Although the literature on informal care-giving for older parents shows that daughters have a higher tendency to provide care compared with sons, only a few studies have focused on the gender composition of all children or parents’ entire range of care options. Our study examines the effect of children's gender composition on informal and formal care types, as well as the informal care network. Using data from the 2015 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 40,312), we found that parents with daughters tended to use less formal care because daughters take on additional informal care-giving responsibilities. Daughters were the main care-givers among parents’ informal care networks. Further analysis indicated that daughters-in-law play an important role in the care-giving process when parents have only sons. We concluded that the presence of a daughter among the children reduces the use of formal care. The results indicated that children's gender composition is an important factor in explaining the allocation of informal care to parents.

The extent to which, and the reasons why, children help to care for their parents are examined in an extensive range of literature. Although care for parents essentially takes place in parent–child dyads, many of these studies acknowledge that the amount of care a child gives is generally the outcome of collective decisions in multiple-child families. However, to our knowledge, no research in Europe enhances our understanding of how sibling characteristics influence an individual child's care-giving. Using data for 14 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, the present study relates pre-care-giving sibling characteristics to children's subsequent start of giving care. This longitudinal approach allows correction for the endogenous nature of time-changing predictors. The analysis demonstrates that daughters start to care more often when they have brothers instead of sisters. This pattern of gendered intergenerational care particularly applies to southern European countries. We also observe that both pre-care-giving parent–sibling frequency of contact and geographic distances predict children's care-giving transition strongly. Children who are closer to their parents than siblings in terms of contact and proximity have higher odds of care-taking. Finally, being the only child without a job enhances the start of care-giving as well. The results suggest that sibling characteristics are an important factor in explaining intergenerational care differences between children in Europe.

School engagement has been shown to be a strong predictor for school achievement. Previous studies have focused on the role of individual and contextual factors to explain school achievement, with few examining the role of siblings. This study used data of 451 adolescent sibling pairs from the Iowa Youth and Families Project to investigate the associations between school engagement and achievement in siblings by considering gender composition and birth order. Data were collected in families’ home and obtained for a target child in the 7th grade and for a sibling within 4 years of age. Average age of younger siblings (55% female) was 11.56 (SD = 1.27), while older siblings (49% female) had an average age of 13.92 (SD = 1.47). Using the two-member, four-group actor-partner interdependence model (APIM), results showed that older siblings’ engagement was positively related with younger siblings’ achievement in same-gender sibling pairs, but not in sibling pairs of opposite gender. Younger siblings’ engagement was independent of older siblings’ achievement regardless of siblings’ gender. Implications for parents and professionals suggest that support for older siblings could also benefit younger siblings in same gender pairs.