The Cradle of Moral Capital Is the Family

Ageing Soc. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 Dec 14.

Published in final edited form as:

PMCID: PMC6294455

NIHMSID: NIHMS956229

Beyond solidarity, reciprocity and altruism: moral capital equally a unifying concept in intergenerational support for older people

MERRIL SILVERSTEIN

^*Davis School of Gerontology, Academy of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

STEPHEN J. CONROY

^†School of Business Administration, University of San Diego, California, USA

DAPHNA GANS

^‡Center for Health Policy Research, University of California at Los Angeles, United states of america

Abstract

The purpose of this commodity is to review, contrast and synthesise several major intellectual streams that accept guided theoretical development and empirical research in the area of intergenerational family unit support to older people: (a) normative-integrative approaches that focus on cohesion between family members based on bonds of solidarity and norms of filial obligation, and (b) transactional approaches that are primarily concerned with identifying motives for resource transfers across generational lines. Nosotros propose the concept of moral capital – defined as the stock of internalised social norms that obligate children to care for and support their older parents – the transmission of which lies at the intersection of self-interest (for parents) and altruism (for children). Using data from a multigenerational family report, we present an empirical analysis showing that a strong positive correspondence in the filial obligations of adult children and their older mothers – arguably the result of intergenerational transmission – elevated the supportive behaviour of children. We propose that moral majuscule may be a useful unifying concept that bridges disciplinary and theoretical divides in the report of intergenerational transfers to elderly people by helping resolve the paradox of how self-interest and selflessness can co-exist within families.

Keywords: ageing families, intergenerational relations, social support, solidarity, altruism, transfers, moral capital

Introduction

The purpose of this newspaper is to review, contrast and integrate several of the major intellectual streams that have guided theoretical evolution and empirical enquiry in the area of intergenerational family back up to older people. These streams tin roughly exist divided into those that emphasise bonds of solidarity and integration (as well equally conflict), and those that emphasise transactions between family members (ordinarily in the form of time and coin transfers). While not necessarily contradictory, these ii traditions evolved out of different sets of assumptions about the nature of developed intergenerational bonds and the principles nether which they operate. As one of the near durable bonds in the family, adult parent–kid relationships have received intense scrutiny in the social and behavioural sciences, yet models on which research are based have evolved along divergent paths. In the kickoff section of this article we review two theoretical streams of scholarship on the ageing family unit that developed concurrently with each other but are rarely intersected. The second department proposes an integrative prototype for considering intergenerational support provision in the ageing family – based on the concept of moral uppercase – that borrows from each stream. The third section provides an empirical analysis demonstrating the utility of our hybrid perspective.

Normative-integrative approaches to intergenerational relations

A normative-integrative approach to intergenerational family relations focuses on cohesion between family unit members based on bonds of solidarity and norms of filial obligation. The roots of this arroyo tin can exist seen in early tracts in family unit sociology. In what resembles a contemporary critique of 21st-century society, Louis Wirth's archetype commentary on America of the early 20th century noted that the very footing of family life was being threatened by failing fertility rates and postponed matrimony amidst the new urban inhabitants of America (Wirth 1938). He noted that 'weakening bonds of kinship' were being replaced past 'impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental' relationships. Wirth and his contemporaries in the Chicago school of sociology (e.m. Ogburn 1933) ended that the growing alienation of urbanites in the teeming cities of the early on 20th century could be partially explained by the loss of family-centrality in everyday life. Invoking Durkheim's concept of solidarity every bit the binding force of society, these scholars were concerned with what they viewed as the unravelling social cloth of family unit life. While the family unit experiences of older adults was niggling considered in their critiques, the general notion was that young adults had become unmoored from older generations – to the detriment of all concerned.

