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Introduction
Past studies have shown that siblings often share parent care (Checkovich and Stern 2002; Finch and Mason 1993; Hequembourg and Brallier 2005; Ingersoll-Dayton et al. 2003a , 2003b ; Matthews 1992, 1995; Wolf, Freedman and Soldo 1997) but provide little information on the dynamics and sequencing of such sharing. Similarly, earlier research offers insights into the selection of adult children as parental care-givers (Grundy and Henretta 2006; Pillemer and Suitor 2006) but lacks information on whether specific adult children stop care or enter the care network later than other children. In view of demographic changes including population ageing, lower fertility, and relatively high divorce rates (National Alliance for Caregiving 1998), it is essential to further explore the dynamics of parent care. If sharing of parent care enables overburdened care-givers to relinquish care to a sibling or allows adult children with other obligations to postpone participation in parent care, then smaller sibling networks may reduce the viability of parent care networks and increase the burden of care for individual care-givers. To address these issues, we present analyses of changes in parent care based on data from the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Our analyses assess changes in parent care both at the child and family system level.
Theoretical framework and literature review
Our theoretical framework relies on altruism, rational choice, gender norms, as well as the lifecourse and family systems perspectives. Although several other theories have been used to explain children's participation in care (Henretta et al. 1997; Pillemer and Suitor 2006; Silverstein et al. 2002; Stern 1995; White-Means and Hong 2001), we lack data to test these theories. Altruism mainly informs analyses pertaining to the impact of parent characteristics on care-giver change, whereas exchange theory and gender norms have most relevance for addressing the effects of adult-child characteristics. Lifecourse and family systems theories speak primarily to the composition of the adult-child network (Coward and Dwyer 1990; Lawrence et al. 2002; Matthews 1987, 1992; Wolf, Freedman and Soldo 1997).
Altruism
The main tenet of altruism theory is that children are motivated by love for their parents so that their provision of care is driven foremost by parents' needs. Such needs derive...