Publication type
Journal Article
Author
Publication date
April 1, 2023
Summary:
Increasing longevity has led to a rising number of adult children who are at higher ages when they provide care for their parents. Drawing on the life-course approach and exchange theory, the paper addresses similarities and differences in parent care between late-mid-aged and older adult children. The study uses the UK Longitudinal Household Study, restricting the analysis sample to individuals aged 50 and older with a living parent or parent-in-law. It presents multivariate models to examine differences between late-mid-aged (aged 50-64) and older (aged 65+) children in being a parent carer, providing intensive care, the duration of parent care and providing selected types of help to parents. The involvement in parent care increases among women up to the end of their seventh decade of life and for men up to their eight’s decade of life. At higher ages, the proportion of parent carers decreases more strongly for women than men. Older carers have shorter caregiving episodes than younger carers, but there is no significant difference in the type of care provided. Even past retirement age, parent care remains classed and gendered with women from lower social classes having the highest likelihood of providing intensive parent care in old age. Having dependent children or living in a non-marital union depress the likelihood of caring for a parent even past retirement age.
Published in
Ageing and Society
Volume and page numbers
Volume: 43 , p.790 -813
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X21000799
ISSN
0144686
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
#536776