The Intriguing Relation Between Parenting Styles and Eldercare

This paper develops an overlapping generations model analyzing parenting choices from a life cycle perspective. Young parents educate their children to foster their human capital development. Strict discipline requires minimal time from parents yet but can strain intergenerational relations. Pedagogical practice preserves familial bonds but demands significant time and effort, adversely affecting parental income. As parents age, they desire caregiving support from their adult children, who may bring earlier conflicts with their parents into the care environment. We suggest that the prevalence of strict discipline declines when the probability of living into old adulthood increases. We then incorporate health investments into the model to endogenize longevity and investigate the transitional dynamics of life expectancy, parenting styles, and human capital stock. Moreover, we examine how the interaction between parenting styles and monetary transfers induces children’s provision of eldercare in a bargaining framework. We characterize multiple stationary Markov perfect equilibria, shedding light on the observed diversity in parenting across different cultures.