Does Gender Top Family Ties? Within-Couple and between-Sibling Sharing of Elderly Care

Matteo Luppi,Tiziana Nazio

doi:10.1093/esr/jcz035

Matteo Luppi, Tiziana Nazio

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcz035

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Abstract

Abstract Most elderly care continues to be delivered informally within families. Yet we still lack a thorough understanding of how care responsibilities are shared across both family ties and generations. We explore the gender dimension of caregiving in the distribution of elderly care between couple members (care provided to parents and parents-in-law and to children or grandchildren) and its associations with siblings' sex composition in a range of European countries. Using SHARE data and multinomial multilevel models, we test how responsibility for elderly care is shared across children and mediated by their partners and their siblings' sex composition as well as how it is combined with other downward care responsibilities, towards children and grandchildren. Results confirm the very gendered nature of elderly care. But who do men shift elderly care responsibilities to? We find that elderly care is more likely shifted to sisters than brothers, especially when caregiving becomes intense. We also find that the lower contribution by sons does not seem to prompt transfers of care responsibilities to their female partners within couples. Finally, although upward and downward caring responsibilities might compete, we find that individuals who are more inclined to provide care tend to do so in both directions.

Highlights

Within studies of gender, the division in informal caring work within the household is a consolidated field
We focus especially on parental care since in the coming decades upward caregiving is expected to become a higher stressor for family resources
How do siblings’ sex composition and partners affect care distribution across family members? We investigate whether elderly care responsibilities directly compete with demands from younger generations, i.e. those from children and grandchildren

Summary

Introduction

The division in informal caring work within the household is a consolidated field. Most elderly care provision continues to be delivered informally within families (Folbre and Bittman, 2004; Saraceno, 2008; Henz, 2009, 2010). Despite increasing recent attention to the role of adults outside the couple dyad (Lee, Spitze and Logan, 2003; Henz, 2009; Grigoryeva, 2017), we lack a thorough understanding of how caring responsibilities are shared across both family’s ties (siblings and partners) and generations, especially when caregiving demands intensify. In a demographic context of increasing verticalization of families—meaning reducing number of horizontal ties (siblings) and increasing of vertical ones (parents, children, and grandchildren)—and longer employment participation, the question of how limited resources are allocated by couples when faced with varying patterns of parental need and conflicting downward caregiving

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