Who visits whom? The balance of intergenerational face-to-face contact

Ori Rubin, University of Groningen
Clara H. Mulder, University of Groningen

We address the question: how is the effort of maintaining face-to-face (F2F) contact balanced between adult-children and their parents? Taking the Intergenerational Solidarity approach we hypothesise that the visiting and hosting balance is associated with two groups of factors: support needs, which include instrumental, health related and age related support, and opportunities for contact in the family network. We use data from the Netherlands on family networks and linear regression analysis to investigate which side of the intergenerational dyad travels (more) for F2F contact. We find that adult-children tend to visit their parents more than host them. The regression results suggest that adult-children who have siblings and those who have siblings that live close to the parents visit relatively more. Adult-children also visit more when their parents are 75 or older or chronically ill. Young adults, grandparents, parents who are car owners and those who provide instrumental support visit more. No significant differences between males and females were found.