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The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences logoLink to The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
. 2025 Jul 16;80(9):gbaf133. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaf133

Social exchange in intergenerational relationships over the family life course: reciprocity dynamics in support to older mothers

Merril Silverstein 1,2,✉, Martin Lakomý 3, Seonhwa Lee 4, Bo Jian 5, Wencheng Zhang 6, Daphna Gans
PMCID: PMC12413899  PMID: 40665526

Abstract

Objectives

Parent–child relationships are characterized by exchanges of support across the family life course. This investigation examined whether earlier financial and service support provided by parents incentivized adult children to provide support to older mothers. Direct, indirect, anticipatory, and contingent reciprocity are employed to test four types of intergenerational exchange.

Methods

Data derived from 470 baby-boom children and their parents participating in the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG). Parental provisions (financial and childcare support, bequest intentions, and assistance provided to grandparents) served as lagged predictors of instrumental and socioemotional support provided to older mothers in five waves between 1997 and 2021/2022. Multilevel models were estimated for 1,324 child–mother observations and tested the direct effects of parental provisions and their interaction with mothers’ vulnerability.

Results

Financial support received by children predicted greater frequency of both types of support to mothers, demonstrating direct reciprocity. Adult children provided more socioemotional support to mothers who assisted their own parents, supporting indirect reciprocity. Financial support produced higher marginal returns of instrumental support to mothers with greater vulnerability, consistent with contingent reciprocity. Little evidence was found for anticipatory reciprocity inherent in a bequest motive.

Discussion

Results were consistent with reciprocity as an underlying mechanism in intergenerational exchanges and revealed long-term consequences of parents’ resource distribution to children. Reciprocity as insurance against unmet needs was mostly limited to financial assistance, a key resource helping children manage the economic challenges of adulthood. We suggest future research continue to refine the theory and empirical identification of motivations behind intergenerational exchanges.

Keywords: aging parents, adult children, care, longitudinal, life course

Parent–child relationships in adulthood have long been characterized by bidirectional support exchanges across the family life course (Wiemers & Park, 2021). Downward provisions of money and instrumental support from parents assist young-adult children with education, housing costs, and childcare needs, and upward provisions of care assist older parents in managing age-related vulnerabilities (Albertini et al., 2007; Lin & Wu, 2020; Silverstein et al., 2002). This two-way flow of intergenerational assistance is often interpreted as a social exchange with the expectation of a commensurate return-to-investment—or reciprocity—guiding both the motivations of providers and the expectations of receivers (Ostner, 2004). However, unlike purely transactional market relationships, intergenerational exchanges can unfold over many decades, reinforced more by normative than punitive principles. Research documenting long-term intergenerational exchange dynamics ideally requires long-term data with sufficient information about children’s early receipts from parents and their later provisions to them.

The purpose of this investigation is to examine whether parents’ provision of monetary and grandchild-care assistance and their modeling of supportive behavior to children incentivize those children to provide instrumental and socioemotional support to older mothers decades later. Specifically, we use longitudinal data from adult children to identify four mechanisms of intergenerational reciprocity leading to support from children: direct exchange (mutual and proportionate), indirect exchange (generalized asymmetric), anticipatory exchange (bequest motive), and contingent exchange (dependent on parental vulnerability).

Reciprocity in intergenerational exchanges

That valued resources of time, money, and affection flow in both directions across intergenerational boundaries is as close to a universal finding as exists in family studies (Antonucci & Jackson, 1990; Kohli & Künemund, 2003; Leopold & Raab, 2013). Reciprocity as a sociological phenomenon can be traced to the seminal work of Gouldner (1960), who identified reciprocation as guided by a moral code—contrasted with contractual arrangements—to repay a social debt. Exchange dynamics in kinship groups has a long history dating to Homan’s (1961) sociological framework and its implied cost-to-reward calculations between dyadic partners, as well as social psychological, anthropological, and economic approaches that emphasize how balanced exchanges build intragroup trust and solidarity (Molm, 2010), strengthen kinship cohesion (Ekeh, 1974; Lévi-Strauss, 1969), and maintain familial harmony (McGarry, 1997).

Reciprocity serves to maintain stability in family systems by inducing feelings of fairness (Kolm, 2006) and gratitude for earlier parental contributions (Akiyama et al., 1997).

Applications of reciprocity to caregiving dynamics offer insights into socially expected forms of providing and receiving support across generations (Cook & Rice, 2006) and their connection across progressive life-stages (Silverstein et al., 2002). However, intergenerational exchanges rest on principles that transcend transactional logic, as suggested by Wong et al. (2020), who argue that such exchanges are reinforced by normative obligations that may span decades in the lives of family members.

Although reciprocity is widely used as an explanation for two-way flows of assistance, alternative interpretations include the possibility of two-sided altruism (Kimball, 1987), where generations provide to each other based on care for each other’s welfare, but not necessarily based on having received prior assistance. However, altruism and reciprocity need not be in contradiction as motivators of support if a history of exchange fosters benevolence in serving older parents in need (Ikkink et al., 1999).

