Social Changes in Women’s Roles, Families, and Generational Ties

Abstract

There has been much speculation around the aging of the Baby Boom Generation because they were at the forefront of turbulent social changes in women’s roles, marriage, and childbearing. This article addresses the ways in which population aging is intertwined with family change, and how intergenerational relations in later life are being transformed by social and demographic changes. Increasing diversity of family types and potentially weaker family ties raise the possibility of challenges to come in the next century.

Introduction

One of the most anticipated demographic transformations in our society has been the aging of the population, and in particular, the aging of the baby boomers, the first of whom turned age 65 in 2011. One reason this cohort has been the subject of fascination is because they have lived through some of the most turbulent social changes around women’s roles, marriage, and childbearing. Because population aging has been a gradual process foreseen for many years, policies have adapted to the changing demographic situation, but families also face the implications of decades of changes in family norms and behavior.

Demographic Change and Family Structure

The aging of the population has led to many myths about the way in which intergenerational relations will change in response to the increasing older population. Some fears about population aging stem from a lack of understanding of how demographic changes that lead to population age-structure changes are intrinsically intertwined with the nature of families and the changes in families that have been seen over recent decades. The same declines in fertility and mortality that change the age and sex structure of a population also change the size and generational structure of families. In turn, these family changes affect individual demographic behavior.

Most people assume that we have an aging population because of improvements in longevity. Actually, our population gets older both because people are living longer and also because fewer children are born. It is well-documented that survival at older ages has increased dramatically over the past several decades, such that men who reach age 65 in the United States can now expect to live another eighteen years on average (to age 83) and 65-year-old women can expect to live almost to age 86. Those who survive to age 80 can expect to live even longer; men to about age 88 and women to age 90 (Kochanek et al., 2016).

These improvements in old age mortality mean that as we enter later life we are more likely to have living parents, siblings, and partners or spouses. One study found that more than 62 percent of American women in the baby boom cohort had at least one living parent when they were age 45 to 64, up from 47 percent in 1988 (Wiemers and Bianchi, 2015).

While it is true that gains in life expectancy for men and women have increased the size of the older population, another important change is that families have become smaller. Fertility can be a more powerful factor than mortality in driving population aging, and historical fertility has long-term consequences. Changes in ideas about ideal family size and the ability to decide when to have children has resulted in families with fewer children and more people living into old age without any children. Fertility declines mean there are fewer young people in the population at the same time as the number of elders is growing.

The legacy of fertility changes also can be seen in the trajectory of the baby boom cohort as it moves through the age structure. The baby boom resulted from a sharp increase of births after World War II, when soldiers returned and women who had delayed starting a family, or having more children, began to give birth (Hughes and O’Rand, 2004). This increase in births came at a time when traditional norms encouraging marriage and children were bolstered by postwar economic growth, leading to early marriage and large families. These trends lasted into the early 1960s, tapering off around 1964.

Both of these demographic trends affect the later-life families seen today. Longer life spans extended the years spent in family relationships and this, combined with the large families in which baby boomers grew up, results in today’s older population having more spouses and siblings who are still alive. As well, many baby boomers are living to see their grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow up. At the same time, due to the prevalence of smaller nuclear families in younger generations, each succeeding generation is smaller than the one preceding it.

Later childbearing and longer survival periods also increase potential for the existence of “sandwich” generations, which are burdened by dual-caregiving. The prevalence of sandwich generations varies by how caregiving is defined. In general, this has been viewed as a relatively uncommon phenomenon, because most children are independent adults by the time older parents need care, and no more than 10 percent of women are estimated to be engaged in childcare and parent care at the same time (Agree, Bissett, and Rendall, 2003). However, studies that define support more broadly have estimated higher levels of burden. Grundy and Henretta (2006) showed that about 30 percent of mid-life women in the United States and Great Britain provided support to an older parent and one or more children, and a subsequent analysis showed that about 30 percent of men and women provide some kind of simultaneous support to parents and children (Friedman et al., 2016).

