Richer people less likely to care for parents

Increasing a person's wage can cause a significant drop in the amount of time they spend helping their parents with household chores, errands and transport.

For every ten per cent rise in their salary women will spend 36 per cent less time providing care and men will reduce their input by 18 per cent.

Having a sibling or other person equipped to help out makes the effect even more severe.

Olena Nizalova, of the Kiev Economics Institute, said her study on long-term care in America and Europe demonstrates that current global policies towards making care affordable are not compatible with each other.

Providing care for the elderly is becoming an ever more difficult problem because birth rates are declining and people are living longer and reaching retirement in record numbers.

Economists have suggested that the burden could be reduced by encouraging more women to take jobs and raising the retirement age in order to increase the workforce, and urging the families and friends of the elderly to provide more informal care themselves.

But the findings from the new study indicate that earning more money would be likely to lower rather than raise the amount of time people spend looking after their elderly relatives.

Involving an elderly person's wider family and friends in their care could also cause their children to more dramatically reduce the amount of time they spend helping out as their earnings rise.

The study of 2,790 American men and women who had at least one parent or parent-in-law alive in 1998 will be presented at a meeting of economics Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany.

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Posted in: likely,Parents,people,Richer

'Supermums' more likely to be depressed

A study of 1,600 married women found that those with jobs were less likely to suffer from depression than those who stayed at home to look after their family.

But of the women who did work, the happiest were those who accepted they could not "do it all" and had to make compromises in their professional or family lives.

Sacrificing some career goals or passing responsibility for some aspects of parenting to their husband helped women achieve a healthy work-life balance and made them happier as a result.

In contrast, those who tried to follow a stellar career path while also fulfilling the role of a domestic goddess become frustrated when they fail to live up to the "supermum" image.

Katrina Leupp, a graduate student from the University of Washington, analysed responses from the group of young women to an American government survey focused on their professional and family lives.

The women were asked to rank a series of statements about work-life balance, such as "A woman who fulfils her family responsibilities doesn't have time for a job outside the home" and "A woman is happiest if she can stay at home with her children", according to how much they agreed with them.

Ms Leupp then measured the women's level of depression at the age of 40.

She said: "Women are sold a story that they can do it all, but most workplaces are still designed for employees without childcare responsibilities.

"You can happily combine child rearing and a career, if you're willing to let some things slide."

The survey found that young women who firmly believed they could combine employment with family care were more likely to suffer from depression later in life than those who were less ambitious.

Expecting to be able to combine work and family life without making sacrifices, such as leaving the office early to do the school run, made women feel guilty when they struggled to do so.

Guilt over failing to achieve their desired work-family balance and dissatisfaction with the division of chores at home may also have contributed to the higher level of depression among "supermums", according to the study, which will be presented to the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Las Vegas today.

Ms Leupp said: "Employment is ultimately beneficial for women's health, even when differences in marital satisfaction and working full or part time are ruled out.

"Employed women who expected that work-life balance was going to be hard are probably more likely to accept that they can't do it all."

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Posted in: depressed,likely,Supermums