Most studies of intergenerational reciprocity in developed Western nations document money-for-time as the predominant mode of exchange, where parents provide economic support to children in exchange for instrumental support and care (Henretta et al., 1997; Lennartsson et al., 2010; Lin & Wu, 2020; Wiemers & Park, 2021). Findings of a proportionate or dose–response relationship between giving and receiving ­suggest that those exchanges involve motivations tied to reciprocity—parents giving to children with the expectation of return and children giving to parents in repayment for having received economic resources from them (Becker, 1991).

The temporal dimension of intergenerational transfers has been considered in assessing reciprocity and its dependence on the life stage of parents and children. Research on the distinction between long-term and short-term reciprocity in intergenerational relationships finds that reciprocal patterns of transfers are found with both temporal metrics (Leopold & Raab, 2013). However, the immediate mutuality of short-term exchange produces challenges to determining reciprocity since transfers in one direction do not precede transfers in the reverse direction. We argue that reciprocity in intergenerational transfers is better established prospectively with relatively lengthy time lags between measurements of investment and return. Taking this approach allows a test of whether parental investments of money and childcare labor in young adult children—when their need for such support is most acute—serve as early determinants of children’s later provision of care to older parents when their physical needs are emergent. Thus, one might expect higher investing parents to receive more assistance from children under adverse conditions of poor health compared to parents who made lesser investments in their children. That is, finding a stronger quid-pro-quo relationship between generations when needs of parents are most acute, provides a robust rebuttal to unconditional altruism since elevated needs would be less well met by children to whom earlier parental support was absent.

Forms of reciprocity

Given the long temporal arc inherent in most intergenerational relationships, the linked lives principle of the life course perspective provides a useful vantage point from which to understand the mutual interlocking trajectories of family members in close relationships spanning many decades (Elder et al., 2003). Importantly, the life course perspective clarifies how early interactions between parents and children (aside from siblings, the longest-lasting family relationship) shape opportunities and constraints for interactions at the last stage of life. Intergenerational exchanges, when conceptualized as guided by norms of reciprocity, highlight how purposeful and mutual interdependence in these linked lives evolve and emphasize the intertwined nature of these relationships across the lifespan (Lin & Wu, 2020; Silverstein et al., 2002).

We take a broad approach to examining intergenerational reciprocity over the long term by considering various operational forms of reciprocity that are reflected in our empirical models. These are labeled as direct, indirect, anticipatory, and contingent reciprocity.

Direct reciprocity is the simplest form of social exchange, represented as a dyadic quid pro quo in which assistance received from parents is associated with assistance provided to them. The literature on intergenerational exchange has documented active two-way flows of resources that connote strong interdependence across generations (for a review, see Wiemers & Park, 2021). In its most stringent form, this type of reciprocity conforms to a dose–response relationship in which receiving and providing intensities are proportional to each other, since exchange currencies do not necessarily have equivalent units of measurement (e.g., money for time exchanges). A useful metaphor to describe reciprocity dynamics is the support bank (Antonucci & Jackson, 1990) into which parents’ contributions to their children build equity (goodwill) that can be later withdrawn in the form of support and care.

Indirect reciprocity has roots in network and systems theories that consider individuals beyond donor–recipient actors as the basis for social cohesion in small groups. Theoretical and empirical work on family networks widened the field of reciprocity to include conditions where the providers and receivers may not be in a mutual relationship (Nowak & Sigmund, 2005). In the basic iteration of this scheme, the transfer of resources from donor A to recipient B will obligate a transfer from donor C to recipient A, where A occupies both donor and recipient statuses. In multigenerational families, adult children care for their parents after observing and then modeling their parents’ care behavior toward grandparents. Thus, the expectation to care for parents is part of a sequential chain of upward giving with each successive generation serving as an example to their offspring (Cox, 1987; Szinovacz, 1997). Enforcement of indirect reciprocity is guided informally by social learning of expected family behaviors (Bandura et al., 1966) and avoiding a harmed reputation from shirking filial responsibilities (Fryling et al., 2011; Jellal & Wolff, 2002). Emulating parental behaviors may be motivated by a sense of duty communicated by caregiving parents and observing the emotional rewards that parents derive from caregiving (Gans et al., 2009).

Although indirect reciprocity has provided a fertile explanation of intergenerational transfers (Cox & Stark, 1994), some ambiguity in empirical tests has been discussed in terms of mixed motivations of the middle generation in the dynastic chain; the upward provision of assistance to parents by the middle generation may model their parents’ earlier behavior and/or model expected behavior from their own children. Controlling for childlessness in the middle generation has served as an empirical approach to account for whether the latter motivation is even possible (Wolff, 2001).

