Core Idea

As I was having lunch with some members of my extended family around Thanksgiving the topic of the family came up.  I was asked how I would define the family.  Well, going on my experiences from my school days, it seemed that many of my friends and I grew up in “traditional” two parent- households.  However, my twelve year old cousin said that many of his peers were not in two-parent households for one reason or another.  These two different views of the family show how the structure of the family is changing.  In fact, as this article points out, over the last half of this century divorce and remarriage has been a major contributor to the change in family structure. 

In this article, the authors focus on divorce and remarriage because it is assumed that divorce weakens the bonds between parent and child.  This has important implications for later in life.  As years pass, and these parents are aging, will their children (now adults) support them (financially or personally)? 

What they say

The researchers explored this issue -- the prospect of adult children of divorce giving care to their parents --because the most research targeted short-term consequences of parental divorce, rather than long-term ones.  They examined two questions.   First, will these adult children of divorced and/or remarried parents in fact support them when they become old and frail?  Second, is there a difference of care given to divorced mothers as opposed to divorced fathers?  To answer these questions the authors tested two hypotheses.  The first was the intergenerational solidarity hypothesis, founded on the belief that divorce weakens the bonds between parent and child.  Therefore, the more time passing since the divorce, the less likely the adult child will be willing to help, because the bonds between the parent and child have weakened more and more over those years.  The second, contrasting hypothesis is the altruistic motive hypothesis.  This hypothesis suggests that the care given by their adult children is dependent upon the parent’s needs. 

These hypotheses were tested using the 1998, 2000, and 2002 waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study.  There were 5,099 adult children in the mother sample and 4029 in the father sample. Latent growth curve models (a statistical method) were used for analysis.  The results showed that there’s support for the altruistic motive hypothesis for mothers, as divorced mothers were just as likely to receive care from their adult children as widowed mothers were.  Further support came from the finding that mothers who lost their spouse during the study period were more likely to receive help than mothers whose marital status stayed the same.  Although support of the altruistic motive hypothesis is good news for divorced mothers, divorced fathers on the other hand are not so fortunate. 

Although this study found no support of the intergenerational hypothesis for divorced fathers, unlike the case with divorced mothers, divorced fathers are less likely than widowed fathers to receive help from their adult children, as well as less likely than divorced mothers to get personal care from them.

What it means

It appears from this study that divorced fathers are the ones in greatest need of support from their adult children when they become older.  Findings such as this one are important for policymakers.  It is predicted that within the next few years Social Security and Medicare benefits may be reduced.  As a result, the support older people receive from their families could become increasingly valuable.  Therefore, as the article stresses, it’s significant to know when adult children will care for their divorced parents.

Further research is definitely needed on this topic. In fact, the authors note several limitations to this study which require further research.  These include:  1) the possibility of unobservable family characteristics affecting parental divorce and the odds of receiving support from adult children in their old age 2) the divorce effect might be underestimated in the father sample, as frail, divorced fathers who lack their adult children’s support, died before the study was completed 3) the majority of parents in the sample being relatively young, resulting in little need of support and 4) no measurement of the adult children’s health status.  Furthermore, other areas of research that the authors insist researchers and policy makers learn about are 1) why some children in a family give help to their older parents and others do not 2) which child initiates or organizes the help 3) what roles the nuclear family and the extended family play in support-giving 4) to what degree familial support can substitute for formal care systems. 

Reference

Lin, I.  (2008).  Consequences of Parental Divorce for Adult Children’s Support of Their Frail Parents.  Journal of Marriage and Family, 70 (February 2008), 113-128.