Functionalist-normative perspectives

By the 1950s a new epitome had taken agree in American family sociology. Prompted by the growth in prosperity following World War 2, social theorists began to consider the nuclear family unit as the family organization all-time suited to the demands of a modern economy that required skilled workers in dispersed labour markets. In this framework the unmooring of adults from their families of orientation was considered an inevitable and necessary effect of societal modernisation (Burgess 1960; Goode 1963). In this line of reasoning, extended-familism was considered incompatible with an increasingly technocratic society that required a trained, specialised and geographically mobile labour force. Nuclear families (characterised by a strongly gendered sectionalization of piece of work/family unit labour and small size) needed to be unencumbered by the older generations in society to maximise their success, and, by extension, secure the economic vitality of the nation (Parsons and Bales 1955).

In reaction to the early functionalists, afterwards theorists, such every bit Litwak (1985) and others, argued that families and the formal machinery of society existed in dissever spheres but necessarily intersected. They considered families as constituting a unique social system that stood in dissimilarity, and sometimes in opposition, to bureaucratic formal organisations. Whereas the family membership was based on ties of emotion and commitment, bureaucratic organisations relied on specialisation, rules of operation and participation based on merit. For case, older adults could rely on formal home-intendance services because bureaucratic enforcement of training, creden-tialling, supervision and regulation insured that care was delivered with standardised quality; family unit members, on the other hand, could similarly deliver home care but would operate out of emotional connectedness and a sense of duty. Paying family care-givers was seen equally introducing a cocky-interest motive into the family modus operandi that stood in contradiction to its bones incentive structure and functional imperative.

Functionalist theories of this later variety were supported by empirical research that revealed intergenerational strength in the face of social change. Although opportunities for contiguous interaction had reduced, relatively rapid transportation and communication technologies allowed the maintenance of potent affective ties betwixt generations – in what came to exist known as intimacy-at-a-distance (Rosenmayer 1968). The modified-extended family – geographically mobile notwithstanding emotionally close – became the filial image that could exist considered to be isomorphic with respect to the demands of modern economy; it also served as a corrective to the isolated extended family as a normative family form (Litwak 1960; Shanas and Sussman 1977).

Intergenerational solidarity, conflict and ambivalence

In the 1970s, the written report of intergenerational relations turned toward codification and classification. Drawing on Durkheim's concept of social solidarity and Heider'due south (1958) and Homans' (1950) theories of small-group cohesion, Bengtson and colleagues began developing a 'periodic table' of the connective links between generations in the family unit – a model that became known as the intergenerational solidarity prototype (Roberts, Richards and Bengtson 1991). Both a conceptual scheme and a measurement model, the solidarity paradigm itemised the sentiments, behaviours, attitudes, values and structural arrangements that demark the generations. Intergenerational solidarity was operationalised along half-dozen dimensions: affectual solidarity (emotional closeness), associational solidarity (social interaction), structural solidarity (opportunity for interaction based mostly on geographic proximity), normative solidarity (filial obligation), consensual solidarity (perceived and actual understanding on values and opinions) and functional solidarity (provisions of material, instrumental and social back up). Although many studies applying the solidarity perspective have employed its range dimensions (e.g. Rossi and Rossi 1990; Silverstein, Bengtson and Lawton 1997; Whitbeck, Simons and Conger 1991), the conceptual and empirical force of the model lay in its consideration of affective bonds betwixt generations. Indeed, the term 'intergenerational solidarity' has come to hateful emotional cohesion betwixt generations.

Responding to criticism that the solidarity paradigm lacked coverage of negative emotions and behaviours, researchers after added the dimension of conflict to the model (Clarke et al. 1999). The aforementioned menstruum saw the rise of intergenerational ambivalence theory, a perspective that focused on the mixed positive and negative emotions that emanate from the ongoing tension between autonomy and dependence in intergenerational relationships (Leuscher and Pillemer 1998). While ambivalent feelings are obvious early in the family unit lifecycle, they are axiomatic in older families likewise, for case when ageing parents become dependent on their developed children (Willson, Shuey and Elder 2003). The emotional content of intergenerational relationships – both closeness and conflict – have a bearing on support patterns in ageing families (Parrott and Bengtson 1999).

