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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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How important is parenthood?
— Childlessness and support in old age in England | | Author(s) | G Clare Wenger, Anne Scott, Nerys Patterson |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 20, part 2, March 2000 |
| Pages | pp 161-182 |
| Keywords | Marital status ; Childless ; Family care ; Social surveys ; Liverpool. |
| Annotation | Family relationships are popularly and sociologically viewed as crucial to the social social support of older people, the relationships between adult children and their parents generally being regarded as most important. But could these expectations be part of a cultural myth; and does the distinction between parenthood and childlessness make much difference to social support in old age? Using data from Liverpool, this paper compares the support networks of older people in three categories: parents (nearly always married); those who married but remained childless; and those who did not marry and remained childless. The main finding is that childlessness has a negative impact on support network strength only for single men and for married women. This suggests that youthful investment in a lasting marriage incurs high social opportunity costs for women in old age, unless offset by the survival of children. The findings have implications for evaluating social policies which are based on the expectation that individual female family members, in the context of a male breadwinner, will provide "caring" for dependent persons. Such provision of care may incur diminished receipt of care for some women in old age. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000502002 A |
| Classmark | SLM: SU: P6:SJ: 3F: 84B |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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