Care-giving to grandchildren and elderly parents: role conflict or family solidarity?

Abstract

Intergenerational help and care among members of the family belong to the most important dimensions of contemporary welfare regimes. Recent research has indicated that a major part of caring responsibilities is placed on the middle-aged generation. The ‘pivot generation’ is expected to provide help to their adult children and grandchildren as well as to their ageing parents. It has been hypothesised that people helping their parents are discouraged from looking after their grandchildren because they experience lack of energy and time. Using data from the four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this paper analyses the effect of providing help to ageing parents on the likelihood and intensity of looking after grandchildren. It takes a four-generation perspective: grandchildren, children, parents and grandparents. The results show that the support of parents is not associated with less-frequent and less-intense care of grandchildren. On the contrary, a positive association between caring responsibilities has been observed. The highest tendency to care for grandchildren has been found for people regularly helping their parents. This effect holds after controlling for grandparents’ characteristics and country effects. It is suggested that caring responsibilities tend to accumulate rather than compete with one another and therefore could represent a potential risk of overburden for those who have a general tendency to care.

Structuring unequal relations: role trajectories in informal dementia care

“…As observed elsewhere (e.g. Grundy and Henretta 2006, Železná 2018), these participants typically considered care for the young to be a natural priority.…”

Grandmothers and Non-grandmothers in the Polish Labor Market: The Role of Family Issues

“…Recent research evidence demonstrates that it is the generation of grandparents rather than parents who, to a greater extent, belongs to the sandwiched generation involved in various multigenerational care duties (Grundy & Henretta, 2006;Zhang et al, 2018;Železnă, 2018).…”

“…Recent research evidence demonstrates that it is the generation of grandparents rather than parents who, to a greater extent, belongs to the sandwiched generation involved in various multigenerational care duties (Grundy & Henretta, 2006; Železnă, 2018; Zhang, Emery, & Dykstra, 2018). The situation where care duties accumulate rather than competing may indicate a strong sense of family solidarity and an overall tendency to care (Železnă, 2018). This, however, does not need to reduce the potential risks of overburden among those who engage in such activities (Železnă, 2018).…”

“…Following Chou, Pfau-Effinger, Kröger, and Ranci’s (2017) exploration of the impact of care responsibilities on women’s employment, we include a range of family situations implying various care duties (adding also those related to caring for disabled family members) to observe their effect on grandmothers’ and nongrandmothers’ employment. In this, we apply a multigenerational approach to our study, which as Železnă (2018) evidences is the most appropriate for investigating the family/care context for middle-aged and older women.…”

Helping older parents in Europe: the importance of grandparenthood, gender and care regime

“…As time is a finite resource, engagement in one activity often takes place at the expense of involvement in another. However, the few existing studies addressing provision of help to more than one generation do not give any indication of a zero-sum phenomenon in the family: helping one generation does not seem to reduce the likelihood of helping another (Grundy and Henretta 2006;Fingerman et al 2011;Vlachantoni et al 2019;Železná 2018). Actually, Grundy and Henretta (2006), as well as Vlachantoni et al (2019) and Železná (2018), have concluded that providing help and care to parents increases the probability of helping younger generations, not the contrary.…”