Transactional approaches to intergenerational relations

In dissimilarity to normative-integrative approaches to intergenerational relations, transactional approaches are primarily concerned with identifying motives for providing resources across generational lines. These approaches typically rely on market place principles that emphasise valued transfers of time (labour) and money, typically within a reciprocity or exchange framework. The foil for this approach is the concept of altruism – defined in this scholarly campsite every bit giving to others with the almost need and the least ability to repay. We hash out these two bones orientations to intergenerational transfers.

Commutation perspectives

Reciprocity has been a consistent theme in the written report of adult parent–child relationships. Adult children and their parents are considered interdependent actors who contemporaneously and dynamically substitution support to each other over the lifecourse. As achieving some level of equity in the substitution is a desired goal, this perspective maintains that the obligation to pay a debt is no less establish in family relations than it is in market place relations and that providers of support are at least partially motivated past cocky-involvement.

One of the most unremarkably tested questions in the paradigm is that adult children who received money from their parents are the same who provide more support to them. Several investigations have shown such a pattern (Cox and Rank 1992; Lennartsson, Silverstein and Fritzell 2010; Lowenstein, Katz and Gur-Yaish 2007), simply others have not or have plant substantively small-scale effects (Altonji, Hayashi and Kotlikoff 1992; Attias-Donfut 2000; McGarry and Schoeni 1997). Studies examining long-term patterns of intergenerational exchange plant that parents who, in middle age, provided financial assistance to their young-adult children were more likely, in old historic period, to receive social support from them (Henretta et al. 1997; Silverstein et al. 2002), an affirmation of the 'support bank' hypothesis (Antonucci 1990). In a related application of substitution theory, Bernheim, Shleifer and Summers (1985) suggested that parents may strategically use the promise of a bequest to obtain help or attending from their children, although the evidence for this is mixed (Caputo 2002). Finally, providing support to older parents may as well be intended to 'demonstrate' to offspring that elder back up is an important duty of children – the eventual emulation of which behaviour may benefit the provider (Cox and Stark 1992).

Altruism perspectives

Intergenerational transfers that flow from the more affluent to the more than needy are generally taken as evidence that altruistic motivations are at work (Altonji, Hayashi and Kotlikoff 1992; McGarry and Schoeni 1997). Few attempts accept been made to straight measure altruism which is typically inferred from observed transfers where there is no ostensible resource do good to the provider. Pure altruism, however, is a construct perhaps not constitute in nature. For instance, the terms 'tempered altruism' (Bernheim and Stark 1988) and 'constrained altruism' (Becker 1991) have been used to describe how the altruist protects himself against the depletion of resource and becoming the victim of exploitation. Further, scholars recognise that purely selfless acts are rare as emotional or symbolic rewards (east.g. a 'warm glow') may be derived from altruistically helping others, specially those with whom one feels most intimate (Andreoni 1990).

Motives for intergenerational transfers are often mixed (Logan and Spitze 1995) and not easily distinguishable. Emotional and transactional elements in transfer behaviours are ofttimes inseparable. For case, transfers of time and coin from parents to children tend to strengthen intergenerational zipper (Attias-Donfut 2000) and filial norms (Ikkink, Van Tilburg and Knipscheer 1999) that may lead to the advent of reciprocal exchanges in a phenomenon known every bit 'double-sided' altruism (Sloan, Zhang and Wang 2002). In a rare comparative exam of this issue, Ribar and Wilhelm (2006) found prove for both exchange and role modelling principles in the transmission of elder back up attitudes across generations in Mexican-American families. In a novel challenge to the theoretical underpinnings of the demonstration effect, Jellal and Wolff (2002) contrast emulation (intergenerational continuity in supportive behaviours) and modelling (intentional attempt to elicit similar behaviour in children) every bit explanations for upward transfers past middle-aged children in French families. The authors find stronger bear witness for the former than the latter, suggesting the primacy of altruistic motivations over those of self-interest. Although parental socialisation of children to eldercare values is cited every bit the likely mechanism responsible for the observed cross-generational association in supportive behaviours, cultural transmission is but inferred and not straight observed.

