Married Adults Coresiding with Older Parents: Implications for Paid Work and Domestic Workloads

Abstract

The rise of life expectancy throughout the developed world has meant that older adults play an increasingly important role in their grown-up children’s lives. We evaluate whether the intergenerational solidarity theory is useful for understanding the intergenerational transfers of time in Japan given the relatively generous welfare provision for the older adults and the fall in intergenerational coresidence. We apply seemingly unrelated regression models to data of the 2006 Japanese Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (Statistics Bureau Japan, 2006) to investigate how coresidence patterns are associated with paid and unpaid work time of adult married children. The sample contains 23,226 married couples where both husband and wife are aged 20 to 59. We find evidence of intergenerational solidarity in coresident households. We also find that “doing gender” is layered through intergenerational exchanges of support between married working-age children and their older parents. Working-age women’s time use patterns are associated with coresidence arrangements and care needs of their older relatives to a much greater extent than working-age men’s. The observed patterns are consistent with healthy older women supporting their daughters’ careers in exchange for care when they need help themselves. For working-age men, the patterns are not very pronounced. Notably, working-age husbands without children appear to be more responsive to their older the parents’ care needs, suggesting that fatherhood may be associated with solidifying gendered role performance within Japanese couples.

Revisiting the Gender Revolution: Time on Paid Work, Domestic Work, and Total Work in East Asian and Western Societies 1985–2016

“…Moreover, East Asian societies score persistently low on gender equality (World Economic Forum 2020). The gap between women’s and men’s time spent on housework is large in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan (Hertog and Kan 2021; Kan and He 2018; Kan and Hertog 2017; Kan, Hertog, and Kolpashnikova 2019; Zhou, Kan, and He 2021).…”

Who Benefits from the Village? Doubling Up and Parents’ Time Use

“…Scholars use numerous frameworks to understand the relationship between doubling up and time use. The time poverty approach (Pepin et al 2018), family model systems (Cross et al 2018), intergenerational solidarity (Hertog and Kan 2021;Raymo et al 2014), and collective models for family relationships (Reyes 2018) all suggest that doubling up will buffer some time constraints ("time poverty") that parents might experience. The extended family household is a network of interconnected kinship relationships whose primary goal is to support family members individually and collectively.…”

“…Existing research that investigates DU and gender dynamics focus on domestic labor and time with children in Japan or among Taiwanese immigrants in Canada (Hertog and Kan 2021;Raymo et al 2014;Sun 2008). These studies show that DU with older parents reduced married women's domestic labor and supported their work-family balance but did not impact men's domestic labor (Hertog and Kan 2021;Sun 2008).…”

“…Existing research that investigates DU and gender dynamics focus on domestic labor and time with children in Japan or among Taiwanese immigrants in Canada (Hertog and Kan 2021;Raymo et al 2014;Sun 2008). These studies show that DU with older parents reduced married women's domestic labor and supported their work-family balance but did not impact men's domestic labor (Hertog and Kan 2021;Sun 2008). In addition, living with parents was associated with single mothers' time with children in Japan; single mothers who co-resided with their parents spent less time with their children than single mothers who lived alone (Raymo et al 2014).…”

“…In addition, I use a broad definition of DU to include multigenerational and horizontal extended family members. Finally, I include partnered and single parents and systematically compare mothers and fathers across race and ethnicity groups, therefore expanding past research (Cross et al 2018;Hertog and Kan 2021;Pepin et al 2018;Raymo et al 2014;Sarkisian et al 2007;Sarkisian and Gerstel 2004;Sun 2008).…”