Anticipatory reciprocity is illustrated by the care provided by adult children who are motivated by the expectation of later economic support from parents, the most common being the expectation of a bequest. The concept of the strategic bequest motive views children’s support to parents as intending to secure or avoid losing future financial returns from an inheritance (Bernheim et al., 1985; Cox, 1987; Henretta et al., 1997). A coercive element is implicit in this motivation as parents use their resources to leverage desired behaviors in their children, who may fear being dropped as a beneficiary if they do not conform to parental expectations. The bequest motive has been well studied with evidence generally supporting its basic proposition that children’s perceptions about future bequests are associated with their provision of care to parents (Cox, 1987; Henretta et al., 1997; Miller & McNamee, 1998). Implicit in this association is that children weigh the emotional and financial costs of care against the potential benefits of securing an inheritance. A recent study of the bequest motive using U.S. national data found that parents tended to have greater contact with children and were more likely to expect help from children who were included in their will compared to those not included (Francesconi et al., 2023).

Contingent reciprocity is based on a model of exchange in which exigent need activates the return of resources to the original investor but otherwise remains latent across a large portion of adult life (Davey & Eggebeen, 1998). In this model, reciprocity is an event-dependent process in which social equity serves as “insurance” against future unmet needs (Becker, 1991). Particularly in societies characterized by greater individualism and stronger preferences for generational autonomy, a return on investment in children may principally be manifest when old age vulnerabilities result in functional impairments that require personal assistance.

The concept of contingent reciprocity was developed by Davey and Eggebeen (1998), who wrote that “parents monitor the well-being of their children (and children monitor the well-being of their parents) and offer assistance when they perceive that there is a need” (p. 87). The implication for the current investigation is that reciprocal behavior of adult children can be triggered by parental need but may remain unresolved under conditions of parental self-sufficiency. Such dynamics have been shown in previous research (Silverstein et al., 2002). Thus, in the current investigation, we consider exigent needs as a trigger of reciprocal support and ask whether adult children in whom parents invested more in the past are more reactive to their older parents’ advancing vulnerability.

In our empirical approach, we explicitly consider several other relationship characteristics that facilitate the provision of support to older parents. Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that geographic proximity enhances family support by reducing the time and financial cost of travel (Joseph & Hallman, 1998; Schoeni et al., 2022) and easing face-to-face encounters that strengthen the quality of intergenerational communication (Schafer & Sun, 2020). Emotional closeness is another aspect of intergenerational relationships found to be a powerful predictor of support and care by virtue of the empathetic attachment it engenders (Hwang et al., 2022; Pillemer & Suitor, 2006). If children receiving parental transfers tend to live in closer proximity to parents and develop emotionally close relationships with them, adjusting for these two factors tests whether reciprocity is fulfilled by children independently of the convenience offered by proximity and the pull of emotional connection.

Other factors that are important to consider when studying support and care to older parents include the gender and socioeconomic status of children and the widowhood of mothers. Daughters tend to provide more emotional support and instrumental care than sons to older parents—particularly to older mothers (Fingerman et al., 2020; Pillemer & Suitor, 2014; Szydlik, 2016). This gender difference may have its origins in the stronger relationships forged between mothers and daughters earlier in life (Bianchi, 2006). Children’s education provides a basis for taking socioeconomic status into account, given its inverse association with providing direct support to parents (Choi et al, 2015). Finally, we note that widowhood typically produces a social deficit that elevates the need for children to provide added support and care to their mothers (Suitor et al., 2014).

Research questions

Research has established distinctions between instrumental support and socioemotional support in terms of their purpose and consequences (Morelli et al., 2015). Where instrumental support reflects practical or tangible forms of assistance, ranging from help with household chores to personal care, socioemotional support reflects expressive activities such as providing emotional comfort and advice and meaningful social integration (Pillemer & Suitor, 2014; Schultz et al., 2022). Recognizing the unique attributes of instrumental and socioemotional support, we consider both types in our research questions and analyses.

In this investigation, we examined whether young-adult children who received contemporaneous and anticipated monetary rewards from their parents provided more instrumental and socioemotional support to older parents than their counterparts. Further, we explored whether parents who themselves served as support providers effectively modelled similar behavior in their children. Finally, we considered whether children’s return to earlier parental investments was conditional on parents’ progressive vulnerability as indicated by functional health, comorbidity, and age.

Specifically, our hypotheses took the following forms: (1) Reciprocity will be manifest in a positive relationship between receipt of parental support and the intensity of instrumental and socioemotional support provided by adult children. (2) The positive relationship between support received and support provided will be stronger with greater parental vulnerability, and (3) reciprocity will be more observable for instrumental support than socioemotional support, given the elevated importance of the former late in life.

