Connections and Constraints: The Effects of Children on Caregiving

This article assesses the effects of children on parents' involvement in caregiving. On the basis of interviews with 273 respondents, we address the effects of having children on care given to kin and nonkin; assess the effects of children's characteristics, especially age and gender, on the help mothers and fathers provide; and examine how these vary with mothers' employment. Overall, we find that the presence of children connects parents into networks of care more than it constrains them. The effects vary depending on the characteristics of the child (including age and gender) as well as characteristics of the parent (like gender and employment). Key Words: caregiving, children, gender, kinkeeping, networks. Two contradictory images of children pervade American culture. The first suggests that children isolate their parents, especially their mothers, from broader community ties. From this perspective, children represent a significant cost to parents in terms of both time and resources that might otherwise be directed toward those outside the household. The second, much older than the first, conceptualizes children as a resource at the core of family life. From this perspective, children strengthen and deepen parents' ties to a wide range of kith and kin-acting as the linchpin of family social integration, broadly defined. Neither of these perspectives, however, have addressed the effects of a range of social factors, like gender and age, on the ways in which children shape parents' social ties. A great deal of research has examined the care that children, especially adult children, give to their parents (Abel, 1991; Brody, 1990; Brody, Litvin, Albert, & Hoffman, 1994; Himes, 1994; Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Far less has addressed the ways in which children shape the care their parents give members of the community, whether family or friends. This article seeks to address precisely this question. Rather than understand "kinkeeping" (DiLeonardo, 1987; Rosenthal, 1985) or "friendkeeping" (Gallagher, 1994; Gallagher, & Gerstel, 1993) as phenomena rooted simply in individual choice, we follow a tradition that views these forms of social integration as emergent properties of a set of obligations and resources within and between households (see, for example, DiLeonardo, 1987; Kibria, 1994; Stack, 1974; Stack & Burton, 1993). As the growing literature on the sociology of children would suggest, children shape their parents' lives as much as their parents shape them (Corsaro, 1997; Thorne, 1993). Before the 1970s, sociological research on parent-child relations emphasized the role of parents in child development and socialization (Rossi, 1968). Since then, a number of studies have begun to address the effects of children on parents. These studies have addressed, for example, how children affect the social-psychological well-being and functioning of mothers (and, more rarely, fathers) and how children affect couples' marital satisfaction (Holden, 1990; Katzev, Warner, & Acock, 1994; Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Even with this recognition of children's influence, the focus tends to be on the nuclear family. That is, far fewer studies address the effects of children on their parents' kinkeeping, or informal help, to extended kin-even though this issue has become the focus of increasing policy discussion and debate (Gerstel & McGonagle, 1999; Glass & Estes, 1997). Moreover, almost no studies address the help parents give nonkin. Our primary concern, then, is the extent to which children foster or undermine the caregiving their parents do. We ask: Do children serve as connectors or, alternatively, as constraints? PREVIOUS LITERATURE Although very little previous research examines the effects of children on help parents give to family and friends, previous studies suggest two broadly different images of how children may affect parents' caregiving. …