The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of taking gender and generational position seriously in research on intergenerational family relations, using as illustration the association between parents' marital status and perceived quality of the relationship between parents and adult children. The data stem from the Norwegian Life-course, Generations and Gender Study (N = 15,156). Findings revealed the importance of considering who is being asked and which parent–child dyad (mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, and father–daughter) is in question. Respondents' generational position mattered considerably. Parents perceived the relationship as more positive, compared to views of adult children. The contrast was magnified when parents were divorced. How gender mattered differed by generational position. Mothers perceived the relationship quality as higher than fathers did, whereas daughters rated the quality as lower, compared to sons. When parents were divorced, data from children showed stronger dyad contrasts than parent-derived data.
The decision to raise the employment protection age limit in Norway (from 70 to 72) evoked considerable debate, with both employers' associations and most trade union confederations opposing the change. The arguments set forth revealed a need for more knowledge about the oldest workers, and factors contributing to a late exit from the labour market. In this article, we use panel data from the Norwegian Life course, Ageing and Generation Study (2007, 2017) to explore previous work history of those who end up with careers extending beyond typical retirement age (i.e. 67). Our findings indicate that men and women who are still working when aged 67–75 have a history of high work engagement and work effort. Compared to their non-working peers in 2017, they were more likely to consider work as very important in life, perceive their job motivation as stable or improved, work long hours, be self-employed, and either have planned a late exit or made no retirement plans ten years earlier (2007). All in all, a strong inner drive for work seems to be central for a prolonged career; although among women, some may have to remain in the labour market due to financial reasons. ; The research presented here was carried out with financial support from the Research Council of Norway (Grant N° 254786 and 236997). The NorLAG survey data collections have been financed by The Research Council of Norway, four Norwegian Government Ministries, The Norwegian Directorate of Health, The Norwegian State Housing Bank, Sta- tistics Norway and NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University. NorLAG data (DOI:10.18712/ norlag3_1) are part of the ACCESS Life Course infrastructure funded by the National Financing Initiative for Research Infrastructure at the Research Council of Norway (Grant N° 195403 and 269920). ; publishedVersion
Summary The report focuses on solidarity between adult generations, more specifically what responsibility adult children have towards older parents, how responsibilities should be divided between the family and the welfare state, and how the two impact on each other. Data was collected through the European comparative study OASIS, Old age and autonomy - the role of services systems and intergenerational family solidarity. The project was financed through the EU fifth framework program, and carried out in Norway, England, Germany, Spain, and Israel. Individual level data were collected via parallel surveys (interviews) among the urban populations aged 25 and over in each of the five participating countries. National samples counted about 1 200, around 6 100 in total. The older participants (aged 75+) were oversampled to represent around 1/3 of the samples.The project was motivated by the assumed threat to family solidarity in late modern and individualist society (Chapter 1). Of particular interest is the relationship between the family and the welfare state. What is a reasonable and sustainable balance? These questions need be studied in context, hence a comparative approach was seen as appropriate. The countries were therefore selected to represent different family cultures and welfare state regimes. They are located along a north-south axis, which according to Reher (1998) divides European families into a southern more collectivist form, and a northern more individualist type. The five countries also represent different welfare state regimes; the social democratic (Norway), the liberal (England, and the conservative-corporatist (Germany), to stay within the Esping-Andersen typology (1990). Spain has as yet a less mature welfare state, while the fifth country, Israel, is a mixed model.The macro conditions of the countries are assumed to be reflected on the invidual and interpersonal (family) levels. Preferences and practices are assumed to be more or less congruent with the already established traditions, and to be more conform for the older than for the younger generation. The present balance is assumed to be fluid and under pressure from demographic and social change in all countries, but more so in countries that are later in these developments and are now confronted with more rapid changes. These assumptions are in OASIS explored in the strength and character of intergenerational family solidarity, and in the ideals and realities of the family-welfare state interaction.Welfare