Toward a moral-economy perspective on support in ageing families

Information technology is articulate from much of the evidence that altruism, as represented by prosocial norms, and bounded self-involvement, every bit represented by reciprocal transfers, are important pieces of the puzzle in explaining support and care provisions by adult children for their older parents. To integrate these distinct orientations nosotros introduce a perspective that treats the family as a moral economy. Within this perspective the concept of filial obligation as a grade of moral capital that links normative and self-interest orientations because it (a) has value in shaping the behaviour of children, and (b) is transmissible from ane generation to some other. We begin by asking from where filial duty to older parents derives. How do parents ensure that their children volition provide for them in their old historic period? In exploring the issue of moral capital, nosotros accost questions virtually the family unit that bear on its importance equally 1 of the nigh primal social organisations in society.

Moral capital letter in ageing families

The prescription to accolade one's mother and father – plant in the western Bible, the writings of Confucius and many other religious tracts – is a moral imperative institute in almost all societies. Nevertheless, this aphorism far from guarantees that adult children will really feel responsible for profitable their ageing parents and leaves open the question of how such obligations come into being. Nosotros propose that feelings of filial duty toward older parents is a form of moral capital that we defined elsewhere every bit the stock of internalised social values that obligate children to care for and support their older parents (see Silverstein and Conroy 2009). Every bit a set up of values that is transmissible from parents to children, moral majuscule lies at the intersection of self-interest (for parents) and altruism (for children). Putting 'normative' and 'transactional' approaches together provides leverage for better understanding how moral capital is accumulated then redeemed in family contexts.

In carving out intellectual infinite for the concept of moral majuscule, information technology is useful to distinguish it from social uppercase. Social capital tin be roughly defined every bit the benefits that accrue from investing in social relationships that build in others the obligation to reciprocate in order to go on (the hopefully rewarding) relationship (Coleman 1988), a phenomenon observed in social as well as family networks (Furstenberg and Kaplan 2004). What compels individuals in whom social upper-case letter is invested to fulfil their duty toward the original investors? We suggest that a normative form of social regulation specific to the type of relationship and social establishment in question – that we label moral majuscule – is the valued good in question (In small-group applications, the concept of the moral economic system can be traced to the work of Mauss (1923/1967), who stressed moral obligations over pecuniary motives for the exchange of resources in elementary societies.) When applied to intergenerational families in later life, moral capital letter resides in developed children every bit an obligation to provide aid for their older parents. Being a 'proficient' (i.east. attentive, responsible) parent early on builds a reserve of goodwill in children, only gratitude may non be enough to guarantee that support from one'due south adult children will be forthcoming; it may also take a moral commitment on the part of children to fulfil their terminate of the bargain (Stein et al. 1998). Alternatively, a 'bad' parent who invests little social (or economical) uppercase in offspring may rely solely on his or her power to socialise children to values of filial duty in order to ensure intergenerational back up (Silverstein et al. 2002). In some sense, moral upper-case letter embodies the value of values – the certainty with which ane tin conceptualize that others concur item values from which they anticipate a benefit.

The transmission of moral capital

Nosotros accept as a central premise of the moral-economic system approach that the transmission of familistic norms from parents to children increases the probability that parents will be able to count on their children for needed back up in the futurity. The generalised expectation that children are obligated to back up their ageing parents in times of need (Cicirelli 1993) is essentially an insurance role of children. Since there are few formal sanctions imposed on children who renege on the informal contract with parents, enforcement must rely on internalised norms of advisable behaviour that operate in the service of reducing the take a chance of moral gamble – that is, of having expectations for solicitous children that do not materialise.

Little attending has been paid to the intergenerational transmission of values that inculcates in children the responsibility to answer to the needs of ageing parents. Becker (1991) came to the conclusion that such preparation was an inefficient strategy on the part of parents compared to leveraging resources to hogtie children to provide help. Yet Becker'south decision is at odds with scholarship showing that the intergenerational reproduction of social values and ideologies is one of the master goals of the family (Bengtson, Biblarz and Roberts 2002; Glass, Bengtson and Dunham 1986; Taris and Semin 1997). We consider the socialisation of children to familistic values to be an investment in their moral uppercase, much like the investment in education represents an investment in human capital. Parents often teach their children about values when they are young both by example and by discussing with them the claim of item orientations. Children can also acquire moral capital letter through social interaction with peers, values-based school curricula and religious participation over which parents accept some degree of control.

