This paper examines whether it is possible to recognise specific patterns of institutionally regulated downward (towards children) and upward (towards the old) intergenerational obligations with regard to care and financial support, and to identify specific country profiles and clusters of countries in Europe. Based on the three-fold conceptualisation of familialism by default, supported familialism and de-familialisation, and using a complex set of indicators, we describe how countries, by means of policies, allocate intergenerational responsibilities between families and the state, also paying attention to their gender impact. The study includes all 27 EU countries and for the first time offers a comparative overview of a diversified set of policies with regard to both children and the old. It concludes that although specific policy profiles emerge with regard to the two sets of obligations, these do not always coincide. Furthermore, contrary to widespread opinion, supported familialism and de-familialisation are not always contrasting policy approaches. In some countries, they actually represent part of an integrated approach to public support of intergenerational obligations. Moreover, the gender impact of supported familialism may be different and even contrary, depending on the specific instrument. Finally, once the road of oversimplification is excluded, only one statistically sound cluster of countries emerges. It is, however, possible to detect groups of countries that are similar. These only partly overlap with prevalent welfare regime types.

The aim of this article is to articulate the concepts of familialism and defamilialization as well as their indicators to assess whether and how welfare states, or regimes, differ not only in the degree to which they are defamilialized but also in the specific familialism form. In other words, it assesses whether family responsibility in a given area (and its gender dimension) is only assumed without public policy support or, on the contrary, whether it is actively enforced by laws or supported by income transfers and time allocation. The same diversification also exists for the opposite concept, defamilialization, which may happen through positive, direct or indirect policy interventions or because of the lack of such interventions, encouraging recourse to the market. The article shows that when considering these distinctions in the analyses, the profiles of countries that are usually generically described as ‘familialistic welfare states’, such as Italy and Spain in Europe or Japan and Korea in East Asia, and their similarities and differences partly differ from those that emerge when considering only a simplified familialism – defamilialization dichotomy, in so far both familialism and defamilialization may occur, and be combined, through distinct means, offering, therefore, also different options.

Population ageing implies the ageing of family and kinship networks. Because the absolute number of the frail elderly is set to increase, notwithstanding the increase in life expectancy in good health, a top-heavy intergenerational chain is likely both to put stress on the middle generation, and result in the older and younger generations competing for their support. Thus, issues of the redistribution of financial and time resources become relevant in the middle and younger generations when frailty emerges in the older generation. This article adopts a bi-generational perspective in order to examine not only whether social inequality affects resources available to the dependent elderly, but also whether and how a frail elderly person’s demands impact differently on children’s resources and life chances across gender and social classes, as well as what the impact of specific patterns of public care provision (other than healthcare) is on these inequalities.

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It has often been argued that Southern European countries are more familialistic in their culture than Western and Northern European countries. In this paper, we examine this notion by testing the hypothesis that adult children are more responsive to the needs of their elderly parents in countries with more familialistic attitudes. To test this hypothesis, we analyse the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We focus on three indicators of need: (a) the partner status of the parent, (b) the health status of the parent, and (c) the education of the parent. Using Heckman probit models, we examine the effects of these variables on whether or not the parent receives instrumental support from children, thereby controlling for whether or not children live independently from their parents. We estimate effects of need on support and we compare these effects across 10 European countries, using both graphic devices and a multilevel probit model where individuals are nested in countries. We find significant cross-level interactions of need variables and the degree of familialism in a country. Our analyses, thereby provide more positive evidence for the hypothesis than earlier studies, which have focused largely on comparing aggregate levels of support among countries.