As parents age, adult children living with their parents receive financial support to provide a safety net for low-income parents. A recent survey found that about half of these children pay rent and 90% contribute to household costs (Pew Research Center, 2012). Of those who have at least one living parent aged 65 or over, about a third (32%) say that in the past year they provided financial support to their parents.
Research suggests that parents are more likely to provide information, spend more time listening to adult children and provide more childcare to their grandchildren (Fingerman et al., 2015; Henretta, Grundy & Harris, 2002). Adult children from better families are also less likely to seek higher education and student status is associated with parental support including time, money and the well-being of the world (FINGERMAN ET al., 2016; HENRETAFFA, Wolf, van Voorhis & Soldo, 2012).
Taking into account this period of improvement, children of older mothers in Sweden had higher cognitive abilities [32], were larger, had better school grades, and achieved higher educational attainment [33]. They also had fathers in Sweden who had a lower mortality rate [34]. Recent research suggests that the ability of rapid phase of improvement to offset the negative effects of reproductive age is not limited to high-income countries and that lower-income countries have experienced a rapid decline in infant mortality, with children born to older mothers more likely to survive childhood [35].
The central idea is that a child is better off if it is born earlier by the same parents. It benefits from less stress and the ability to gain more knowledge through education, and studies have shown that children become sharper as they age. Recent studies have also shown the benefits of later motherhood.
A study published in the American Geriatrics Society Journal tested 830 middle-aged women to see if there was a link between having a later child and brain function. They found that women who had their first child at 24 were better at solving problems than their peers with children under 24. They also found that women with their last child at the age of 35 have sharper cognitive and verbal memory.
The researchers ruled out genetic factors, but in fact they found evidence that children born later are healthier than first-borns. There may also be differences in sibling and family dynamics during early childhood.
As young adults, children of older parents are exposed to their parents at an early age to emotional, medical and financial responsibility. They often find themselves having to make a choice between seemingly insignificant options, like the casino rewards vip patrons are offered and something like thinking about the financial future of their children, long before it becomes a more urgent consideration to have to make. They are also becoming more aware of their parents “age and want to spend as much time with them as possible and gain as much experience as possible. For many children, the emotional structure of their childhood and their experiences in early adulthood differ from those of peers whose parents are younger.