Any firsthand 'leverage' wielded by parents to control the actions of children (as is suggested in the case of bequests) may be more important to obligations based on an altruism norm that has a long-fourth dimension horizon within intergenerational families. Such norms are products of collective or subgroup belief systems, just are manifest at the private level in terms of the felt obligation to provide support in a particular relationship nether particular circumstances. The question of why a kid would act against his or her own self-interest and perform altruistic acts revisits a well-known dilemma in economical theory. Adam Smith, in his 'Wealth of Nations' (1790), described how the general good is served by agents acting in their own self-interest. To the extent that an intergenerational 'family unit game' resembles a multi-period game with an unknown horizon, we may expect branch substitution to emerge as an optimal strategy – even with agents acting in their own selfish all-time interest. However, these 'games' may even so have a 'concluding menstruum problem' in which adult children, no affair how co-operatively they have 'played' throughout their life, are notwithstanding faced with an optimal strategy to defect on their ageing parents in the end. We do non need to appeal to irrationality arguments as in that location are 2 basic explanations for acting unselfishly and assisting ageing parents: (a) they are selfish but face up a credible threat from their parents to be removed from the will, or (b) they are unselfish because they receive a 'warm glow' of satisfaction from assisting their parents (Andreoni 1990). This 'warm glow' could be direct proportional to the stock of moral capital and could also exist moderated by emotional attachment to the parents.

The moral capital perspective unlike those that rely on exchange and emotional solidarity implies that the kid cares fifty-fifty when the human relationship is/has been strained and at that place has been no initial investment or promise of an investment to stimulate a quid pro quo. It is also important to note that we refer to a depreciation of value in moral majuscule over time in distinct dissimilarity to Kohlberg's (1981) stage theory of moral evolution that refers but to a monotonic increase in values over time. Given that social and moral capital letter in families may lay fallow for many decades, information technology is possible that the value of parental investments will depreciate over fourth dimension due to memory lapses or be remembered differently by parent and child, raising the possibility that the kid equally an adult may renege on the implicit contract to reciprocate. The potential for dubiety in what is substantially an extra-legal contract demands that motivation be reinforced by internalised commitments or a sense of duty on the office of the adult child.

Becker formalised this discussion in his Nobel lecture (1993, 400) and suggested that parents may attempt to instill 'guilt, obligation, duty, and filial honey that finer, tin can "commit" children to helping them out (in former age).' He goes on to advise that 'social sanctions' may compel children to uphold their end of the bargain, specially if they consider reneging on the implicit intergenerational contract (Becker 1991).

However, this is not say that the transmission of normative obligation from parents to children is ever complete and, if complete, e'er enforceable. Even children who embrace filial responsibility equally a desired goal do not necessarily plan to, or actually provide back up to their parents (Peek et al. 1998). Normative obligations as ethics are differentially expressed depending on the resources, constraints and alternative obligations of the provider, and the level of need of the recipient (Finch and Mason 1991). Parents also identify their bets on some children more than others in terms of who is more likely to absorb and retain the normative training equally a strategic conclusion, in a sense 'grooming' the future care-giver. Filial commitment – moral capital in our designation – may vary across siblings and developed children may brand decisions virtually caring for an anile parent partially based on their apprehension that siblings will (or volition not) be willing to commit to care-giving (Neuharth and Stern 2002; Silverstein, Conroy and Gans 2008).

An empirical instance of the value of intergenerational moral capital

In club to examine the potential of the moral capital model, we employ information from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG) to exam whether norms of filial responsibility of middle-aged children and their older mothers predict the corporeality of upstream back up provided to mothers. Nosotros limited our assay to older mothers to optimise the sample size and limit our focus to a unmarried source of transmission. The LSOG began in 1971 with 358 three-generation families living in Southern California (run into Bengtson and Schrader 1982 for sample details). Follow-upward surveys were administered to original and newly eligible respondents in 1985, and then roughly every three years until 2005. All information have been collected by mail-back surveys. Response rates of eligible respondents have averaged 70 per cent over the life of the study. The sub-sample for this analysis comprised G2 mothers participating in the 1985 survey matched to their corresponding G3 children participating in the 2000 survey. The sample consisted of 379 mother–child dyads. In 2000, mothers averaged 71.vii years of age and children averaged 47.six years of historic period. Most of the responding children were daughters (58.half dozen%).

