How does wealth flow from parents to their adult children? Why do parents give – and their adult children accept – apartments, cars, or cash? What moral intentions and norms activate this flow, justify it, and give it direction? What life situations mobilize transfers, and which cases do not deserve financial support from parents? What does it mean today to provide adult children with a proper ‘start’ in life? In this presentation, I analyze social practices and cultural discourses around transfers of wealth transfers from living parents to their adult children. Based on family interviews conducted in 24 households of parents and their adult children (25-38 years old), the presentation explores various forms and dynamics of transfers of wealth received by early adults from their parents and shows the importance of cultural and moral frames in shaping economic actions in an intergenerational, familial context. Intergenerational financial transfers reflect the mutual entanglement of the wealth and family relationships and mobilize taking into consideration parents’ obligations to their children, the principles of justice, transfer conditions, and the right to control. At the same time, financial flows allow families to make attempts of achieving social mobility in a multi-generational plan, by using funds to situate next generations higher in social stratification. While both parents and their adult children express a strong acceptance for downward transfers and take them for granted, receiving a transfer creates an obligation to reciprocate not upward to the donors but down to the next generation of recipients. The key value that guides these transfers is the pursuit of improving living conditions for future generations.
Intergenerational transfers: giving and receiving money in families
Written by ptsadmin
Grupa tematyczna: G72
Słowa kluczowe: intergenerational transfers, money, wealth, parents, adult children
Prelegent: Marta Olcoń-Kubicka