Method

Sample

We used data from the LSOG to answer our research questions. The LSOG began in 1971 as a survey of three-generation families in Southern California and continued for nine additional waves of data collection (for details on the original sampling, see Bengtson, 1975). For the present analysis, we used five waves of the survey (W6–W10), covering years 1997, 2000, 2005, 2016, and 2021/2022; mail-back surveys were used for W6–W8 and web-surveys for waves W9–W10. We limit our sample to 470 baby boomers in the third generation of the original sample who had a surviving mother in at least one of the five waves considered. These waves were chosen because they contained the most detailed measures of support and care and were fielded in years when mothers were entering old age and beginning to exhibit health vulnerabilities. Given the study’s longitudinal design and the fact that G3 children derived from a common set of G1 grandparents, the analytic sample has a three-level structure consisting of 1,324 child–mother observations derived from 470 adult children who are nested within 288 families. The sample represents 2.8 observations per adult child and 4.6 child observations per extended family.

For practical reasons related to sample size, we focus only on support and care provided to older mothers. However, we might expect that reciprocal exchanges are weaker with fathers than with mothers because fathers make more modest time and emotional investments in their younger children (Pew Research Center, 2013), consequently building less social capital in them. In contrast, mothers have greater opportunities to build mutually supportive relationships with their children across all stages of the family life course (Fingerman et al., 2020; Swartz, 2009).

Measures

Support provided to mothers

We analyzed two dependent variables, distinguishing scales measuring instrumental and socioemotional support. Each scale was indicated by responses to the following question: “Do you provide any of the following types of help and support for your mother?,” each rated on the 8-point scale from 1 = daily to 8 = not at all. The scale for instrumental support comprised the average response in the following four areas: household chores, transportation/shopping, help when she is sick, and assistance with personal care. The scale for socioemotional support comprised the average score in the following four areas: information and advice, emotional support, discussing important life decisions, and visiting/sharing leisure activities. These two scales exhibit high internal consistency at each of the five waves of measurement, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging between 0.79 and 0.87.

Vulnerability index

To assess the need for assistance over the study interval, we combine three components of vulnerability likely to trigger support and care from children, an approach analogous to frailty indexes used in the gerontological literature (Fried et al., 2001). These three components, described below, included functional impairment, the number of commonly reported diseases and health conditions, and age.

Functional impairment was based on children’s reports of their mothers’ performance abilities in five areas: walking up/down the stairs, walking more than one block, preparing meals, doing household chores, and taking care of personal hygiene. Each ability is rated by children on a scale of 1–4 with 1 = no difficulty; 2 = with difficulty; 3 = needs assistance; and 4 = unable to do at all.

The number of diseases is a measure of multimorbidity based on the sum of six health conditions experienced by mothers as reported by children: heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and serious memory problems.

Chronological age is measured in years. Age captures unobserved elements of frailty, loss of resilience, and susceptibility to adverse events such as risk of falling, which may precipitate greater attention and support from adult children.

We operationalized vulnerability by summing standardized values of the three indicators at each of the five measurement occasions. This additive scale ranged from −3.34 to 8.33 over the study interval. In robustness checks (not shown), we found that the vulnerability index correlated with each support scale more strongly than any of its individual components. Mothers’ marital status represents another factor indicating vulnerability and is included as a separate time-varying factor (0 = married; 1 = not married).

Parents’ provision of support

We considered parents’ provisions of support with data collected before or at the baseline period (1997), which served as the origin of the estimated trajectories of children’s support to mothers, thus allowing for a prospective analysis. The years of measurement chosen for these variables were determined by their earliest availability in the data and are shown in parentheses.

Financial support to children was measured as a binary variable indicating whether financial assistance was received from mothers or fathers if either was mentioned in response to the following question: “Who do you rely on for financial assistance such as a small loan to help you out in a pinch or a larger sum of money to help you with a house or care payment, or to cover medical or educational expenses” (1985/1988). The variable was coded as 1 = either parent provided financial assistance; 0 = neither parent provided financial assistance.

Childcare received from mothers was measured as a binary variable as to whether adult children indicated in a checklist that their mother or father was someone who provided childcare assistance over the last year (1991). This variable was coded as 1 = provided childcare; 0 = did not provide childcare.

Inheritance intentions were based on the question posed to mothers and fathers: “Do you have plans to leave an inheritance to your “study” child (1997). The variable coded as 1 = either parent answered “yes,” 0 = both parents answered “no.” Given the norm in American families to include all children equally in estate planning (Wilhelm, 1996), we take this question about a single randomly selected “study” child to represent a general intention to leave a bequest and assign the response to each child in the family.

Parents’ modeling of support was measured by reports by mothers as to how much they provided “help with chores or errands” to their own mothers and fathers (1971). Using a scale ranging between 1 and 8 for each parent (1 = almost never; 8 = almost every day), we averaged the two responses and assigned the result to each adult child of the reporting mother.

