Introduction

The rising costs of healthcare and other social welfare programmes and the efforts of the federal, state and local governments to reduce services that are provided by governmental agencies have increased the importance of distinguishing personal and familial responsibilities from public (that is, governmental) obligations to dependent individuals. Societal debates about collective, familial and individual responsibility for dependent individuals are not new, but demographic and social changes have made the issue of who will assist dependent family members an increasingly important topic.

Increased longevity and reduced fertility in the past few decades have profoundly affected the structure of families in the US. Just as in other industrialised nations, life expectancies in the US have been increasing (Vaupel and Kistowski, 2005), which has resulted in more multiple-generation extended families than ever before (Uhlenberg and Kirby, 1998). These multiple-generation families are different than in the distant past, however, because lowered fertility means that there are fewer younger family members to care for greater numbers of older people than was true just a couple of generations ago. Younger adults are therefore likely to have more older kin who potentially need aid, which has fuelled societal concerns about the well-being of older adults.

Unlike many other industrialised nations, the US lacks a comprehensive system of government-sponsored social programmes for its citizens. Although there are a few federal support programmes for older adults (that is, Medicare, which provides funds for health-related needs), and even fewer state programmes that are primarily for low-income older people, for the most part responsibilities for the care and support of older adults have been seen in the US as belonging primarily to families.

The belief that families are obligated to care and support older kin is so widespread that 30 of the 50 states have filial responsibility laws that define which family members are obligated to provide care and what care they are obligated to provide (Bulcroft et al, 1989). Critics have argued that these laws and other US social policies about intergenerational care and assistance are based on the outdated and questionable assumptions that kin networks are unwaveringly emotionally close and loving, families have readily available members to assist older kin and family membership is stable (Hooyman and Gonyea, 1995). These assumptions do not reflect the experiences of many, if not most, families in the 21st century.