Abstract
ABSTRACTUnderstanding patterns of intergenerational support is critical within the context of demographic change, such as changing family structures and population ageing. Existing research has focused on intergenerational support at a given time in the individuals' lifecourse, e.g. from adult children towards older parents and vice versa; however, few studies have focused on the dynamic nature of such support. Analysing data from the 1958 National Child Development Study, this paper investigates the extent to which the receipt of parental help earlier in the lifecourse affects the chances of adult children reciprocating with support towards their parents later in life. The findings show that three-quarters of mid-life adults had received some support from their parents earlier in life, and at age 50 more than half were providing care to their parents. Patterns of support received and provided across the lifecourse differ markedly by gender, with sons being more likely to have received help with finances earlier in the lifecourse, and daughters with child care. The results highlight that care provision towards parents was associated with support receipt earlier in life. However, the degree of reciprocity varies according to the type of care provided by children. Such findings have implications for informal care provision by adult children towards future cohorts of older people, and by extension, the organisation of social care.
Highlights
Individuals aged and over comprised per cent of the total population of the United Kingdom (UK) in and this proportion is expected to increaseDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core
The mediation of support exchange by the gender of the adult child is an important finding across several studies, where gender has been linked to expectations of daughters or daughters-in-law to care for family members, compared to sons’ greater likelihood of being responsive to earlier transfers from their parents (Grundy and Read ; Silverstein, Gans and Yang )
Adult children are one of the main sources of informal care provided towards older individuals, understanding intergenerational exchanges of support between parents and their adult children is key to determining the reasons behind adult children’s provision of care and so informing future projections of such care
Summary
Individuals aged and over comprised per cent of the total population of the United Kingdom (UK) in and this proportion is expected to increase. Previous studies have explained children’s involvement in support provision through a framework that emphasises intergenerational relationships (Steinbach ; Szydlik ) The majority of such studies have found that children’s receipt of support from their parents is associated with children’s provision of support towards their parents (Alessie, Angelini and Pasini ; Djundeva et al ; Grundy ). In order to capture the dynamic nature of support exchange between family members, longitudinal data recording transfers at different points in time is needed. Recent research using such data and focusing on specific cohorts has aimed to disentangle the dynamics of exchanges over time (e.g. Alessie, Angelini and Pasini ), or to study past exchanges retrospectively (e.g. Henretta et al ; Whitbeck, Simons and Conger ). This paper builds upon and extends the existing evidence base in two important ways: firstly, it examines flows of support at different stages of the lifecourse amongst a cohort of women and men currently in mid-life, shedding light on the flows of support received from their parents earlier in the lifecourse (between leaving full-time education and age ) and the provision of support to their parents when the cohort members are aged ; secondly, it explores in detail the types of support provided at both sides of the exchange relationship, highlighting that the nature of the exchange relationship varies according to the type of support being provided
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