The risk of middle-age cohorts experiencing this sandwiched obligation is potentially increasing due to rising levels of female education and later marriage and childbearing, both of which increase the risk of having a child at home while caring for an older relative (Agree, Bissett, and Rendall, 2003). By the beginning of this century, the most common family structure for men and women ages 50 to 69 was families with four living generations (parents, children, and grandchildren), varying from 25 percent to 40 percent (Margolis and Wright, 2016).

Historical Trends in Family Structural Change

Starting in the 1960s, revolutions in norms about gender roles, individualism, and sexuality fostered a rise in divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, and multiple-partner fertility (Cherlin, 2010). These changes have in turn led to a proliferation of family ties that are more diffuse and possibly weaker or more ambiguous. In the latter part of the twentieth century, women’s labor force participation and educational attainment rose, and it remains high to this day. Even though many women still take some time off from work for childrearing, it is more likely to be measured in months than in years.

Marriage and childbirth

Concurrently, women are marrying and beginning to form families at later ages, and childbearing is increasingly taking place outside of traditional marriage. Across cohorts, the proportion of women married by age 25 was highest among those born during the Great Depression in the early part of the twentieth century (84 percent) and dropped to about 50 percent of those born in 1956 or later. This trend has continued, with only 47.3% of women who were born between 1975 and 1979 marrying by their 25th birthday (Kreider and Ellis 2011). The US Census Bureau estimates that the median age at marriage for women has risen from a low of 20 years in the 1950’s to 27 years in 2016 (US Bureau of the Census 2016.)

Similarly, while 23 percent of older women born during the Great Depression had a first child during their teenage years, this declined to 18 percent among those born in 1956 or later (Agree and Hughes, 2012). Younger generations are even less likely in their teenage years to bear children. Teen birth rates are at historic lows: in 2015, only 2.3 percent of teenage women gave birth in the United States (Martin et al., 2017). Higher education is associated with the lowest probabilities of teenage childbirth. As of 2010, more than half of women with less than a high school education had a first birth as a teen, while among women who completed college, less than 5 percent had their first birth as a teen (Martinez, Daniels, and Chandra, 2012).

Patterns of divorce

As women were marrying and having children later, divorce also began to be easier for women to initiate and thus more common. Divorce rates began to rise in the 1960s and reached a peak around 1980, when almost half of new marriages were expected to end in divorce (Cherlin, 2010). The baby boomers were most profoundly affected by the so-called divorce “revolution” since they came of age when divorce was more acceptable, but older generations also were getting divorced at higher rates. Almost a one-quarter (24 percent) of women born during the Great Depression era divorced at least once, but they were more likely to have gotten divorced at a later age (after about age 35) when “no-fault” divorce legislation made it easier to leave unhappy marriages. About 37 percent of baby boomers, have been divorced at least once, but they were more likely to have been divorced at a younger age than earlier generations (Agree and Hughes, 2012). Earlier timing of divorce allowed the baby boomers additional years in which to remarry-- and they have. As of 2012, about 28.3 percent of baby boomer women had married more than once (Lewis and Kreider, 2015).

Effects of education and work on marriage and childbirth

In the latter part of the twentieth century, women’s educational attainment and labor-force participation rose, and they remain high to this day. Even though many women still take some time off from work for childrearing, it is more likely to be measured in months than in years.

Longer educational careers and higher labor-force participation have been associated with women’s lessening dependence on their husbands’ economic earning power. These factors comprise the first half of the gender revolution, and have had profound effects on family life, such as increases in divorce, later family formation, and lower fertility (Hofferth and Goldscheider, 2016). Interestingly, there is some evidence that postponing marriage is associated with a lower probability of divorce (Rotz, 2016).. Goldscheider and colleagues also recently showed that although changes in women’s roles created turbulence in marital relationships and family stability, both men and women place importance on keeping family ties and relationships strong. This has encouraged both men and women to adapt to changing roles in order to maintain the stability and wellbeing of their families (Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Lappegård, 2015). Stronger family ties and greater family involvement by men should enhance the capacity of families to care for older generations when they need help.

