von Saenger Isabelle, Dahlberg Lena, Augustsson Erika, Fritzell Johan, Lennartsson Carin
Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
School of Health and Welfare, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden.
Eur J Ageing. 2023 Apr 3;20(1):8. doi: 10.1007/s10433-023-00755-0.
Intergenerational family care provided to older parents by adult children is growing and differs based on gender and socioeconomic status. Few studies consider these elements in relation to both the parent and their adult child, and little is known about the number of care tasks received even though those providing intensive levels of care are at risk of experiencing adverse consequences in their lives. This study uses data from the nationally representative 2011 Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD) and includes child-specific information from parents aged 76 years and above. Analyses used ordinal logistic regression and are presented as average marginal effects and predictive margins. Results show that parents in need of care report that one-third of all adult children in the sample provide care to three out of five of them. The care is most often non-intensive, yet nearly one in ten of all children provide more intensive care of two or more tasks. When adjusting for dyad characteristics as well as geographic proximity, results show adult-child gender differences where parents receive more care from manual-working-class daughters than manual-working-class sons. Overall, manual-working-class daughters are most commonly reported as carers among adult children, and they are particularly overrepresented in providing intensive care. We conclude that gender and socioeconomic inequalities exist among care receivers' adult children, even in a strong welfare state such as Sweden. Knowledge about levels and patterns of intergenerational care have important implications for how to reduce unequal caregiving.
成年子女为老年父母提供的代际家庭照料正在增加，且因性别和社会经济地位而异。很少有研究同时考虑这些因素与父母及其成年子女的关系，对于所接受的照料任务数量也知之甚少，尽管那些提供高强度照料的人在生活中面临着出现不良后果的风险。本研究使用了具有全国代表性的2011年瑞典最年长者生活状况面板研究（SWEOLD）的数据，并纳入了76岁及以上父母的特定子女信息。分析采用有序逻辑回归，并以平均边际效应和预测边际呈现。结果显示，需要照料的父母报告称，样本中三分之一的成年子女为他们中的五分之三提供照料。这种照料大多是非高强度的，但所有子女中近十分之一提供两项或更多任务的高强度照料。在调整了二元特征以及地理距离后，结果显示成年子女存在性别差异，父母从体力劳动者阶层的女儿那里得到的照料比从体力劳动者阶层的儿子那里更多。总体而言，体力劳动者阶层的女儿在成年子女中最常被报告为照料者，并且她们在提供高强度照料方面的比例尤其过高。我们得出结论，即使在瑞典这样强大的福利国家，照料接受者的成年子女之间也存在性别和社会经济不平等。关于代际照料的水平和模式的知识对于如何减少不平等的照料具有重要意义。
