As a religious law, adage, and recipe for generational reciprocity, the “honor commandment” looms large as a societal construct, especially with 76 million baby boomers in the United States approaching old age. This article explores how the honor commandment persists as a normative ethic in the lived practice of elder care and the ways that it is supported by, or at odds with, secular legal imperatives of elder care.

Much in the way that the biblical story of Ruth provides a broad interpretation of how to live the honor commandment, this interdisciplinary exploration is informed by contemporary experiences of elder care culled from ethnographic interviews as well as by theological, demographic, and legal source material. We argue that the honor commandment continues to support practical adherence to largely unknown legal obligations. Caring for aging and ill parents can impose burdens on the caretakers that secular laws often fail to alleviate, particularly because of changes in the structure of twenty-first-century families. We suggest potential reforms that could better facilitate honoring seriously ill elders and the grown children who care for them.

This paper examines the relationship between attitudes of filial responsibility and five different types of care-giving behaviours to parents among three cultural groups. It does so within an assessment of the relative importance of cultural versus structural factors for care-giving behaviours. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 100 Caucasian-Canadians, 90 Chinese-Canadians and 125 Hong Kong-Chinese. Multiple regression analyses assessed the association of cultural and structural factors with behaviours among the total sample and each of the three cultural groups. Limited support was found for an association between care-giving attitudes and care-giving behaviours. Attitudes are related to emotional support only among the two Chinese groups as well as to financial support among Chinese-Canadian respondents and to companionship among Hong Kong-Chinese respondents. Attitudes are not the strongest predictors and are unrelated to assistance with basic and instrumental activities of daily living. However, cultural group per se is a strong predictor of care-giving behaviours as are: parental ill health, living arrangements, and relationship quality. This study suggests gerontological assumptions about the role of societal norms and personal attitudes in parental care-giving should be questioned. It also suggests the need for further inquiry into unpacking those aspects of ‘cultural group’ that are related to behavioural differences, and the importance of examining multiple types of care-giving behaviours and of distinguishing task-oriented helping behaviour from other types of assistance.

A desire to ‘return’ or ‘pay back’ past care has been identified as a potential motivator of support provided by adult children to their ageing parents. The purpose of this study is to examine whether, how and in what ways adult children interpret and apply the concept of delayed reciprocity in filial relationships. Twenty-eight men and women supporting one or both ageing parent(s) in a Western Canadian city participated in a qualitative study of filial responsibility. Data were analysed interpretively, using thematic coding, contextualised reflection and guiding questions. Findings suggest delayed reciprocity is limited as an interpretive framework for describing parent support. Overall, comments reflected qualification or rejection of ‘paying back’ in the sense of a filial contract. Delayed reciprocity appears for most participants to symbolise imbalance, expectedness or obligation, and a lack of affection. In response, participants tended to reject delayed reciprocity in favour of interpretations emphasising mutuality, family role duties and reciprocated love. Findings are discussed in relation to interpretive purposes, symbolic meanings of parent support, participant characteristics and cultural contexts.

This study examines whether and how couples share the provision of informal care for their parents. Four waves of the British General Household Survey contain cross-sectional information about caring for parents and parents-in-law. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted on 2214 couples that provided parent care. The findings emphasise married men's contribution to informal caring for the parental generation and at the same time demonstrate the limits of their involvement. Spouses share many parts of their care-giving but this arrangement is less common with respect to personal and physical care. The more care is required the more likely are people to participate in care for their parents-in-law. More sons-in-law than daughters-in-law provide care but, once involved, daughters-in-law provide on average more hours of care than sons-in-law. Own full-time employment reduces both men's and women's caring for their parents-in-law, and men's caring drops further if their wife is not in the labour market. The findings suggest that daughters-in-law often take direct responsibility whereas sons-in-laws' care-giving depends more on their wives' involvement. Children-in-laws' informal care-giving might decrease in the future because of women's increasing involvement in the labour market and rising levels of non-marital cohabitation in mid-life.