarent plus de difficultés à concilier le travail et la famille, ont une moins bonne santé auto-déclarée et éprouvent plus de difficultés financières que les couples où seul l’homme travaille à plein temps. A l'inverse, dans les autres pays, les "dual earners" ont des indicateurs de conflit travail-famille, de santé et de bien-être économique meilleurs que les autres couples. Ces résultats soulignent que les dispositifs de conciliation travail- famille (quelle qu'en soit la nature) permettent d'abord aux mères qui ont plus de ressources de s'investir substantiellement dans la sphère professionnelle, un mécanisme de sélection qui au final compense largement –sur l'ensemble des mères qui travaillent à temps plein- les désavantages liés aux conflits travail-famille.

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Previous research supports a positive relationship between cognition and emotional stability, although findings regarding healthy older adults are inconsistent. Additionally, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this association. Thus, the present study investigated the mediating effect of cognitive complaints on the bidirectional longitudinal association between cognition and emotional stability in old age. The study sample consisted of 500 older individuals (M age 62.97 years, SD 0.91, range 60–64 years; 52% male) from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development. The results showed that cognitive complaints mediated the effect of cognition on emotional stability over 12 years even when taking baseline emotional stability, baseline cognitive complaints, depressive affect, gender, sensory functioning, and objective and subjective health into account. However, cognitive complaints did not mediate the effect of emotional stability on cognition. The results of the current study emphasize the importance of investigating cognition as a predictor of personality traits, and indicate that cognitive resources may serve as a protective factor for emotional stability in old age.

Background:From a conceptual point of view, close friends are an important resource for promoting activity engagement in old age. Leisure activity engagement in turn is a key predictor of cognitive performance. Empirically, it remains unclear so far whether leisure activity engagement mediates between having close friends on the one hand and cognitive performance on the other, which we investigated in a large sample of older adults.Methods:We assessed cognitive performance (Mill Hill vocabulary scale and Trail Making Test (TMT) parts A and B) in 2,812 older adults. Participants reported information on leisure activity engagement and close friends.Results:A larger number of leisure activities and a larger number of close friends were significantly related to better cognitive performance in the Mill Hill vocabulary scale and TMT parts A and B. A larger number of close friends were significantly related to a larger number of leisure activities. The number of leisure activities mediated more than half of the relation of the number of close friends to performance in all three cognitive measures.Conclusions:Having close friends may be helpful to stimulate and promote activity participation in old age. By enhancing individuals’ cognitive reserve, this may finally preserve their cognitive performance level in old age.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated cross-lagged relations between leisure activity participation and Trail Making Test (TMT) performance over 6 years and whether those reciprocal associations differed between individuals. METHOD: We analyzed data from 232 participants tested on performance in TMT Parts A and B as well as interviewed on leisure activity participation in 2 waves 6 years apart. Mean age in the Wave 1 was 73.42 years. Participants were also tested on vocabulary (Mill Hill scale) as a proxy indicator of crystallized intelligence and reported information on early and midlife cognitive reserve markers (education and occupation). Latent cross-lagged models were applied to investigate potential reciprocal activity-TMT relationships. RESULTS: The relation of leisure activity participation predicting TMT performance 6 years later was significantly larger than was the relation of TMT performance predicting later leisure activity participation. Statistically comparing different moderator groups revealed that this pattern was evident both in individuals with low education and in those with high education but, notably, emerged in only young-old adults (but not in old-old adults), in individuals with a low cognitive level of job in midlife (but not in those with a high cognitive level of job in midlife), and in individuals with high scores in vocabulary (but not in those with low scores in vocabulary). CONCLUSIONS: Late-life leisure activity participation may predict later cognitive status in terms of TMT performance, but individuals may markedly differ with respect to such effects. Implications for current cognitive reserve and neuropsychological aging research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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Background and Objectives: Valuation of life (VOL) represents a construct capturing individuals’ active attachment to
their life. The majority of studies on VOL were conducted in North America and Europe where personal autonomy and
independence are highly valued, leaving open the question about the relevance of this construct in interdependence-oriented
cultures. Using a framework of cross-cultural and life-span theories, the present study compared levels and predictors of
VOL between the young-old and old-old individuals from Germany and Japan. Research Design and Methods: Two hundred fifty-seven Germans and 248 Japanese, matched by age, gender, education, and IADL, answered a 5-item VOL scale and shared information on sociodemographic, social, and health resources. Results: Germans’ VOL levels were higher than in Japanese participants. Both culture- and age-moderated predictions of VOL: education was significant only in the young-old Japanese, and close social partners mattered in the old-old, not in the young-old. Health determined VOL irrespective of culture and age. Discussion and Implications: The findings suggest that cultural values and aging processes should be considered to
better understand how individuals value their life and to help older adults to feel that his/her life is meaningful and
worth living.