Elsevier

Journal of Aging Studies

Volume 24, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 257-265
Journal of Aging Studies

Autonomy in an ascribed relationship: The case of adult children and elderly parents

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2010.05.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Demographic and cultural changes have given rise to the question of whether adult children will continue to provide support to their elderly parents. In a qualitative study among selected respondents from a large representative sample, we investigated the motivations of adult children to provide support to their elderly parents. Five major themes emerged: individual choice, obligation, reciprocity, quality of the relationship and genetic relatedness. Respondents rejected general norms of filial obligations, were reluctant to impose behavioral rules on others, but nevertheless expressed strong personal obligations to care. Individualization is often equated with withdrawing from providing care. Our findings suggest otherwise. Filial obligations tend to be strong, but personalized. Social prescriptions have given way to personal motives to provide care.

Introduction

Demographic and cultural changes have prompted many scholars to ask the question whether enough informal support will be available for elderly in the future(Hagestad, 2000). In the Netherlands, it is expected that in 2040, almost 24% of the population will be 65 years and over, against 14% now (CBS, 2006). More than one-third of the population aged 75 and older needs some form of support, and more than two-thirds of this group needs support if they are living alone. (Alders & Esveldt, 2004). Next to partners, children have been the most important providers of help to older parents over the last decades, especially those parents who live alone or who have a spouse unable to provide help (Cantor, 1979, Dooghe, 1992, Shanas, 1979, Wolff and Kasper, 2006) In the Netherlands, 22% of people aged 25 and up have at least one parent or parent-in law who needs some support (Alders & Esveldt, 2004). This support includes housekeeping, odd jobs, transport and help in managing finances, and social and emotional support by calling and visiting (Knipscheer, Dykstra, Van Tilburg, & De Jong Gierveld, 1998). Although some scholars express worries, signaling a possible diminution of support (Cicirelli, 1983, Clawson and Ganong, 2002, Komter and Vollebergh, 2002, Wolff and Kasper, 2006) or even speaking of ‘family decline’ (Popenoe, 1993), others signal changes in family life, but not a decrease in support (Attias-Donfut and Arber, 2000, De Jong Gierveld, 1998, Silverstein and Bengtson, 1997, Stuifbergen et al., 2008), or see new possibilities because of an increase in potential support providers(Murphy, Martikainen, & Pennec, 2006), an increasing importance of multigenerational bonds(Bengtson, 2001) or new types of family life(Stacey, 1993).

Norms of filial obligation have often been regarded as an important motivator for adult children to provide support (Burr and Mutchler, 1999, Silverstein et al., 2006, Stein et al., 1998). These norms are subject to change over time. In the US for instance, they weakened in the period from the 1980s to the 1990s (Gans & Silverstein, 2006). Changes in family circumstances have been the basis for notions of “family decline” and predictions that social cohesion in our society is disappearing(Popenoe, 1993, Putnam, 1995). Though more and more adult children are part of complex family structures including step- and half family, in which obligations towards parents and stepparents are less clearly defined (Ganong & Coleman, 2006), whether greater family complexity is accompanied by a decline in filial obligations, remains an open question.

When investigating norms of filial obligation among the public, many studies refer to general, societal norms e.g. (Dykstra and Fokkema, 2007, Gans and Silverstein, 2006, Lowenstein and Daatland, 2006). If our society is becoming more individualistic, the prescriptivity of general norms may be felt less (for a discussion of the role of prescriptivity in norms, see (Wallace & Walker, 1970). At the same time, individual norms—norms that are valid for a certain person in a certain situation—may become more important. When taking into account both attitudinal norms of filial obligation and personally felt norms of obligation, the latter appear a better predictor of actual support giving(Stein et al., 1998).

Our aim is to investigate how adult children and their elderly parents perceive obligations to provide support, and to what extent they invoke (a) general, societal norms and (b) personalized obligations as motives for support giving up the family line. Our working hypothesis is that in an individualized society like the Netherlands, general societal norms are giving way to personal obligations to provide care.

Research on support giving within families has often focused on those who already provide support (e.g. (Finch and Mason, 1990, Timmermans, 2003). The emerging picture of caregivers is one of highly motivated daughters with strong feelings of obligation. But it is known that motivations may be adapted to circumstances, such that not rewarding or demanding activities may be judged more positively to avoid cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). Norms and motives of those engaged in care giving may be adapted to the situation and not reflect views the person had prior to the situation. We therefore investigated feelings of obligation among those who were not currently engaged in support giving, but for whom the possibility of being engaged in these tasks was nevertheless real.

Section snippets

Participants

Data are from a 2006 qualitative study on support giving by adult children to elderly parents. The sample is a targeted sub sample from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, a representative national longitudinal research project among 8161 independently living adults aged 18 to 79. For full details on the NKPS and the sampling frame we refer to the codebook (NKPS (Dykstra et al., 2005a, Dykstra et al., 2005b). Participants in the qualitative study were primary respondents, taken from the

Participants

We compared the primary respondents in our interviews with the respondents from the representative sample who fulfilled the same criteria except for providing support. They were comparable with regard to sex, age, marital status, number of siblings, number of children, educational level, degree of urbanization, age of the parent and quality of the relationship with the parent, but the primary respondents had a lower than average score on questions measuring norms of filial obligations. Some

Discussion

We found five major themes in our dataset regarding norms for support giving to elderly parents: individual choice, obligation, reciprocity, quality of the relationship and genetic relatedness. A general norm of filial obligation was often rejected, which is consistent with previous research showing an endorsement of statements on norms of filial obligations by 30–60% of respondents, depending on the content of the statement and country of study, with lower percentages in the Netherlands (

Acknowledgements

The Netherlands Kinship Panel Study is funded by grant 480-10-009 from the Major Investments Fund of The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and by The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), Utrecht University, the University of Amsterdam and Tilburg University. This study was also funded by the multidisciplinary research programme ‘Changing Patterns of Interdependence and Solidarity in Family Relations’ at Utrecht University. The costs of the interviews

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