The impact of family transformations on intergenerational ties, caregiving and care receiving in Canada

Over the last decades, families in Canada have experienced profound changes, marked by the decline in fertility and a rise in conjugal instability. These changes will inevitably affect the provision of care for tomorrow’s elderly, more specifically for the large baby-boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1965, who will all have crossed the threshold of age 65 in the next fifteen years. Despite the large number of studies on aging conducted in Canada and in other Western countries, the effects of the diversification of parental and conjugal trajectories on the support and care provided to seniors remain poorly understood. This is the main objective of this dissertation, which aims to examine the effects of family transformations on intergenerational relationships and eldercare. In the first chapter, we analyse the conjugal and parental trajectories that Canadian men and women born between 1923 and 1972 experienced throughout their lives, highlighting the differences observed across cohorts and gender. We run a series of life tables, using data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey’s (GSS) on family transitions (cycle 20), conducted in 2006. Our analysis shows that men and women born during the baby boom were more likely than their predecessors to go through multiple conjugal transitions and to do so earlier in their life. They were also more likely than previous generations to remain childless. Furthermore, they were more inclined to experience family life in a stepfamily. In the second chapter, we first estimate the impact of family transformations on the maintenance of intergenerational ties, measured as the frequency of contact between parents and their adult children. We further examine whether the probability to receive care if needed and the source of care (informal or formal) received due to a long-term health problem or physical limitation are influenced by individuals’ parental and conjugal trajectories. We run multivariate logistic regressions, using data from Statistics Canada’s 2007 (cycle 21) GSS on family, social support and retirement. Our results show that the maintenance of intergenerational ties varies depending on prior family events. We observe that the reception of care also varies depending on prior family events, and that the effect of current conjugal status depends on the number of unions experienced. In the third chapter, we analyze the effects of family transformations on the provision of care. We run multivariate sequential logistic regressions, using data from the 2007 GSS. These regressions explore the odds of, first, providing care as opposed to not providing care and, second, of providing care to kin (or a parent) rather than to non-kin (or a person other than a parent) among those who did so. Our results show that some characteristics of the respondents’ family of origin, most particularly having at least one parent alive and living in geographic proximity to one’s parents, strongly increase the odds of providing care and of helping a family member. Our results suggest that individuals’ past and current family experience has little effect on the provision of care among men, but has some effect for women. We note that women who were not in a union due to separation or widowhood have smaller odds of providing care to a kin member than those still in their first union. In summary, the results of the last two chapters of this dissertation suggest that the increase of family diversity and instability, as documented in the first chapter, may undermine intergenerational ties and the provision of eldercare in the future.

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