Control variables

Control variables for children’s characteristics are coded as follows: gender (0 = male; 1 = female), education (0 = no college; 1 = college or higher), and age (in years). Since there is little variation in the race and ethnic background of the sample, these variables were omitted from the model (they were not significant, and their inclusion did they alter the study’s findings). We also controlled for parental status of children (0 = childless; 1 = has at least one child) to account for the childless not having an incentive to provide care as a modeling strategy (see Wolff, 2001). Geographic proximity and emotional closeness to mothers were included as continuous time-varying variables with proximity ranging from 1 to 7 (1 = more than 500 miles to 7 = live together), and emotional closeness ranging from 1 to 6 (1 = not at all close to 6 = extremely close)

Sample characteristics

Table 1 shows characteristics of the sample. Adult children were mostly daughters (61%), tended to have children (82%), and averaged 45 years of age at the baseline period. Support received by children from parents is also shown in Table 1. Almost half (49%) reported receiving financial support from at least one parent, and 21% reported receiving childcare support from their mothers. More than three-quarters of children (78%) had a parent who expected to leave a bequest to children, and 69% had mothers who reported providing care to either of their own parents.

Table 1.

Time invariant characteristics of G3 children who participated in baseline W6 survey in 1997 (N = 369).

Variable Range M (SD)
Financial support from parents (1985/1988) 0–1 0.49 (0.50)
Childcare from mother (1991) 0–1 0.21 (0.40)
Bequest intention of parents (1997) 0–1 0.79 (0.40)
Mother provides support to parents (1971) 1–8 2.62 (1.63)
Child is daughter 0–1 0.61 (0.49)
Child’s age (1997) 40–56 44.92 (2.88)
Child has at least some college (1997) 0–1 0.81 (0.39)
Child is parent (1997) 0–1 0.82 (0.39)
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Note. Respondents absent from W6 but included in later waves or with missing data later imputed are not included in the table but represented in the analysis.

Time-varying characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 2. Mean values for the dependent variables over time show that instrumental support increased from 1.6 to 2.4, and socioemotional support increased from 3.3 in 1997 to 4.2 during the same period (both ranging from 1 to 8). Socioemotional support started at a higher value than instrumental support, but instrumental support increased at a faster rate, likely being more sensitive to the declining capacity of mothers over time. The vulnerability scale steadily increased over time, the result of declines in functional ability, an increased number of diseases, and the programmatic advance in chronological age from 69 years at baseline. The percentage of unmarried mothers rose from 30% to 85%, almost completely due to widowhood.

Table 2.

Time-varying characteristics of the G3 sample.

Variable Range W6 W7 W8 W9 W10
(n = 369) (n = 372) (n = 311) (n = 177) (n = 95)
M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
Child provides instrumental support 1–8 1.55 (0.90) 1.68 (1.13) 1.94 (1.23) 2.31 (1.53) 2.44 (1.66)
Child provides socioemotional support 1–8 3.29 (1.52) 3.36 (1.57) 3.72 (1.55) 3.92 (1.72) 4.23 (1.84)
Vulnerability index for mother −3.34 to 8.34 −1.41 (1.31) −0.66 (1.66) 0.22 (1.83) 2.32 (2.12) 3.40 (1.89)
Mother’s functional impairment 0–15 1.00 (1.88) 1.92 (3.15) 2.59 (3.74) 5.67 (4.90) 7.73 (5.04)
Mother’s number of diseases 0–6 0.65 (0.84) 0.87 (0.99) 0.98 (1.03) 1.14 (1.12) 1.09 (1.03)
Mother’s age 60–100 68.71 (4.52) 71.27 (4.68) 76.40 (4.92) 86.29 (4.71) 91.48 (4.03)
Mother is unmarried 0–1 0.30 (0.46) 0.35 (0.48) 0.40 (0.49) 0.69 (0.46) 0.85 (0.36)
Child’s proximity to mother 1–7 3.33 (1.99) 3.44 (1.98) 3.49 (2.08) 3.49 (2.05) 3.83 (2.04)
Child’s emotional closeness to mother 1–6 4.32 (1.31) 4.22 (1.29) 4.39 (1.24) 4.29 (1.39) 4.34 (1.51)
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Analytical strategy

The aim of the analysis is to predict instrumental and socioemotional support provided to older mothers based on earlier parental investments and mothers’ vulnerability. We employed a multilevel approach with three levels (repeated measures embedded within children and children embedded within families). Vulnerability is treated as a random effect, the coefficients for which vary across children. Intercepts are evaluated at the mean level of vulnerability, which is zero for this standardized variable. We also account for clustering of adult children within the same families. Full information maximum likelihood estimation maximizes the use of available data. Because the vulnerability index includes age (a temporal metric), functional impairment, and number of diseases (period-specific characteristics), the model combines elements of latent growth curve models and repeated measures analyses. Thus, the index comprises a hybrid within-subject variable that synthesizes age-related change with period variation in health.

Stata 18.0 (StataCorp, 2023) was used to produce model estimates. In order to determine the suitability of a three-level model that incorporates between-family variation, we compared its log-likelihood goodness-of-fit statistic to that of the two-level model in which family clustering is ignored. The resulting difference (2*loglikelihood difference) was significant for models predicting instrumental support (LLdiff = 8.38, df = 1, p < 01) and socioemotional support LLdiff = 7.24, df = 1, p < .01), showing that the three-level model fits the data better than the two-level model, suggesting the presence of shared family tendencies in both types of support.