states differ in the responsibility they ascribe to families (Chapter 2). Some put the family in a dominant position, others assume that the welfare state should protect against dependency upon the family. The OASIS-countries are differently located along this dimension, hence they represent different opportunity structures for family life and elder care. They are facing similar challenges, but are inclined towards different solutions. Germany and Spain tend to favor familistic solutions, and give the state a subsidiary (Germany) or even a residual (Spain) role. They have legal obligations for adult children towards older parents and low levels of services on areas that are by tradition a family responsibility, like long-term care. England and Norway have no legal obligations between generations and higher levels of services on traditional family areas, in particular in Norway. Israel is a mixed case, with legal obligations as in Spain and Germany, but also with rather generous service levels.Are these patterns reflected in public opinion and personal preferences? Do people support the established policies, or do they push for change? Of interest is also to investigate consensus and contrasts in attitudes within the five countries, for example between women and men, the younger and the older. Knowledge about actual help provision is important, but so also is knowledge about norms and attitudes because people tend to act accordingly if opportunity allows it.The intergenerational solidarity model (Bengtson & Roberts 1991) is employed as a research instrument and measures solidarity along six dimensions - structural, associational, consensual, affectional, functional, and normative solidarity. Ambivalence has more recently been introduced as an alternative perspective (LöƒÂ¼scher & Pillemer 1998). Intergenerational relations are seen as inherently ambivalent and characterised by mixed feelings and contradicting expectations that family members need to cope with. These adaptive changes may have been misinterpreted as a breakdown of family solidarity in stead of a change in how solidarity is expressed.Affectional solidarity (Chapter 3) is considerable. Both parties say they feel very close, but parents more so than children. Conflict levels are low as seen from both sides of the relationships, while both parties - and in particular the children - allow a difference of opinion without this being seen as a threat to the relationship. The presumably tighter spanish family shows primarily in structural and associational solidarity. Generations live closer and have more often contact in Spain compared to the more northern countries. This is mainly explained by the higher co-residence rates in Spain, but shared living is often enforced more than chosen, and is then more likely an indicator of (lack of) opportunity than of solidarity.Exchange of help and support (functional solidarity) is substantial in all five countries, and not less so in the northern family (Chapter 3). Exchanges are integral parts of daily life of nearly any family, but roles and resources change over the life course. Older people tend to be in the receiving end, but act also as providers of support. Starting out from the adult child perspective, the findings show that most adult children have provided one or several types of support to older parents during the last year. Emotional support is the most frequent form of support, followed by instrumental help. Only few children provide personal care to older parents, probably because few parents are this frail, and if so, they may already have moved to an institution. Adult children are as a general rule the net providers in the exchange relationship to older parents; they give more than they receive. Older parents provide first of all emotional support to adult children, and in some countries (Norway, Germany, Israel) also money. Instrumental help is flowing upwards in the family line, financial support flow downwards if and when pension levels allow it.Normative solidarity (Chapter 4) is indicated by the support for filial obligation norms; the extent to which adult children are obligated to help their older parents. The majority support such norms in all five countries, but more so in Spain and Israel than in Norway, England, and Germany. This trend is consistent with Rehers (1998) suggestion that the southern family are tighter than the northern. The main impression is, however, that normative solidarity is substantial also in northern countries, even in a universalist welfare state like Norway. This is even more so as the samples were drawn from large cities, and do not include smaller towns and rural areas which may be assumed to be even more familistic. Hence, neither urbanisation nor welfare state expansion seem to have eroded filial obligations.The focus in Chapter 5 is on what people find is a reasonable balance of responsibilities between the family and the welfare state, and what their personal preferences are. Public opinion is found to vary considerably between the countries. The welfare state is seen as the main responsible in Norway and by a (smaller) majority also in Israel. A more even split is favoured in the other three countries. A common trend is that the majority in all five countries favours some form of complementarity between the family and the welfare state, but the complementarity takes different forms. The welfare