Grown Children’s Provision of Financial and Instrumental Support to Midlife Mothers in Rural Mozambique

Natalia Toledo Melendez, UCLA
Victor Agadjanian, Department of Sociology and the International Institute University of California - Los Angeles
Cecilia Menjivar, University of California, Los Angles
Sarah R. Hayford, Ohio State University
Ines Raimundo, Eduardo Mondlane University

Instrumental and financial support exchanges between parents and children shift as children age and parents approach old age. This shift is particularly important in many rural settings in sub-Saharan Africa, where children are often considered to be the main form of support for their aging parents. Parents’ motivations and incentives to have children in settings with limited access to support systems have been analyzed from multiple angles going back to Samuelson and Caldwell; yet recent literature suggests a less straightforward picture. A number of factors—like escalating poverty, unstable labor markets, increasing rates of urbanization, illness, and unstable partnerships—have transformed the experiences of families and aging women. This paper takes an in-depth look at expectations of support between young adult children and their mothers in a province of rural Mozambique. We draw from 71 in-depth interviews with women with young adult children and support findings with descriptive and bivariate statistics from a panel of 1,803 women. Specifically, we analyze expectations of support and the contextual significance of meeting or not meeting such expectations. The final manuscript will contribute a rich, nuanced perspective to the literature on intergenerational exchanges by drawing from a unique collection of longitudinal in-depth interviews.

Keywords: Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Mixed methods research, Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations

See extended abstract.