Exploring Support to Older Parents: Marital Status, Geographic Distance, and Parents’ Filial Expectations

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 15. Multigenerational Family Practices

Abstract

Previous studies examine the relationship between older parents’ marital status and the amount of emotional and instrumental support received from adult children. Using the Longitudinal Study of Generations (Wave 8, 2004), this paper builds on prior work by exploring how being married/partnered, having a child nearby, and endorsing strong filial care expectations are associated with older adults’ receipt of support from children. Overall, the results suggest that parents’ marital status and geographic proximity to children independently influence adult children’s provisions of support to older parents and, in combination, may shape the process by which parents’ filial care expectations activate adult children’s decisions to provide support. First, older adults who are not married/partnered receive more support from children than do their married/partnered counterparts, perhaps indicating that a compensatory shift occurs where children assume responsibility for care of older parents in the absence of spouses/partners. Second, children in close geographic proximity provide more support for their older parents than do more geographically distant children, perhaps due to the increased interactions and enhanced emotional obligations experienced by more proximal children. Third, older adults who hold strong filial care expectations receive more support from their children compared to those with weaker filial responsibility norms. Further examination reveals that filial care expectations may trigger support primarily among distant children of married/partnered parents and among nearby children of unmarried/unpartnered parents. Additional analyses will explore whether these preliminary patterns are consistent over time and across multiple generations.

Authors

• Christine A. Mair, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

• Jonathan R. Brauer, University of Nebraska-Omaha