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The long-term rewards of parenting: Older adults’ marital history and the likelihood of receiving support from adult children

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Abstract

This study investigates support provided to older parents by non-resident children and compares older adults in various living arrangements, based on a typology of current partner status, marital history and gender. Data come from the Dutch 1992 survey on older adults living arrangements and social networks (NESTOR-LSN). The 4494 respondents constituted a random sample of men and women born in the years 1903 to 1937. The findings, based on those with ADL- and/or IADL-limitations and with living children (N=2182), point out that ever-divorced men, regardless of whether they have repartnered, receive only marginal help from their children. Among those without new partners, 8 percent of the ever-divorced men and 22 percent of the ever-divorced women cite children as sources of help, while this is so for 45 percent of the ever-widowed men and 53 percent of the ever-widowed women. Multivariate analyses revealed that health, educational level, number of children and travel distance are significant predictors of support from children, in addition to the significant and important contribution of marital history, partner status and gender.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Meijboomlaan 1, 2242 PR, Wassenaar, The Netherlands

    Jenny de Jong Gierveld (Professor)

  2. the Department of Sociology and Social Gerontology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jenny de Jong Gierveld (Professor)

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  1. Jenny de Jong Gierveld
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  2. Pearl A. Dykstra
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Correspondence to Jenny de Jong Gierveld.

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is currently a Permanent Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the period 1987 to 2000 she was director of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). Her main interest is the demographic and social aspects of ageing of the population.

Pearl A. Dykstra is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and Professor of Family Demography at Utrecht University. Her publications focus on late life families, and ageing and the life course. At present she is the coordinator of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS), a longitudinal study of 10,000 individuals and their families funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

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de Jong Gierveld, J., Dykstra, P.A. The long-term rewards of parenting: Older adults’ marital history and the likelihood of receiving support from adult children. Ageing International 27, 49–69 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-003-1002-z

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