Our modeling strategy proceeded in four steps. First, we estimated the model with random intercepts and linear slopes to establish trajectories of instrumental and socioemotional support over mothers’ vulnerability across five waves of measurement (1997, 2000, 2005, 2016, and 2021/2022). We relied on a linear model after finding no significant quadratic terms for the vulnerability index. Second, we added four parental support variables as predictors, along with control variables. We then added interaction terms between each of the parental support variables and vulnerability to examine whether the response to mothers’ vulnerability was triggered by earlier parental investments. Finally, we added time-varying measures of geographic proximity to mothers and emotional closeness with mothers to identify whether early investments enabled support by enhancing accessibility and forging a stronger emotional attachment to mothers.

The LSOG sample contains missing data typical for panel studies, with about 34% of observations having at least one missing value in the predictor or outcome variables. Among substantive variables with the highest proportions of missingness are childcare (32.3%), upward care to grandparents (29.6%), and inheritance plans (11.8%). We imputed missing values via chained equations specification in Stata 18.0 (StataCorp, 2023). Robustness checks (not shown) demonstrated no meaningful differences in model fit and findings across different methods for addressing missing data, including listwise deletion.

We note that the sample diminishes over time, mostly due to the death of G2 mothers, but also due to the nonresponse of adult children. Sample selection bias is mitigated by the use of all available data for maximum likelihood estimation and imputation of missing data under the missing at random assumption. Previous research with this sample has detected little evidence of bias due to selective attrition in models with time-varying outcomes and predictors (Feng et al., 2006; Silverstein et al., 2002).

Results

Trajectories of instrumental support provided to mothers

In Model 1, we examined trajectories of instrumental support provided to mothers across levels of vulnerability (see Table 3). Estimated intercepts and slopes in Model 1 reveal that instrumental support averaged 1.8 at the mean level of vulnerability and grew by .22 for each standard unit increase in vulnerability.

Table 3.

Multilevel models for instrumental support to mothers predicted by parental support and covariates.

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Intercept 1.838*** 1.420*** 1.357*** 0.348
Vulnerability index for mother 0.219*** 0.193*** 0.113* 0.097*
Financial support from parents 0.157* 0.251** 0.163*
Childcare from mother 0.177* 0.179* 0.010
Bequest intention of parents 0.148+ 0.157+ 0.051
Mother provides support to parents −0.017 −0.011 −0.009
Child is daughter 0.135+ 0.134+ 0.141*
Child’s age 0.003 0.003 −0.001
Child has at least some college −0.039 −0.032 0.042
Child is parent −0.106 −0.107 −0.122
Mother is unmarried 0.296*** 0.291*** 0.241***
Financial support from parents × Vulnerability index for mother 0.089* 0.093**
Childcare from mother × Vulnerability index for mother −0.001 0.007
Bequest intention × Vulnerability index for mother 0.016 0.023
Mother provides support to parents × Vulnerability index for mother 0.010 0.016
Proximity to mother 0.179***
Emotional closeness to mother 0.169***
Random effect variances
Level-3 family intercept 0.133*** 0.109*** 0.108*** 0.074***
Level-2 vulnerability slope 0.060*** 0.062*** 0.061*** 0.048***
Level-2 child intercept 0.345*** 0.322*** 0.325*** 0.183***
Level-1 residual 0.602*** 0.593*** 0.592*** 0.561***
Loglikelihood −1889.55 −1888.43 −1895.67 −1810.06
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Note. Longitudinal Study of Generations waves 6–10, child observations = 1,324; children = 470; families = 288.

+

p < .1.

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

In the next model, we added the main effects of explanatory and control variables. Of the four parental investments tested, all but upward care provided by mothers had a positive effect on the average frequency of providing instrumental support to mothers. Specifically, provision of instrumental support was more frequent among children who received financial support from parents, and who received childcare from mothers, and marginally (p < .10) for children whose parents planned to leave a bequest. In addition, instrumental support was provided more frequently by adult children who were not married compared to those who were married and (marginally) by daughters compared to sons (p = .06).

To Model 3, we added interactions between parental provisions of support and mothers’ vulnerability to test the conditional reciprocity hypothesis; only the interaction with receiving financial support from parents was statistically significant. That is, the support response by children to the vulnerability of their mothers was stronger for children who received earlier financial support from parents compared to those who did not receive such support.

Finally, in Model 4, we added geographic proximity and emotional closeness to mothers as potential mediators of the above relationships. Both variables were statistically significant, with instrumental support positively associated with proximity and emotional closeness. With the addition of these two variables, the main effects of childcare and inheritance plans (evaluated at the mean level of vulnerability) were reduced to being nonsignificant, implying that children who received childcare assistance and anticipated a bequest provided more instrumental support because they tended to live and feel closer to their mothers in later life. The interaction term between receiving financial support and the mother’s vulnerability remained statistically significant.

