Family as a provider of social support: the Lithuanian case

Abstract

demographic ageing. These developments pose many challenges to a family as a primary caregiver and provider of support. The second section discusses the individual perceptions about the role of family in care giving and examines the peculiarities of informal social support networks, aiming to discover the place of close family members in these networks and to reveal the importance of gender in provision of informal care and assistance within a family. Analysis is based on the data of questionnaire survey of the Lithuanian population “Trajectories of family models and social networks: intergenerational dimension”, conducted in 2011-2011. The respondents (N = 2000) represent Lithuanian population of four age cohorts (persons born in 1950-1955, 1960-1965, 1970-1975 and 1980-1985).