Slide 33 of 38
Notes:
Boomers may be called on to provide care for their parents (and/or coordinate parent care with several siblings), but they will have fewer children to call on to provide them with care. Although siblings caring for one another has not been as common a pattern as care between generations, boomers may have to rely more on siblings, friends, or other members of their own generation.
A common pattern for previous generations in North Carolina was for the youngest daughter to stay home or live very near by to care for aging parents. In that generation, there might be 10 or 15 years or more between the oldest and youngest child. Boomer women have tended to have all of their children within a few years of each other—either late in the child-bearing years for more affluent or earlier in life (20s) for most other women. It is not clear whether it will work out better socially (and in terms of caregiving) for boomers who reach age 85, for example, if their 1 or 2 children are in their 60s (and more likely to have free time) or in their 40s (and more likely to be healthy). Men, who have had 2 families will have more choice, but it is not clear what their relationship will be with children of the first marriage if they have not maintained good connections in younger years.
