Balancing work, family, and care responsibilities

Balancing Work, Family, and Care Responsibilities

Authors: Edward Pomeroy, University of St Andrews and Francesca Fiori, University of Strathclyde

How do adult children balance competing demands of work, family, and informal caregiving? Our study explores how these dynamics shape the provision of informal care from adult children towards their parents (Pomeroy & Fiori, 2025).

The Growing Need for Informal Care:

Population ageing is reshaping societies worldwide, with an increasing number of older adults requiring assistance due to chronic illnesses, disabilities, or age-related vulnerabilities. Informal care, unpaid support provided by family and friends, plays a crucial role in meeting these needs. Estimates show that there are 10.6 million informal carers in the UK, underscoring their importance in delivering health and social care to those in need (Carers UK, 2022). Adult children are often at the heart of the caregiving network and frequently provide care to support their ageing parents. However, an adult child’s involvement in care provision is not solely determined by the needs of their parents but is also shaped by a complex interplay of their personal factors including the various demands of daily life, such as balancing work and raising children. Our study provides new insights into the interplay between individual and household level factors and how they shape the provision of parental caregiving.

Competing Demands for Care Provision:

Balancing caregiving with other responsibilities is no easy feat. Adult children often find themselves pulled in multiple directions, building careers, raising children, and managing household tasks, among others. As such, adult children differ widely in their own personal circumstances, and the combination of these factors may influence their involvement in providing care to their parents. Furthermore, the competing demands they may face are not distributed equally and vary by demographic and socio-economic factors. For example, societal norms frequently position women as primary caregivers. Employment status adds an additional layer of complexity, as full-time workers may struggle to find the time for caregiving. On the other hand, part-time employment may enable greater involvement in care provision, though potentially at the cost of career progression or financial stability. Additionally, adult children may become ‘sandwich caregivers’ simultaneously providing care to their children and parents. This diversity in personal characteristics can impact their involvement in care provision to their parents, as some may face multiple competing demands simultaneously, whilst others will not.

Key Empirical Findings:

Our study uses data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (University of Essex, Institute for Social and Economic Research, 2024), a nationally representative annual survey of the UK population, and employs an innovative quantitative method known as multicategorical multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (Evans et al., 2024). This approach enables us to quantify both the additive and combined effects of the competing demands in shaping adult children’s involvement in care provision to their parents.

Our results show that certain elements of the competing demands, such as gender, the presence of children, and employment status, all affect the provision of informal care. Additionally, for certain groups facing multiple competing demands at once the combination of factors makes involvement in care provision especially prominent for them. Specifically, we find that the combination of being a woman, without children and providing care inside the household to another family member with care needs, creates a specific social profile in which adult children have a notably higher predicted probability of providing parental care.

This result highlights the structural and normative dynamics that shape caring roles within families (Batur et al., 2024). The absence of dependent children can significantly reduce household responsibilities, freeing up time for other caring tasks, an effect that is especially pronounced for women who are most likely to assume child-caring duties (McMunn et al., 2020). Moreover, this aligns with broader societal expectations that position women as primary caregivers within families, including care provided inside the home (Vangen & Herlofson, 2023). Notably, this patterning persists irrespective of employment status or income, supporting the idea that women disproportionately take on caring responsibilities regardless of employment or financial status (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004; Haberkern et al., 2015).

Implications for Policy:

As the UK’s population will continue to age in the next decades, so too will the societal demand for informal care. While the health and care sector will have to adjust to the new demographic landscape, families will play an even more crucial role in the provision of informal care and in enabling the ‘ageing in place’ of their older members. By understanding who takes on this role, and the personal and family circumstances that shape their experiences, we can better inform targeted interventions to support informal caregivers. Recognising these groups is essential, as those unequally involved in caregiving may also be more likely to experience the consequences of providing care. Whilst not all impacts of providing care are negative, many can adversely affect carers in a range of outcomes including on their health and economic well-being (Bauer & Sousa-Poza, 2015). As such, by identifying the competing demands involved in family care provision, we can help to prevent inequalities widening or newly developing for those who provide informal care (Oxfam Great Britain, 2024).

One policy measure gaining increased recognition to support informal caregivers is flexible working. Firstly, the Carer's Leave Act 2023, effective from April 6th 2024, grants all employed informal carers a new statutory right to take five days of unpaid leave annually to attend to their caring duties. Similarly, the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023, also introduced on April 6th 2024, provides employees and other workers the right to request changes to specific elements of their employment, including working hours and locations. These policies highlight the crucial role of flexible working, such as working-from-home, in enabling informal carers to balance the competing demands between work, family and care responsibilities (Pomeroy & Fiori, 2024). While these changes are an important step in supporting informal caregivers, it is crucial that flexible working arrangements and other targeted interventions remain at the forefront of policy discussions to promote a fairer and sustainable system of care.