IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/iesopp/4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Caught in the Middle? Occupancy in Multiple Roles and Help to Parents in a National Probability Sample of Canadian Adults

Author

Listed:
  • Carolyn J. Rosenthal
  • Anne Martin-Matthews
  • Sarah H. Matthews

Abstract

This paper considers for a Canadian national probability sample of middle-aged women and men the question of how typical is the experience of being "caught in the middle" between being the adult child of elderly parents and other roles. Three roles are examined: adult child, employed worker, and parent (and a refinement of the parent role, being a parent of a co-resident child). Occupancy in multiple roles is examined, followed by an investigation of the extent to which adults in various role combinations actually assist older parents and whether those who provide frequent help are also those "sandwiched" by competing ommitments. The majority of middle-aged children do not provide frequent help to parents. Notably, the highest proportion of daughters who assist elderly parents are those in their fifties whose children are no longer co-resident. For both sons and daughters, being "caught in the middle" is far from a typical experience in this cross-sectional analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Carolyn J. Rosenthal & Anne Martin-Matthews & Sarah H. Matthews, 1996. "Caught in the Middle? Occupancy in Multiple Roles and Help to Parents in a National Probability Sample of Canadian Adults," Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population Research Papers 4, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:iesopp:4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/iesop/papers/iesop_04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rachel Margolis & Laura Wright, 2017. "Older Adults With Three Generations of Kin: Prevalence, Correlates, and Transfers," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 72(6), pages 1067-1072.
    2. Carolyn J. Rosenthal, 1997. "The Changing Contexts of Family Care in Canada," Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population Research Papers 10, McMaster University.
    3. Katharina Herlofson & Gunhild Hagestad, 2011. "Challenges in moving from macro to micro: Population and family structures in ageing societies," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 25(10), pages 337-370.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    multiple roles;

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:iesopp:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.