It begins with a single, panicked phone call about a fallen parent or a flickering memory, but it is quickly becoming the defining white noise of a nation. As the American population ages and family structures splinter, a quiet domestic struggle has escalated into a pressing national inquiry: Who is actually responsible for our elders?
New insights from the University of Michigan suggest that while the American heart remains committed to the ideal of family-led care, the American household is running out of resources to provide it.
Sarah Patterson, a sociologist and demographer at the Institute for Social Research, joined the Michigan Minds podcast to talk about a high-stakes collision between universal moral values and a \"math problem\" that no longer adds up.
Q: Is the traditional family safety net fraying under the weight of several modern demographic shifts.
So I would say that our expectations for family is pretty universal. This is a widely held belief among many people, many nations, that families should help older adults with their care. But as you said, it's becoming sort of a math problem because older adults' families are changing. So we have higher rates of what's known as gray divorce or getting divorced later in life. Family estrangement has become a big topic. For instance, Oprah has been talking about it, so it's a big topic in the public. And there's these sort of family changes that are happening for older adults that call into question what our expectations might be in this changing sort of demographic environment.
My research is concerned with how we think about these expectations for families when families are changing… There is a question about whether these sorts of values will persist into the future as there's more pressure on smaller families to take care of older adults in the U.S.
Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.