state is assumed to have the major responsibility in Norway and Israel with the family in a supplementary role. Itö''s the other way around in Germany and Spain, with England in an intermediate position. Attitudes are more or less congruent with the actual policies, but public opinion leans more heavily towards a welfare state responsibility than is presently implemented. The contrast between ideals and realities is greater in low-service countries, implying a greater tension between policy and opinion in these countries.Gender differences are small; hence the female dominance in actual care provision is more likely imposed upon them, not chosen. Age differences are also modest. Older people are not more traditional (familialistic) than are the younger. Spain is an exception, while Norway has high degree of consensus in these matters across gender and age. The older generation is in fact more inclined to push responsibilities on the welfare state than are the younger. Personal preferences lean even more towards services than do the more general attitudes. The great majority of Norwegians state a preference for services over family care if they should come to need help in old age. A corresponding majority would prefer institutional care over living with a child if they could no longer live by themselves. Preferences are more moderately biased towards the welfare state in three of the other four countries. Spain stands out with a majority in favour of family care, but only among the older generation.Chapter 6 analyses the actual distribution of help to elders in need. The family and the organised services are the dominant sources of help, but in different combinations. Families are dominant on all leves of needs in Spain, while services - and then mainly public services - are the major source of help among the most needy in Norway. The total help rate (from all sources) is higher in a high-service country like Norway than in a family dominated system like Spain, while the volume of family care is only moderately lower in Norway, indicating that service systems and families tend to supplement rather than substitute each other. There is little or no support in these trends for the idea that older people are diserted by their families and pushed over on services as a secondary option. Family solidarity need not be threatened by alternative or complementary services, and each party may have qualities that are not easily replaced by the other. Hence complementarity is more likely than substitution.Considering that affection and exchange levels are rather substantial in five otherwise different countries, they indicate that solidarity is general and considerable although not universal. While country differences are moderate in the more general features of solidarity, they are far larger in the more concrete attitudes about how policies and services should be organised. If this is a valid observation, then intergenerational family solidarity may have a rather stable and general character, but find different expressions in practice when circumstances and conditions change. This suggestion indicates a need to clarify what should indeed be ment by solidarity. We have therefore in the concluding Chapter 7 conducted a series of factor analysis in order to explore the solidarity concept and model. The findings give conditional support to a simplified variant of the solidarity model. A general finding is a four factor solution. Affection comes out first and includes consensus. Conflict comes out next as a distinct factor. Third is a joint factor for structural and associational solidarity, while giving and receiving support (functional solidarity) is the fourth factor. Normative solidarity is in most cases not included in any of these factors, and is apparently a distinct aspect of intergenerational relationships that may be combined with different ways of relating to each other.Family life has been, and to some extent still is, structured by material necessities and enforced duties which makes it difficult to separate the truly solidary motivations from external pressures. These are among the reasons why it is difficult to compare families across time and cultures. Solidarity may be easier to observe and separate from external pressures today than in earlier times, but the mechanisms and processes that have produced the solidary patterns may have become more complex. ; Rapporten belyser solidaritet mellom familiegenerasjoner, nærmere bestemt hvilket ansvar voksne barn har for eldre foreldre, hvordan ansvarsdelingen mellom familien og velferdsstaten er, og hvordan den etter befolkningens syn bør være. Ligger det en trussel mot familiesolidaritet i framveksten av velferdsstaten og økt individualisering? Rapporten tar også opp hvordan familien og velferdsstaten påvirker hverandre, og hva vi i mer teoretisk forstand skal forstå med familiesolidaritet. Dataene ble samlet inn gjennom det europeisk komparative prosjektet OASIS, Old age and autonomy - the role of services systems and intergenerational family solidarity. Fem land med ulik familiekultur og velferdspolitikk deltok i studien, Norge, England, Tyskland, Spania og Israel. Dette gir muligheter for å studere forholdet mellom familie, velferdsstat og aldring under ulike betingelser. Et tilfeldig utvalg av storbybefolkningen i alderen 25 år og over ble intervjuet i hvert land, ca. 1 200 i hvert land, til sammen ca. 6 000.
