Parenting Later and Longer Impacts Parents 50-Plus

As both maternal and paternal age in the United States increase and life expectancy reaches the late 70s, Americans are parenting later and longer. To understand the impact to older adults, AARP fielded a survey to adults ages 50-plus who have adult children that addressed the extent to which they provide support to their adult children. The survey explored actions that parents have taken to parent adult children, as well as their own experiences and expectations relative to their own parents.

Overall, these parents are still providing various kinds of financial and emotional support to their adult children, and they have both positive and negative feelings about this support. Positives include:

• Being able to balance their professional and parenting duties without too much stress (71%).
• Being happy to be able to help financially support their adult children (55%).
• Feeling the benefits of parenting their adult child(ren) outweigh the challenges (49%).

However, concerns exist, including:

• Feeling like it is a bigger task than it was for their parents (37%).
• Being more involved in supporting their adult child now than they anticipated they would be (28%).

Their level of involvement and worries can impact parents’ day-to-day lives, particularly as they consider how their continued support could affect their own futures. This includes regularly thinking about:

• How to equip their children with skills to be financially secure (43%).
• Whether their child(ren) will be self-sufficient enough to support or care for them if needed (39%).
• How to have enough money for themselves now while also supporting their adult child(ren) (28%).
• How to save for their own retirement while also supporting their adult child(ren) (27%).

Compared to the experience of their own parents, 50-plus parents are more likely to say they provide more financial support to their adult children than their parents did (44%) for them, rather than less (26%).

Methodology

Interviews were conducted February 15–19, 2024 in the Foresight 50+ Omnibus among 1,010 adults ages 50-plus, including 771 who have adult children. Funded and operated by NORC at the University of Chicago, Foresight 50+ is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population ages 50 or older. Interviews were conducted online and via telephone. All data are weighted by age, sex, education, race/ethnicity, region, and AARP membership.

For more information, please contact Rebecca Perron of AARP Research at rperron@aarp.org. For media inquiries, contact External Relations at media@aarp.org.