You give your child life, a home, food, love, and encouragement – don’t they owe you something in return?
A YouGov survey from July 2026 shows that roughly half of the country believes that adult children have a moral obligation to care for their parents if they become ill in old age. Meanwhile, just 30 per cent believe there is a duty to have their parents live with them. Some people believe you’re obligated to give your parents grandchildren, while others believe that all you owe them is a phone call now and then. Those who don’t believe that we don’t owe our parents anything at all tend to argue that they didn’t ask to be born, that they never signed a contract. In reality, of course, the relationship between a child and their parent tends to be less transactional than that, and more emotionally complex.
The most pressing question in today’s UK is perhaps what we owe our parents in terms of care. This is a crucial debate for families, but also our new Prime Minister, who has become leader of a nation with a rapidly ageing population. It is estimated that 46 per cent of the population will be aged 50 and over by 2065. The number of people aged 65 and over in England is projected to increase by 3.3 million in the next 20 years and by 6.5 million in the next 40 years. People are living longer than ever, with increasingly complex conditions that they would not have survived before medicine became so advanced.
