Older parents in China rely heavily on their adult children for instrumental assistance. In different multi-child families, multiple offspring may co-operate in providing instrumental support to older parents in distinct ways in terms of how much support they provide on average and how much differentiation exists between them when they provide such support within a family. We aimed to identify different within-family patterns in relation to multiple offspring's instrumental support to an older parent in Chinese multi-child families, and to investigate potential predictors for different within-family patterns. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (2016), we had a working sample of 5,790 older adults aged 60+ (mean = 68.54, standard deviation = 6.60). We employed latent profile analysis (LPA) to classify within-family patterns and multinomial logistic regression to investigate predictors. Our findings identified three within-family patterns: dissociated (59.10%), highly differentiated (29.60%) and united-filial (11.30%). Older parents in the highly differentiated families tended to be older, mothers, divorced/widowed and to have poorer physical health compared to their counterparts in the dissociated families. In contrast, the composition characteristics of multiple adult children played more important roles in determining the united-filial within-family pattern. The united-filial families were more likely to have fewer adult children, at least one adult daughter and at least one co-residing adult child.

Research has shown that mothers often differentiate among their adult children in terms of closeness and support; however, studies have not addressed why some mothers report preferences among children and others do not. To distinguish between mothers who do and do not report favouring some of their adult children, we used data from a within-family study in which 553 older mothers were interviewed about each of their children. Almost all of the mothers reported differentiating among their children regarding emotional closeness, confiding, or preference among caregivers. Multivariate analyses revealed that mothers' values and mother-child value similarity predicted which mothers differentiated among their children regarding closeness and confiding, whereas mothers' and children's demographic characteristics predicted which mothers differentiated regarding preferred caregivers. Black mothers were less likely than white mothers to differentiate when seeking a confidant; however, race played no role in mothers' likelihood of differentiating regarding emotional closeness or help during illness. Taken together, these findings indicate that differentiating among adult children is common; further, family-level predictors of mothers' differentiating mirror the patterns shown in dyad-level analyses of mothers' favouritism.