Daughters provide as much elderly parent care as they can, sons do as little as possible

This is consistent with my observations. It is not unusual to see families where the parents dote on their son, always talking about them, while ignoring the daughter who is helping them.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/asa-dpa081214.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 19-Aug-2014

Contact: Daniel Fowler
American Sociological Association
Daughters provide as much elderly parent care as they can, sons do as little as possible

SAN FRANCISCO — Parents are better off having daughters if they want to be cared for in their old age suggests a new study, which finds that women appear to provide as much elderly parent care as they can, while men contribute as little as possible.

"Whereas the amount of elderly parent care daughters provide is associated with constraints they face, such as employment or childcare, sons' caregiving is associated only with the presence or absence of other helpers, such as sisters or a parent's spouse," said study author Angelina Grigoryeva, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Princeton University.

According to the study, daughters provide an average of 12.3 hours of elderly parent care per month as compared to sons' 5.6 hours. "In other words, daughters spend twice as much time, or almost seven more hours each month, providing care to elderly parents than sons," said Grigoryeva, who will present her research at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

The study also indicates that in the division of elderly parent care among siblings in mixed-sex sibling groups, gender is the single most important factor in the amount of assistance each sibling provides.

"Sons reduce their relative caregiving efforts when they have a sister, while daughters increase theirs when they have a brother," Grigoryeva said. "This suggests that sons pass on parent caregiving responsibilities to their sisters."

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