The provision of assist and support was measured using four questions that asked adult children how often they provided the following four types of instrumental help and support to their mothers: (1) household chores, (2) transportation/shopping, (iii) help when she/he is sick, and (four) assistance with personal care (e.g. assist with bathing, dressing). Response categories were: non at all, once a year, several times a year, monthly, several times a month, weekly, several times a week, and daily. An additive scale was calculated potentially ranging from 0 (no back up) to 28 (daily support) in the four areas.

Moral capital was operationalised by six items representing filial norms of eldercare responsibility using the following root question adapted from Heller (1976): Regardless of the sacrifices involved, how much responsibility should developed children with families of their ain accept:

To provide companionship or spend fourth dimension with elderly parents who are in need?
To assistance with household chores and repairs and/or to provide transportation for elderly parents who are in need?
To listen to the bug and concerns of elderly parents and to provide advice and guidance?
To provide for personal and wellness-care needs of the elderly parent (e.g. bathing, grooming, medication).
To provide financial support and/or assist in financial and legal affairs of elderly parents who are in need?
To provide housing for the elderly parents who are in demand.

On each of the 6 items, respondents assigned responsibility on a five-indicate scale: none, minor, moderate, major and total. Responses were summed to class an additive scale ranging from zero (the least responsibleness) to 24 (the nearly responsibility). The generalised nature of the question (as a norm rather than a self-expectation) tempers the bias of social desirability. In lodge to better specify the downwardly management of transmission, filial responsibleness as expressed by parents was taken from the 1985 survey and filial responsibility as expressed by children was taken from the 2000 survey. Other variables controlled included gender of children (1=daughter, 0=son), and income, age and marital status (1=married; 0=single) of mothers in 2000. Control variables were selected after a serial of iterative models revealed that they explained the well-nigh variance in support.

We used Hierarchical Linear Modelling (Bryk and Raudenbush 1992) to estimate the joint influence of parents' and children'due south norms of filial responsibility on support provided to parents. This approach provides methodological and noun advantages in our multi-sibling data by (a) appropriately taking into business relationship the nested nature of the data structure, and (b) assuasive child-level predictors to be represented as inside-family differences (also known as centring by group-mean) such that each child'south score on filial eldercare responsibility is treated every bit a deviation from other siblings in the family.

Estimated coefficients from the multi-level model are presented in Table 1. In terms of female parent'south characteristics, older, lower-income and unmarried (more often than not widowed) mothers received more support from their children than did their younger, higher-income and married counterparts. In terms of children'due south characteristics, daughters provided more support to their mothers than did sons. Filial eldercare responsibility had no direct impact on support provision until it was considered together with the forcefulness of mothers' filial norms (p<0.07). That is, there was a synergistic effect of filial responsibleness beyond generations. This conditional human relationship is depicted graphically in Figure 1, showing that when mothers held relatively stronger filial norms of responsibleness, their adult children were well-nigh probable to provide back up when their sense of responsibility was strong relative to their siblings. Amid children whose mothers had weaker eldercare norms, norms had piddling bearing on the volume of support they provided. Thus, a potent positive correspondence in the filial norms of adult children and their older mothers – possibly the result of intergenerational transmission processes earlier in life – elevated the supportive behaviour of children.

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Social support provided by developed children to older mothers past filial eldercare norms of both generations.