To illustrate the pattern implied by this interaction, we plotted predicted margins for this interaction from coefficients in Model 4. Figure 1 reveals a stronger positive relationship between vulnerability and instrumental support for children who received financial support from parents compared to those who did not receive financial support. Confidence intervals reveal significant differences between the lines at the mean of vulnerability and at one standard deviation above the mean, confirming that predictions increasingly deviate in the predicted direction. Although both slopes are positive, the stronger relationship among financially supported children demonstrates the conditionality of the strength with which children respond to the elevated needs of their older mothers.

Figure 1.

Predicted instrumental support at three levels of vulnerability with confidence intervals for children who received financial support from parents and children who did not receive financial support from parents.

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Predicted marginal values (with confidence intervals) of instrumental support provided by children by vulnerability of mothers and financial support received from parents. Note. Longitudinal Study of Generations waves 6–10; child observations = 1,324; children = 470; mothers = 288.

Trajectories of socioemotional support provided to mothers

In Table 4, we present models predicting socioemotional support to mothers based on the same predictors in the previous analysis. Model 1 shows that the average level of socioemotional support was generally higher than the level of instrumental support based on the intercept of 3.5 and grew at a rate of 2.0 with each standard unit increase of vulnerability, a slower rate of increase than that found for instrumental support.

Table 4.

Multilevel models for socioemotional support to mothers predicted by parental support and covariates.

Variable Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8
Intercept 3.537*** 2.239*** 2.222*** −0.220
Vulnerability index for mother 0.200*** 0.155*** 0.173** 0.140**
Financial support from parents 0.438*** 0.434*** 0.261**
Childcare from mother 0.320** 0.317** 0.081
Bequest intention of parents 0.206 0.215 0.020
Mother provides support to parents 0.078* 0.073* 0.086**
Child is daughter 0.393** 0.391** 0.360***
Child’s age 0.001 0.002 −0.005
Child has at least some college 0.120 0.113 0.233*
Child is parent 0.046 0.049 0.005
Mother is unmarried 0.522*** 0.527*** 0.501***
Financial support from parents × Vulnerability index for mother −0.003 0.007
Childcare from mother × Vulnerability index for mother −0.003 0.004
Bequest intention × Vulnerability index for mother 0.043 0.046
Mother provides support to parents × Vulnerability index for mother −0.020 −0.006
Proximity to mother 0.240***
Emotional closeness to mother 0.514***
Random effect variances
Level-3 family intercept 0.360*** 0.343*** 0.336*** 0.180***
Level-2 child vulnerability slope 0.067*** 0.072*** 0.072*** 0.040***
Level-2 child intercept 1.077*** 0.906*** 0.915*** 0.417***
Level-1 residual 0.798*** 0.774*** 0.775*** 0.725***
Loglikelihood −2246.88 −2223.60 −2231.92 −2052.35
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Note. Longitudinal Study of Generations waves 6–10; child observations = 1,324; children = 470; mothers = 288.

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

In Model 2, each type of parent-provided support except bequest intentions predicted the level of socioemotional support provided to mothers. Specifically, financial support, childcare, and support provided to grandparents elicited socioemotional support to mothers. In addition, children provided more socioemotional support to unmarried mothers than to married mothers, and daughters provided more such support than did sons.

In Model 3, none of the interactions between parental support variables and mothers’ vulnerability were significant, thus providing no evidence of need-contingent reciprocity for this outcome.

The addition of geographic proximity and emotional closeness to mothers in Model 4 shows that both were significant predictors. Although the main effects of parental support were weakened in size with this addition, we still see that children provided more socioemotional support to mothers who had earlier provided them financial support and who had a history of providing upward support to their own parents. However, the positive association between having received childcare assistance and providing socioemotional support ceased to be significant with proximity and emotional closeness controlled.

Discussion

This investigation examined patterns of long-term social exchange between parents and their adult children, focusing on reciprocity in its various forms as a driver of instrumental and socioemotional support provided to older mothers. The results largely support a two-way exchange model that is consistent with reciprocity as an underlying mechanism. Direct reciprocity was demonstrated in findings that financial support from parents was a robust predictor of both types of support provided by children, and in the case of instrumental support, the effect size was conditioned on older mothers’ increasing vulnerability. These results are informative about the importance of distributing financial resources to children as a prompt for old age support. By contrast, receipt of childcare from mothers was associated with provision of instrumental and socioemotional support only in the absence of controls for geographic proximity and emotional closeness. This finding is not surprising given that childcare assistance requires proximity and usually involves bonding with the cared-for grandchildren and their families.

