The principle of ‘give and take’ is as old as time itself. In Ancient Greece, it was called «δούναι και λαβείν» , literally meaning "give and take", and in Latin it was “quid pro quo”, a phrase used to denote a mutual exchange of goods or services of equal, or near equal, value. In more colloquial terms, it’s “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”. This principle guides more than we think, within and outside the home and family, within and beyond our work. The principle is simple enough: often (but not always), people give their time/money/support/other types of resources, expecting to get it back in the same or a different form. Perhaps not immediately, maybe in the medium or long-term – but eventually, they expect to get it back. In academic lingo, we call this reciprocity, that is the expectation that when different types of resources are offered/ given, these will likely be reciprocated in due course.
Not everything in life is guided by this principle, of course – and that’s a good thing. A different term in academia, describes the situation where time/money/ support/ other types of resources are given, but not necessarily expected back – this is called altruism. One gives something because they simply want to or feeling generous, without expectations of getting it back. Reciprocal and altruistic theories of exchange are both part of the same continuum, but essentially describe different dimensions of the same principle of ‘give and take’.
Having worked in academia for almost 20 years, I have accumulated several experiences which were intellectually intriguing and insightful at the same time. One of these experiences relates to an intriguing finding from a piece of collaborative research that I was part of in the ESRC Centre for Population Change, which is an interdisciplinary team undertaking research on the causes and consequences of population change. The experience of working as part of a brilliant research team was, in itself, a rewarding experience of ‘give and take’ in practice, as many productive academic relationships are, particularly within a team.
During this particular piece of research, I worked with Professor Maria Evandrou, Professor Jane Falkingham (both at the University of Southampton, and co-directing the Centre for Population Change) and Dr Madelin Gomez-Leon (now at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain), to analyse a special dataset called the 1958 National Child Development Study. It is special because it is a cohort dataset: it follows a specific group of more than 17,000 persons born in a specific week in March 1958 in Great Britain – the first time they were interviewed (next to their parents), they were aged 7, and at their most recent interview in 2026, they were aged 68 years old.
When we analysed the dataset, these respondents were aged 50. We were interested in the extent to which the receipt of parental help earlier in the lifecourse affects the chances of adult children reciprocating with support towards their parents later in life (when the adult children were aged 50, and their parents were in their late 70s and 80s). First, we found that about three-quarters of mid-life adults had received some support from their parents earlier in life, and at age 50 more than half were providing care to their elderly parents. We did find evidence of the ‘give and take’ principle, as people who had received some support from their parents earlier in life were indeed more likely to provide care to their elderly parents later in life. About 57% of sons and 60% of daughters who had received support earlier in life (and had at least one elderly parent alive) provided care to an elderly parent, and this percentage dropped to 49% of children who had not received any support earlier in their life from their parents.
But here comes the twist, and intriguing part of the findings: the patterns of support received and provided across the lifecourse differed markedly by gender. Sons were more likely to have received help with finances earlier in the lifecourse, and daughters with child care. But it was the receipt of help with accommodation earlier in life for sons, and the receipt of help with childcare for daughters, which significantly increased the likelihood of providing care to an elderly parent later in life.
What do these results tell us? Firstly, the principle of ‘give and take’ does not apply strictly speaking to parent-child relationships, rather there are more complex, deeper embodiments of love, respect, obligation which guide such relationships, and are well beyond the remit of advanced statistical analyses. Secondly, and where the principle of ‘give and take’ is evident, what is offered later in life depends on what kind of support was given earlier in life, and has strong gender dimensions. Although these results tell us something about this special cohort of more than 17,000 children born in the same week in March 1958, they may not apply to different cultural contexts, or to these children’s children who are now in their mid-life themselves.
Perhaps these research findings are not that surprising. After all, we all have many experiences where the principle of ‘give and take’ held true, and some experiences (maybe life lessons?) where it didn’t. Still, it is rewarding to represent a tiny dimension of the marvel of human relationships with a statistical model, and it’s not a bad ice-breaker either.
Reference
Evandrou, Maria, Falkingham, Jane, Gomez-Leon, Madelin and Vlachantoni, Athina (2018) Intergenerational flows of support between parents and adult children in Britain. Ageing & Society, 38 (2), 321-351. (doi:10.1017/S0144686X16001057).