6. Conclusie en discussie
6.4. Concluderende opmerkingen
Dit onderzoek is één van de weinige onderzoeken die een vorm van steun onderzoekt die specifiek gerelateerd is aan een bepaalde gebeurtenis en kan als eerste iets zeggen over steun van kinderen bij de pensionering. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat relatief weinig ouders steun krijgen van hun kinderen bij de pensionering. Hoewel er geen harde uitspraken kunnen worden gedaan over de waarde van zowel altruïstische theorieën als exchange theorieën, zijn deze theorieën vanuit de intergenerationele literatuur wel nuttig gebleken voor dit onderzoek naar steun van kinderen bij de pensionering. De resultaten suggereren dat kinderen eerder steun geven als zij zelf steun hebben ontvangen of als de ouder geen partner heeft die steun kan geven. Verder suggereren verschillende resultaten van deze studie dat juist de personen die meer behoefte hebben aan steun, gemiddeld niet meer steun ontvangen van hun kinderen dan andere gepensioneerden. Maar een beperkte groep ouderen krijgt wel veel steun bij de pensionering van hun kinderen. Kinderen lijken niet goed mee te leven met een belangrijke levensgebeurtenis als de pensionering, welke ook steeds belangrijker wordt omdat men een steeds groter deel van het leven als gepensioneerde doorbrengt. Dit terwijl het hebben van kinderen wel bepalend is voor het tijdstip van pensionering (e.g., Szinovacz, Deviney & Davey, 2001; Raymo & Sweeney, 2006). Voor de ouders is de relatie met de kinderen ook op later leeftijd belangrijk omdat zij een groot deel van hun netwerk uitmaken (Antonnucci & Akiyama, 1987). Een vraag die blijft liggen is daarom of ouderen die geen steun van hun kinderen krijgen bij de pensionering deze steun van andere personen in hun netwerk zoeken of geen behoefte hebben aan steun. Het eerste kan zorgwekkend zijn omdat kinderen in het leven van ouders een belangrijke rol innemen, eerder onderzoek laat zien dat men weinig met ex-collega’s over de pensionering praat (Bossé, 1993) en er voor het ontvangen van sociaal-emotionele steun weinig formele mogelijkheden zijn. De tweede optie, geen behoefte aan steun, creëert nieuwe vragen over hoe de transitie van werk naar pensioen wordt beleefd.
English summary
Intergenerational support in the transition from work to retirement
The population in the Netherlands is aging. Because relatively more people are retired and generations live longer at the same time, both research on retirement and intergenerational relations is becoming more important. This thesis combines these two fields and studies whether the parents receive socio-emotional support from their children during the transition from work to retirement. No research has yet been done on this subject, but similar research concerning other life-events, like losing a partner of the decline of health, show that support from children can increase the parent’s wellbeing. Retirement is often seen as an important life- event because of the loss of the work-role. Other research shows that having children living at home delays retirement, mostly because of financial reasons, and can influence the adjustment to retirement. Children are also a big part of the network of retirees. Therefore, children seem to play a role in the transition from work to retirement.
The research questions are: To what extent do children support their parents in the
transition from work to retirement? and How can differences in the amount of support retirees receive from their children in the transition from work to retirement be explained?
By support is meant the support parents think they receive or have received from their children in the transition from work to retirement. The questions respondents were asked are: I
have talked a lot with my children about life after retirement; My children often ask how I experience quitting my job; My children have been very supportive, now I’m not working anymore
and If I didn’t have children, life after retirement would have been more difficult. Based on factor analysis two dimensions of support were distinguished: social support and emotional support. Social support focuses on the interaction between parents and children (the first two questions) and emotional support focuses on feelings and the appreciation of support (last two questions).
To answer the research questions data collected by the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute were used: the NIDI Work and Retirement Panel. Respondents were questioned in 2001, 2007 and 2011 about their work situation, retiring from the labour force and life after retirement. This research used data from the third wave. In total 774 of the 1275 respondents that participated in the third wave were both retired and had children. Respondents that did not answer the questions that constitute the dependent variable were deleted from the data. The remaining missing values were filled in using multiple imputation. Only forty percent of the respondents positively answered at least one of the questions. This means that more than half of the respondents do not seem to receive support during the transition from work to retirement. Only a fifth of the respondents receive social support and
one-third emotional support. Possible explanations for these differences for the amount of support parents receive were found in the intergenerational literature.
Altruistic theories state that people will help other people without expecting anything in return. Children would support their parents in the transition from work to retirement when they are in need of support. To test this theory several work and transition characteristics were examined. Retirees who before their retirement didn’t participate in a lot of activities apart from their work, worked longer hours or retired involuntarily were expected to be more attached to the work role and therefore in need of more support. The regression analyses show that these groups do not receive more support from their children. It is possible that certain mechanism work against each other. Retirees that were more attached to the work role, and therefore need more support, might have a lower quality relationship with their children because they were so busy with their job. It is also possible that these variables are not good indicators of who needs support, as it is an indirect measure. An effect was found for women who had a psychically demanding job. They received less support than women who did not have a psychically demanding job. This is probably because they experience leaving their job as a relief and therefore have fewer issues with adjustment. Last but not least, retirees who do not have a partner received more support from their children than retirees that do have a partner. Earlier research shows that retirees without a partner have more adjustment issues and the partner is often the most important person in their support network.
Exchange theories state that people exchange support. This would mean parents will receive more support in the transition from work to retirement if they give more support to their children. This hypothesis was tested by examining whether parents who took care of their grandchildren, helped their children with practical matters or in the household or still had financially dependent children received more support. Analyses show that the more often grandparents babysat their grandchildren, the more support they received during the transition from work to retirement. This was also the case for helping with practical matters, but only for male retirees. Parents with financially dependent children received, contrary to the expectation, less support than parents without financially dependent children. A possible explanation is that parents experience financially dependent children as a burden when they are retired and therefore do not value their support as much.
At last, this study also examines the effects of gender and the number of children the retiree has. These factors can influence the number of possibilities there are to receive support. Woman have more contact with their children and the more children you have, the higher the chance you will be in contact with at least one of them. In the analyses gender did not influence the amount of support a retiree receives from their children, but the more children retirees have the more support they get.
All analyses controlled for health, financial situation, age, number of years since retirement and education level.
This study is limited. First of all, socio-emotional support is a difficult concept to measure. Secondly, because the data focus on work and retirement, there is less information available about the children. It was not possible to take into account the relationship quality or certain characteristics of the children. A third limitation that even though it was part of a panel-study, the questions about giving and receiving support were only part of the third wave. A problem with cross-sectional data is the uncertainty of the direction of the relationship between the variables. It might be that the parents started giving support to their children, because they received support during the transition from work to retirement instead of the other way around. A fourth limitation of this study concerns the sampling. The data was collected in large companies in the Netherlands and it is unclear to what extent the results can be generalized to other companies and other countries.
In conclusion, this study shows that only a minority of the retirees receive support from their children in the transition from work to retirement. Children are more likely to support their parents if they receive support in return or if their parent does not have a partner. It is possible though that not all parents do not need support from their children, because they either experience no adjustment issues at all or rather receive support from other people in their network.
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