The Intriguing Relation Between Parenting Styles and Eldercare

This paper analyzes the effect of longevity on parenting choices from a life course perspective.
We develop an overlapping generations model to address a core tradeoff that young parents face
when investing in their children’s human capital. They can choose a low-time-cost demanding
strategy that risks straining intergenerational relations or a time-intensive pedagogical method
that fosters familial bonds at the cost of reduced parental income. Aging parents value attention
of their adult children, who uphold the eldercare norm while bringing the shared history of their
relationship into the caregiving environment. The rising future need for eldercare heightens the
value of pedagogical effort for building relational capital and reveals parental demandingness
as counterproductive. Our analysis suggests that longer life expectancy reduces the prevalence
of authoritarian parenting practices, while higher income promotes greater pedagogical effort.
We characterize the steady states of parenting styles and human capital and then examine their
dynamic responses to changes in longevity and eldercare time.