Evidence for indirect reciprocity was found for socioemotional support but not instrumental support. Adult children provided more frequent socioemotional support to mothers who provided more assistance to their own parents. This finding may seem at odds with expectations from demonstration theory, that upward support of a practical or tangible nature would be emulated by children in similar types of support. That socioemotional support was associated with mothers demonstrating instrumental support for grandparents may reflect a strong culture of affective familism that is communicated by serving as an example of commitment to an older generation.

Slight evidence was found for anticipated reciprocity as represented by a bequest motive, since we found a marginally significant effect of bequest intentions for instrumental support. We speculate that bequests may largely be fixed, and the threat of losing an inheritance is slim, short of overtly transgressive behaviors. In addition, children’s knowledge of their parents’ bequest intentions may be imperfect, particularly regarding their amount, which we were not able to examine. Nevertheless, this marginal finding was explained by geographic proximity and emotional closeness, suggesting that children providing instrumental support tend to maintain warmer and more local relationships with parents who expressed an intention to leave a bequest.

We also tested for contingent reciprocity, predicting that children would be more responsive to their mothers’ support needs if they received early parental investments. We found support for the conditionality of reciprocity in children’s provision of instrumental support to mothers. Mothers’ vulnerability more strongly predicted instrumental support from children who had earlier received financial assistance from parents compared to those who did not receive financial assistance. This finding suggests that the returns on parental investments are best realized when triggered by emergent frailty, supporting an insurance model of reciprocity. It is worth noting that even children who did not receive financial support from their parents responded positively to their mothers’ vulnerability, albeit with a weaker response than those who received financial support.

We expected that parental support would more strongly predict instrumental support than socioemotional support since the former type of support requires more sacrifice in time and effort on the part of children than the latter. This expectation was not supported by most of our results. Socioemotional support was sensitive to early financial and upward transfers made by parents, the effects of which were robust to controls for geographic proximity and emotional closeness. However, the only significant interaction was that between mothers’ vulnerability and receiving financial support in predicting instrumental support provided by children. This finding is in line with the expectation that vulnerability would require personal care and tangible help, elements of assistance which were part of the instrumental support scale.

Although the pattern of our results is consistent with reciprocity as an explanatory mechanism, we note that we have no access to information about subjective states of providers and receivers. Thus, it is not possible to know whether providers are giving with the expectation of a return or whether receivers feel the obligation to make a return. Alternative explanations are compatible with our results, such as two-sided altruism, where each generation altruistically provides to the other, or hybrid altruism-reciprocity, where one generation altruistically provides to the other and the receiving generation feels obligated to reciprocate.

Several limitations of our analysis merit discussion. First, families participating in the LSOG were initially recruited in Southern California. Although sample members who left the region were included in follow-up surveys, half the sample of G3 children still resided in California by the last wave of measurement. Second, due to the recruitment source of the G1 generation, from which G2s and G3s derived, the original sample mainly consisted of White middle-class families. Consequently, the sample underrepresented families in ethnic and cultural groups, which may exchange resources based more on mutuality than reciprocity. Further, lower income families may have incentives and needs for intergenerational transfers that differ from those of families in our sample with greater economic resources. With these caveats in mind, caution is advised in extrapolating our findings to other groups in the population. Finally, we note that, though our sample of adult children was nested within common families, there was not sufficient variation within families to differentiate siblings. We recognize the value of examining reciprocity dynamics within families to identify how parents make strategic investments in specific children who might yield maximum returns (Leopold & Raab, 2013).

Conclusion

Identifying reciprocity as an operative principle in intergenerational exchange is not without challenges in making valid inferences about causal effects and estimating well-specified models. Our investigation brings unique features to this branch of family research as applied to later life support; these features include simultaneous consideration of multiple forms of reciprocity, the availability of dyadic data from parents and children, and the time-lag between receiving and providing exchange. Evidence for reciprocity as a strategy for ensuring intergenerational support to older mothers was found most for financial support. Perhaps this is not surprising given the importance of downward financial transfers in helping children manage economic challenges in their adult lives and the gratitude this engenders. We hope that future research will continue to refine theory and empirical identification of motivations behind observed intergenerational exchanges. Such efforts will clarify the importance of children—increasingly in short supply in most nations—to the well-being of older adults.

Contributor Information

Merril Silverstein, Department of Sociology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, United States; Department of Human Development and Family Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, United States.

Martin Lakomý, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic.

Seonhwa Lee, Human Development, Family Studies, and Counseling, Texas Women’s University, Denton, TX, United States.

Bo Jian, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, United States.

Wencheng Zhang, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Child & Family Studies University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, United States.

Data availability

Data from W8 and earlier are publicly available at the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging. Analytic methods and materials are available to researchers for replication purposes from the first author.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 AG07977; R21 AG064512; R21 AG050429), Retirement Research Foundation (2020203), and John Templeton Foundation (61457).

Conflict of interest

None declared.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

Data from W8 and earlier are publicly available at the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging. Analytic methods and materials are available to researchers for replication purposes from the first author.

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