Is Parent Care Normative? The Experiences of a Sample of Middle-Aged Women

Occupational commitments are seen as competing with responsibilities for old parents, because an increasing proportion of women is in the labor force. E. M. Brody goes so far as to argue that long-term parent-care is a normative experience. In voicing concern about the current and future adverse effects on adult children of meeting the needs of their old parents, the principal cause for alarm is increased life expectancy and declining fertility that presumably combine to make having filial obligations both more common and more difficult to meet. Respondents were interviewed in their homes to gather information about their relationships with their parents and others in their extended families in addition to themselves. As a precondition for a daughter’s currently being caught in the middle, at least one of her parents must be alive. Additional responsibilities that have been consistently identified in the literature that compete with parents for an adult daughter’s time are children, husband, and employment outside the home.