Table 1

Hierarchical linear model predicting social back up from adult children to older mothers

Fixed result	Guess	SE	Variance	χ^two (df)
Intercept	6.24^***	0.26
Mothers' characteristics¹:
Age	0.xi^*	0.05
Income	−0.12^*	0.06
Unmarried (versus married)	one.49^*	0.64
Children's characteristics²:
Daughter (versus son)	2.27^*	0.92
Filial eldercare norms	0.05	0.11
Cross-level interaction:
Filial eldercare norms of kid past filial eldercare norms of mother	0.06^†	0.03
Random outcome:
Intercept			5.94^***	229 (92)
Children'southward filial eldercare norms			0.36^**	132 (94)
Level 1			15.62	–

Discussion and conclusion

In this newspaper, we have attempted to lay the background for moral upper-case letter equally a concept that helps explain why adult children provide support to their older parents. Evolutionary theory suggests a biological motive for why parents provide resources to their children (Hamilton 1964), but in the instance of upwardly transfers to older parents, genetic reproduction is not at stake and, thus, we are faced with entertaining purely social explanations. Drawing on integrative mechanisms that focus on normative structures and transactional motives that focus on forms of aware self-interest, we adult the idea of pro-social norms as transmissible values across generations that have potential long-term benefit to the transmitter. Past conceptualising the socialisation of children as a moral capital investment, nosotros represent the family as moral economy within which parents inculcate their children to filial beliefs that redound positively to the parents in the grade of future intergenerational support. Moral capital is an orientation to activeness that has value to parents that provides added certainty that children volition exist solicitous and perhaps increases the likelihood that returns from other forms of investment in children will come to fruition.

Our discussion of moral majuscule has focused primarily on intra-familial relations without taking into consideration wider social structures. Where then does moral uppercase fit in relation to the welfare country that may substitute for family intendance? Public resources provided past the state are important considerations within a transactional approach to intergenerational transfers. The interdependence between the family and the generosity of welfare state regimes has been the topic of several multinational studies that mostly find that the utility of intergenerational relations tends to be weaker in nations with more than generous public services and benefits (Daatland and Lowenstein 2005; Hank 2007).

Related to these formulations are disquisitional theories that trace how the expansion of free market global capitalism has increased family care-work through welfare state retrenchment and the privatisation of run a risk (Phillipson 2003). We contend that land support for its older citizens embodies a collective form of moral capital that, similar to its family unit-based analogue, has compulsory elements (through tax) and is reproduced across generations as a socially desirable end (manifest through stability in the political structure). Rather than conclude, as some cultural critics take, that at that place has been a general turn down in the stock of moral capital letter in families over time, we argue that it is more probable that a portion of information technology has merely been transformed into its commonage incarnation. Variation in filial norms across cultural groups presents a challenge to our framework besides. Potent preferences for family unit care accept been noted in minority groups (Burr and Mutchler 1999) and information technology is likely that these preferences negatively correlate with access of such groups to state and/or private resources. In this sense, moral capital within families may exist compensatory for disadvantage at the group or societal level.

We provided an empirical examination of norms of filial responsibility in ii generations and showed evidence that back up was maximised when both mothers and their children held stiff norms of filial responsibility. Further, nosotros found this interaction merely when within-family sibling differences in norms were considered, not when the original value was used. This suggests that particular children are targeted for investment of moral uppercase and not all children within the same families are good bets. The mechanism of transmission may operate directly through training, give-and-take and modelling, or indirectly through third-party organisations over which parents have some control, such as religious and educational institutions that provide moral training of children. While we have correspondence in norms between mothers and children as evidence of transmission, alternative explanations may exist at piece of work. For instance, structural equivalence in occupational position across generations may provide an explanation for cross-generational correspondence that does not rest on socialisation.

We conclude by noting that the father of free-market economics, Adam Smith, fully recognised the limits of rational cocky-interest for explaining the motivations behind interpersonal transactions in families (Rosenberg 1990). In family relationships moral sentiments co-be with rational concerns over resource expenditures and returns on investments. We have suggested in this paper that moral capital exists in the space between strategic investments (by parents) and elementary altruism (of children), and as such represents two sides of the same intergenerational money. Nosotros advise that moral capital may be a useful unifying concept that bridges disciplinary and theoretical divides in the written report of intergenerational transfers to the elderly by helping resolve the paradox of how cocky-interest and selflessness can co-be within families.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294455/