Quelle est la nature des obligations entre enfants adultes et parents âgés dans l'Europe contemporaine? Qu'est-ce qui est perçu comme un bon dosage des responsabilités entre la famille et l'État-providence et par qui les individus préféreraient-ils être aidés s'ils devaient en avoir besoin durablement? Ces questions sont examinées dans une enquête auprès d'échantillons représentatifs de citadins âgés d'au moins 25ans, dans cinq pays : Angleterre, Allemagne, Espagne, Israël et Norvège. Il semble que des normes d'obligation filiale prédominent dans ces cinq pays, mais à des degrés divers. Ces écarts sont encore plus marqués dans les réponses portant sur l'expression concrète de ces normes, et vont ici dans le même sens que les opportunités et politiques nationales. Les obligations filiales ne supposent pas forcément que la famille soit considérée comme l'aidant naturel. En fait, la préférence pour le dispositif d'aide est généralement supérieure au volume des services effectivement fournis, d'où la demande, non satisfaite, d'une plus grande intervention de l'État. En outre, les différences de normes et d'opinions paraissent obéir à des logiques quelque peu différentes, ce qui laisse à penser que les conclusions pour un pays donné ne peuvent guère être généralisées à ceux qui n'ont pas les mêmes traditions familiales ou le même régime d'Étatprovidence.
A key issue in policy debates on active ageing is how to increase older people's participation in both paid and unpaid work. This combined goal raises the question of whether the different activities compete for seniors' time and energy or whether it is possible to achieve both, since such activities may instead complement one another. To address this issue, we examine associations between paid work, informal help provision and formal volunteering among 62- to 75-year-olds by using longitudinal data from the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation Study (2007, 2017). Our analyses show that both work exit and part-time work are associated with a higher probability of doing unpaid work in senior years compared with full-time work. However, previous engagement in unpaid activities matters considerably, regardless of paid work status. Individuals involved in informal help or formal voluntary work in 2007 were far more likely to do unpaid work 10 years later than those who were not involved. Since seniors who are already engaged in unpaid activities before leaving the labour market are likely to continue to provide informal help and volunteer, we argue that initiatives to stimulate combinations of paid and unpaid work in late careers may be advantageous. ; The NorLAG survey data collections have been financed by the Research Council of Norway and four Norwegian government ministries, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian State Housing Bank, Statistics Norway and NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University. ; publishedVersion
Abstract: Between generations: Attitudes towards family responsibilities in the East and the West of Europe The article addresses the strength and character of family responsibility norms in Eastern and Western Europe. The strength is measured by the level of support for filial and parental responsibilities (i.e., adult children's obligations towards older parents and vice-versa) and the character is indicated by the priority given to the older or the younger generation. For the analyses, we employ data from thirteen Eastern and Western European countries participating in the Generations and Gender Survey. In general, family norms are stronger in the East than in the West, but it is difficult to establish where to draw a dividing line. The contrast between the two extremes, Norway and Sweden in the north-west and Georgia in the south-east, is striking. The remaining countries line up quite close along the geographical diagonal (from Scandinavia to Georgia). The character of the norms is less clearly distributed – whereas almost all countries in Eastern Europe give priority to the older generation, the picture in the West is more mixed. The results partly confirm earlier conclusions about east-west differences in family responsibility norms, but adding more countries to the analyses has revealed a more complex and ambiguous picture than presented in previous studies.
The Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation Study (NorLAG) was set up to gain new and updated knowledge on ageing and age-related changes in Norway. The nationwide, population-based study includes information on core life domains for 11 028 men and women born between 1922 and 1966. NorLAG combines longitudinal survey data from three waves (2002, 2007 and 2017) with secondary annual data from the public registers that provide time series on financial information, civil status and educational attainment for up to 50 years (1967 to 2017). NorLAG1 comprises 5555 respondents aged 40 years and older at the time of interview, the expanded NorLAG2 sample counts 9238 respondents (including 68% of the NorLAG1 participants) and NorLAG3 includes a total of 6099 respondents (aged 50–95). Topics covered include health and care, wellbeing and mastery, work and retirement, and family and intergenerational relationships. Information on context, timing of events and close family enables the construction of interdependent trajectories and pathways for men and women from mid-life to old age. Access to the NorLAG data is facilitated through the national research infrastructure ACCESS Life Course. Data are available via the online portal at [https://norlag.nsd.no], hosted by Norwegian Social Research at Oslo Metropolitan University and the Norwegian Centre for Research data. ; The NorLAG survey data collections have been financed by the Research Council of Norway, four Norwegian Government Ministries, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian State Housing Bank, Statistics Norway and NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University. ; publishedVersion
