Intergenerational Family Relationships

Historical and Demographic Trends

Several trends over the last century have affected intergenerational relationships. The trend that has had the greatest impact is the dramatically lengthened life span; for a child born in 1900, life expectancy was 48 years; by 2005, it had increased to nearly 78 years. Perhaps even more important, for individuals who are now about 50 years of age, the life expectancy for women is 33 additional years and for men it is 29 years. Thus, family members now spend more time occupying intergenerational family roles as adult children, parents, and grandparents than did any earlier cohorts.

The second major demographic change is a decline in parent-adult child coresidence. Coresid-ence with adult children when parents entered their later years was common in earlier historical periods; however, there was a dramatic decline in this pattern across the 20th century in the United States. Nevertheless, many parents and adult children still coreside, although more recently coresi-dence typically involves the adult child living in the parents' home rather than the reverse. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006, 22 percent of householders 65 and older had an adult child living with them, whereas only 3 percent of householders ages 25 to 54 had an older family member coresiding.

The third important change involves women's increased participation in the labor force, reducing the time and energy devoted to “kinkeeping.” In fact, married women's labor force participation has increased from 30 to 60 percent since 1970 alone. Although one might expect that this demographic change would lead to women doing markedly less caregiving, in most cases, women instead expand their responsibilities to meet their older parents' need for assistance.

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