Late-life families, changing family structures

These changing patterns of marriage, divorce, and childbearing over the last thirty years have resulted in late-life families that are increasingly diverse in structure and in relationships. Most family transitions around these patterns, which lead to such diverse relationships, occur at younger ages, when individuals are forming families and having children. This means that these transitions have primarily affected older people in families because of upheavals taking place among their adult children. When adult children experience marital disruptions, familial intergenerational relationships are impacted.

Older persons in families have to navigate new relationships with divorced children, former sons- and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren who may have different sets of parents. This can have especially profound effects on relationships with grandchildren, because these relationships often depend on the closeness between the grandparent and the parent of that grandchild. On the positive side, grandparents in many cases have been the most stable and consistent relationships in their grandchildren’s lives (Hagestad and Uhlenberg, 2007).

Changes in cohort succession

Now, as the Baby Boom Generation and later generations enter old age, these changes are affecting family life through cohort succession. In 2000, the older (ages 65 and older) population was made up of people born before 1935; by 2015, it was made up of those born before 1950; and in 2030, it will be composed of those born in 1965 and earlier. The current aging cohort—the baby boomers— are more likely to have divorced, remarried, or cohabited.

As more baby boomers divorced, there has been a modest rise in multiple-partner fertility (e.g., when a divorced parent remarries and has children with their new spouse) (Guzzo, 2014). The combination of baby boomers’ disrupted marital histories, and the increasing levels of extramarital and multiple-partner fertility among younger generations, positions baby boomers to enter old age with fewer “traditional” sources of support (spouses and biological children), but with many more ex-spouses, stepchildren, and distant relatives. Projections based on recent data estimate that by 2030, fewer baby boomers will be married or live within ten miles of a biological child, compared with their parents’ generation (Ryan et al., 2012).

Remarriage, Step-Families, and Intergenerational Support

As people age and experience needs for day-to-day assistance, they rely primarily on family members for support. Most help given to older persons is non-compensatory, non-medical care provided by family and friends. Caregivers manage the effects of disabilities and chronic disease, household tasks, and provide emotional support. The most central and stable relationships in later life are among families, spouses, and children; these relationships provide emotional support, instrumental assistance, and caregiving. Older generations also assist children and grandchildren. Parents often continue to provide financial support quite late in life, even to middle-age children, and grandparents are actively involved with grandchildren; some are their grandchildrens’ primary caregivers (McGarry and Schoeni, 1997; Uhlenberg and Hammill, 1998).

It is well-established that marital disruption has negative impacts on supports provided between parents and children and vice versa. This is particularly true for fathers, who are more likely to leave the family home as a consequence of divorce (Noël-Miller, 2013). While most of these changes occur earlier in life, divorce and remarriage later in life also can reduce the support given to and received from children (Shapiro and Remle, 2011).

Stepchildren provide less support (of all kinds) than biological children, and they receive less from stepparents. Stepchildren also are less likely to live near or with stepparents (Seltzer, Lau, and Bianchi, 2013). Men and women have worse outcomes (disability and mortality) when they only have stepchildren available to help them, but older women appear to benefit from the presence of stepchildren when they are in addition to biological children (Pezzin, Pollak, and Schone, 2013).

The type and amount of support provided in step-relationships varies depending upon the age of the children when the stepparent entered their life. Stepparents who joined a family when children were younger, especially those who live with the children when they are growing up, tend to have closer, more parental relationships with the children when they become adults, and receive more support from them. (Pezzin and Schone, 1999). Younger children have been shown to have the time to form deeper relationships with stepparents, which lead to greater closeness in adulthood (Becker et al., 2013; Kalmijn, 2013).

