Contrary to a persistent cliché, as summer approaches, families do not rush to place their elderly loved ones in nursing homes so they can go on vacation. Yet the idea of a selfish society persists, fueled by the media and politicians during crises, such as the 2003 heat wave. Research on family solidarity paints a very different picture. How can we explain why this reality remains invisible?
Reluctance to pass a law on end-of-life care is reviving a number of negative stereotypes about families and their supposed selfishness. Some family members might, out of self-interest, encourage their elderly relative to seek this assistance in dying—either to receive an inheritance or to avoid paying for a nursing home. As for the vulnerable individuals involved, they are more likely to seek this assistance when their feelings of abandonment by loved ones and social isolation are at their most acute.
During the COVID-19 health crisis and the heat wave of the summer of 2003, families suspected of neglecting their loved ones—whether in care facilities or at home—had already been stigmatized.
While not denying that some people do feel isolated, it seems necessary to shed light on the reality of these intergenerational family bonds. And above all, to understand how negative perceptions—which have developed over the past two centuries—have intensified since the 2000s.
Family Ties That Go Unnoticed
Families have long been suspected of shifting their responsibilities onto the public welfare system. This view emerged with the development of a welfare system in France, alongside the rise of anti-individualist and moralizing thought in the 19th century.
Solidarity with the elderly is based on the principle of subsidiarity, grounded in particular in Article 205 of the Civil Code (1804) and the obligation of descendants to provide support to their ascendants. Public assistance is provided—for elderly individuals of good character and without means—only if their families are unable or too poor to support their relatives. This includes placement in nursing homes as well as the provision of home care services, which became widespread with the Assistance Act of July 14, 1905. Under this law, the amounts paid by families to support their elderly relatives are deducted from the (already minimal) sums allocated by public assistance.
Yet the needs are immense in a society where there is no retirement system and where people’s bodies are worn down by work. Many elderly people are forced to apply for admission to a care facility to escape poverty and thus join a long waiting list. In this context, families overwhelmingly opt for clandestine assistance: this involves concealing from the authorities the small amount of money they might give to their elderly parents who remain at home.
This situation came to light during World War I when sons, sent to the front, could no longer carry out these secret money transfers. Deprived of this financial support, many elderly people then sank into the most extreme poverty. The invisibility of these forms of solidarity at the turn of the century gave rise to the myth that families would abandon their loved ones to their own fate or that they would commit fraud to avoid fulfilling their obligation to provide financial support or to prevent the estate from being seized after death.
Living Together or Living as Neighbors
During the interwar period, the number of people entering care facilities continued to rise, alongside growing suspicion toward families. Although families did what they could, the deteriorating economic situation and the specter of unemployment made it more difficult for them to help an elderly relative.
During the Occupation and the 1950s, however, intergenerational cohabitation increased—along with its share of intrafamilial tensions—but it was a necessity brought about by the exceptional circumstances of the period. First, there was the need to get a parent out of the nursing home to prevent them from starving; then, after the war, there was an acute housing crisis affecting all generations of French people.
The sharp decline in this type of cohabitation beginning in the 1960s and the increase in the proportion of older adults living alone are interpreted as a decline in solidarity within families—including by sociologists who focus on the breakdown of contemporary family ties, in parallel with the rise in divorce rates. For their part, doctors denounce what they call “the fishing rod syndrome”: families “dropping off” their elderly relatives at the hospital for the duration of their vacations.
Yet these moralizing and guilt-inducing condemnations mask another reality: the glaring lack of government support for caregiving families and the absence of respite care programs to allow them to take a break for a few weeks. Furthermore, social changes are making acts of solidarity even less visible. Intergenerational cohabitation is on the decline as the housing crisis eases, and older adults, who are in better health, aspire to live independently.
But living alone does not mean living in isolation. In the early 1970s, geographer Françoise Cribier and sociologist Claudette Collot demonstrated the importance of intergenerational proximity in housing. Regular visits from adult children thus foster new, intimate relationships despite the distance. Following in their footsteps, several studies—such as those by Agnès Pitrou —highlight the importance of this rediscovery of family solidarity and the choice of living arrangements.
As a result, there has been a growing number of studies that define kinship as a network of mutual support. During the 1980s, the social sciences began using the term “family caregivers”:the protective capacity of the family was contrasted with the limitations of public protection.
These studies emphasize the role that families are expected to play—and do play—in promoting the health of frail older adults. They use various concepts, some of which are borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon world: support, aid, care, and assistance.
Research in gerontology and the sociology of health examines family solidarity in terms of social support; it also highlights the existence of “pivotal generations” or “sandwich generations”—generations of caregivers caught between caring for the elderly and supporting children or young adults.
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Persistent Stereotypes About Intergenerational Relationships
While scientific research on family care challenges the notion of a decline in family involvement, this biased view continues to be perpetuated by policymakers and the media. In *Le Paravent des égoïsmes*, published in 1989, the former Minister of Health and Family Affairs, Michèle Barzach, revisits the narrative of a supposed decline in solidarity, denouncing a “collective selfishness, which is leading us toward the slow decline of the population, and an individual selfishness that, in the name of national solidarity, excuses us from looking around us.” She also condemns the end of intergenerational cohabitation with the elderly, which she argues has not been replaced by “other forms of solidarity.” This, she argues, “has contributed to the exclusion of the elderly, as improvements in their material circumstances are not enough to compensate for their isolation.”
In 1989, to guard against families motivated by financial gain, the law on foster care established the terms of compensation for foster families, but excluded biological families that would take in an elderly parent. During the 1990s, during debates on the creation of a long-term care allowance, some senators expressed suspicion that families wantedto “shift their obligations onto social services.”
These ideological views resurfaced during the 2003 heat wave, in which the vast majority of the victims (14,802 deaths) were over 75 years old. Political leaders and the media wrongly accused families of neglecting their loved ones during the summer , as historian Richard Keller clearly demonstrates. They spread this claim even though 64% of the deaths occurred in care facilities, particularly in nursing homes.
During the years 2000–2020, in a context where the prevailing trend was toward keeping elderly people in their own homes, families who nevertheless placed their elderly relatives in a care facility were suspected of abandoning them. And since the cost of housing in a long-term care facility—after subtracting the state-funded portion—is their responsibility, they were also suspected of hoping for the shortest possible stay. From there, it is only a short step to assuming that some family members might wish for a quick death—especially since this could be carried out with the complicity of some members of the medical profession who might view it as a form of lethal therapy—risks that critics of the law on assisted dying frequently cite.
However, this overlooks the fact that these families—particularly women caregivers—are the primary providers of “ care "in our contemporary societies, whether the elderly family member remains at home or in a care facility. And that a law on end-of-life care with such far-reaching societal implications cannot be accepted without French families being involved and endorsing it, in one way or another. Only under this condition will this new provision function fully, as the examples from Belgium and the Netherlands show.
This article is part of the KAPPA project , “Conditions for Access to Public Assistance and Policies Promoting Independence: Origins, Implications, and Prospects for the Evolution of Age-Based Segmentation,” which receives support from the French National Research Agency (ANR), the agency that funds project-based research in France. The ANR’s mission is to support and promote the development of basic and applied research across all disciplines, and to strengthen the dialogue between science and society. For more information, visit theANR website.
