Filial care in Sweden: Does childhood family dissolution and parents’ present living arrangements matter for adult children’s support?

The study examines adult children’s propensity to provide personal care to older parents in Sweden by gender of adult child, parental breakup in childhood and parent’s living arrangements. Regression analyses examined personal care separately for mother and fathers using Swedish GGS from 2012. Adult daughters are more likely than sons to provide personal care to mothers and fathers. Daughters who experience breakup provide more care for their mothers. Especially daughters help lone parents more often than other parents, but children’s care provision does not differ for parents living with the other parent and re-partnered parents. Gender of adult child and parent’s living arrangements operate in slightly different ways regarding care provided for mothers and fathers, and living arrangements represent a central predictor for whether children provide filial care. Particularly, the dominant kinship pattern is care provided from daughters to mother and through the mother’s line.