When Gender Trumps Everything: The Division of Parent Care Among Siblings.

While previous research on the gender division of family labor consistently finds that "gender trumps money," recent studies of the gender division of parent care report a rather surprising finding -- that gender itself is trumped, though not by money but by kin relations. Arguing that most gender division of parent care takes place among brothers and sisters rather than husbands and wives, this article shifts the focus from married couples to sibling networks and examines how adult children share caring responsibilities for their parents. Using a large, nationally representative dataset, the author reports direct, indirect, and structural effects of gender on parent caregiving. First, daughters provide more care to their elder parents than sons, net of other factors. Second, daughter's caregiving appear to be more elastic than sons' with respect to constraints and resources associated with parent caregiving. Finally, not only the focal child's gender, but also his or her siblings' genders appear to be important in explaining parent caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]