Resilience or social reproduction? Parental job loss and children’s prosocial development and caregiving after the Great Recession

Background: Family resilience foregrounds personal and relational transformations that might help families overcome adversity. Yet why and from whom resilience is required is often overlooked. Economic downturns are exemplary sites to examine these questions. Objective: I study children’s prosocial development and caregiving as interrelated expressions of family resilience in households affected by job loss during the Great Recession in Ireland. From a social reproduction perspective, I posit that the demands and capacities for resilience are unequally shared within families and across generations and follow a gendered pattern. Methods: I rely on cohort data from children’s early years to adolescence (Growing Up in Ireland, 2008–2022) to estimate growth-curve and OLS models for prosocial development and outcomes tied to caregiving. Results: Children whose mothers experienced job loss are rated more prosocial over time. Girls with younger siblings drive this finding. At age 13, the same group is more likely to share and fulfil caregiving duties. Findings suggest that mothers might have leaned on their children to maintain some paid work after job loss, stimulating their daughters’ prosocial development and involvement in caregiving. Contribution: The study highlights how economic downturns reinforce the gendered and generational underpinnings that bind the paid and unpaid work of family resilience.