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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1418472
This article is part of the Research Topic Analyses on Health Status and Care Needs among Older Adults View all 18 articles

The family as provider of intergenerational support during COVID-19: a study into the mental health consequences for older Europeans

Provisionally accepted
Lore Van Herreweghe Lore Van Herreweghe *Wim Van Lancker Wim Van Lancker
  • Centre for Sociological Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Intergenerational support is an important determinant of mental health. Due to limited access to formal care, the role of the family as provider of support became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, it remains unclear how intergenerational support from adult children to older parents was affected during the pandemic and whether this had consequences for the mental health of the parent generation. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Corona Surveys, we explore whether changes in support going from non-coresident adult children to their parents are associated with parents' increase in depressive feelings. Additionally, we test whether the pandemic context and public health measures affected this relationship. Families responded by providing more support. These changes in intergenerational support, however, were related to increased depressive feelings for the older parents. Furthermore, both the strictness of public health measures and the concurrent epidemiological situation affected this relationship. We conclude that the family is an essential source of late-life well-being, but stressful life events, such as public health crises, put pressure on these intergenerational relations with potential adverse mental health outcomes. Future policies should take into account the ambivalent nature of intergenerational relationships.

    Keywords: Intergenerational support, Intergenerational Relations, Informal care, Mental Health, COVID-19

    Received: 19 Apr 2024; Accepted: 09 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Van Herreweghe and Van Lancker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lore Van Herreweghe, Centre for Sociological Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

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