The nature of these relationships is varied, and depends not only on the relationship between the parent and (step)child, but also on the presence of other family members and the quality of those relationships. When an adult child’s biological parent is alive and still married to the stepparent, it increases care given by those children to the stepparent (Pezzin, Pollak, and Schone, 2009). This is consistent with research showing that the quality of parent–stepparent relationships affects the degree to which adolescents remain close to stepparents as they grow into adulthood (King and Lindstrom, 2016). Similarly, the presence of children (biological or step) increases the hours of care provided by spouses. (Pezzin, Pollak, and Schone, 2009).

Older persons are only beginning to be affected by these changes, but the prevalence of divorce, remarriage, and multiple-partner fertility is growing as younger cohorts with more complex families age into later life. It is important that clinicians and other practitioners working with older adults explore the availability and reliability of family members to be involved in the decision-making and care for older family members.

The Importance of Acknowledging Family Diversity

Older people often are treated as though they share the same concerns and perspectives because they belong to the same age group. However, we know that the older population is a tremendously heterogeneous group that spans four decades in age and is growing ever more diverse in ethnicity, nativity, and race, as well as in socioeconomic status. The family changes described in this article have not affected groups equally across the socio-demographic spectrum. Higher rates of cohabitation, earlier fertility, and procreation with multiple partners have increasingly been concentrated among lower socioeconomic families, while people with more education experience childbearing later in life and longer survival, which leads to an increase in the potential for sandwich generations (Furstenberg, 2014).

African American and Hispanic populations are younger, have higher fertility, and are more likely to live in multi-generational family households. Higher fertility and shorter generations play out in larger, younger families. Seltzer and Yahirun (2014) found that among both African American and Hispanic elders ages 55 or older, about 30 percent have at least four sets of grandchildren, compared with 16 percent of white elders. Social class differences are similar—among those ages75 and older, 38 percent of those who did not complete high school have four sets of grandchildren, compared with 19 percent of college-educated older adults.

Social class and race and ethnic differences have been exacerbated by the recent recession, which led many older adults and families to “double up,” moving in together to pool scarce resources (Seltzer, Lau, and Bianchi, 2012). Although research has provided some insight into the challenges that older minority families face, a better understanding of the structure and support these relationships provide for older adults is needed.

New Family Relationships

Although this article has outlined some of the main changes that have been developing and that will affect later-life families and intergenerational support, there are many new issues just beginning to emerge—issues that will need further investigation before their consequences are known.

One is the rise in new non-marital partnerships among older persons. An increasing number of couples are either cohabiting or “living apart together” in later life. Cohabitation in mid-life and older ages is growing primarily among those of lower socioeconomic status, though the presence of children and grandchildren increases the probability that an older adult will remarry rather than live in an unmarried partnership. Late-life cohabitations seem to be quite stable, however, compared with cohabitation earlier in life (Brown, Bulanda, and Lee, 2012).

Some older persons are choosing to maintain separate households rather than to cohabit, dubbed “living apart together.” Qualitative research indicates that formerly married persons at older ages enter into such relationships because they want to balance a shared, intimate relationship with autonomy and independence. These people in these couples tend to be more work-oriented, individualistic, and egalitarian than married people. Studying living-apart-together relationships is limited by lack of data on non-residential unions and ambiguity about whether a couple is living apart together or in a dating relationship (de Jong Gierveld and Merz, 2013).

Conclusion

Population aging and family change are inextricably intertwined, and are transforming intergenerational relations in later life. As the share of the older population rises, social changes in the role of women, and the nature of family have also transformed later-life families. More people live in families with three or more generations for most of their lives, and grow up with two working parents or in single-parent families. Increases in divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation indicate that new cohorts are entering old age with a diverse set of ties to family, but ones that may be ill-defined and potentially weaker. These family changes are affecting different ethnic groups and social classes disproportionately, with multiple-partner fertility and cohabitation more common among minority elders and occurring at lower levels of socioeconomic status.

Although these changes are just beginning to play out in the older population, they are underway. Recognizing the diversity of family resources and the potential challenges and constraints will be necessary for professionals and providers working with older persons.