ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Kathleen Adams and Tamara K. Hareven approach intergenerational supports from a life-course and historical perspective. This chapter aims to identify changes both in the practices of caregiving in aging parents' and in adult children's attitudes toward caregiving by comparing two cohorts of adult children. It examines the ways in which patterns of support among generations developed over the life course and were revised or adapted in the later years of life by a historical and developmental approach. A life-course perspective provides a way of understanding how relations of mutual support are formed over people's lifetime and how they are reshaped by historical circumstances such as migration, wars, or the collapse of local economies. The earlier life-course experiences of each cohort—as shaped by historical events—also affect availability of resources for their members, modes of assistance, coping abilities, and expectations.
