Explaining Mothers' Ambivalence Toward Their Adult Children

Interest in applying the concept of ambivalence to the study of intergenerational relations has increased in recent years. However, few empirical studies of this issue have been conducted. Using data from a study of 189 mothers aged 60 and over, the authors examine sources of ambivalence regarding the quality of their relationships with adult children. They hypothesized that adult children's failure to achieve and maintain normative adult statuses and financial independence and mother's developmental stage will predict ambivalent assessments of the relationship. Regression analyses supported these hypotheses and also revealed that the variables predicting ambivalence differed from those that predicted closeness and interpersonal stress.     

Estrangement Between Mothers and Adult Children: The Role of Norms and Values

Relationships between mothers and their children are expected to be lifelong and rewarding for both members of the dyad. Because of the salience of these ties, they are likely to be disrupted only under conditions of extreme relational tension and dissatisfaction. In this work, the authors drew on theoretical arguments regarding societal norm violations and value similarity to examine the processes that lead to estrangement between mothers and adult children. To address this issue, they used quantitative and qualitative data on 2,013 mother–adult child dyads nested within 561 later life families, including 64 in which mothers reported being estranged from at least 1 of their children. Value dissimilarity was found to be a strong predictor of estrangement, whereas violation of serious societal norms was not. Qualitative data revealed that value dissimilarity created severe relational tension between mothers and adult children leading to estrangement.     

Dynamic Family System Trajectories From Pregnancy to Child's First Year

Family systems reorganize during transitional periods, such as the birth of a new child. Longitudinal research, however, on family dynamics during the transition to parenthood is lacking. Accordingly, the authors aimed to identify family system trajectories from pregnancy to the child's first birthday and to examine their contextual predictors. Both parents (N = 702) reported autonomy and intimacy in marital (wife‐to‐husband, husband‐to‐wife) and parenting (mother‐to‐child, father‐to‐child) relations during pregnancy and at child's ages of 2 months and 12 months. Finite mixture modeling revealed 7 unique family system trajectories: (a) Cohesive (35%), (b) Disengaged (5%), (c) Enmeshed Declining (6%), (d) Enmeshed Quadratic (5%), (e) Authoritarian (14%), (f) Escalating Crisis (4%), and (g) Discrepant (15%) families. Parental education in interaction with duration of partnership and parity predicted family trajectory membership. The study demonstrates how different family types reorganize during the transition to parenthood; this includes decline, growth, and stability in autonomy and intimacy.     

Spillover in the Home: The Effects of Family Conflict on Parents' Behavior

Conflict with a spouse or child may generate spillover, defined as short‐term affective changes in parents that affect their behavior with other family members. In a diverse sample of 86 parents, this 56‐day diary study examined daily bidirectional spillover between conflict in the marital or parent–child dyad and parents' irritable, frictional behavior with their child or spouse, respectively. Tests of daily associations between conflict and parent behavior revealed robust spillover effects according to parent as well as spouse and child reports. Parents' daily negative mood and child externalizing behavior contributed to several but not all of these associations. Daily spillover findings were largely unaffected by parents' neuroticism, suggesting that parents' day‐to‐day fluctuations in negative mood, not average levels of negative affectivity, promoted spillover. Significant direct effects of conflict on parent behavior even when controlling for negative mood, however, implicate additional cognitive or social processes as contributors to conflict spillover in families.     

The Transition to Parent Care: Costs,Commitments, and Caregiver Selection Among Children

This research traced the process of caregiver selection among adult children longitudinally, investigating how transitions to parent care were influenced by previous constellations of caregiving costs and commitments within sibling groups. The authors used data from 6 waves (1998–2008) of the Health and Retirement Study, selecting a sample of families (N = 641 parents comprising N = 2,452 parent–child dyads) in which they observed at least 1 adult child becoming a caregiver to a previously self‐sufficient parent. Among cost‐related factors, this transition was predicted primarily by between‐sibling differences in previous geographical distances to the parent and, to a lesser extent, competing demands in work and family spheres. The indicators for caregiving commitments showed the importance of reciprocity, path dependency, and parental expectations as motivational forces affecting the process of caregiver selection among adult children. Gender effects revealed the primacy of the mother–daughter tie, as daughters were overrepresented only in transitions to mother care.     

Does Educational Similarity Drive Parental Support?

This article tests competing mechanisms explaining linkages between parent–child educational similarity and parental advice and interest to adult children, asking whether mechanisms differ for mothers and fathers. Educational similarities might provide common ground whereas educational dissimilarity affects parents' authority to dispense advice. Using ordered logistic regression with data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (N = 2,444) parental advice and interest are modeled separately for mothers and fathers. Seemingly unrelated estimation is used to test for gender differences across models, revealing that mechanisms driving parental support differ by parents' gender. Fathers show more interest in adult children when they are educationally similar (consistent with the homophily hypothesis), but only among the highly educated, whereas mothers show more interest to highly educated children, regardless of their own level of educational attainment. Fathers' advice is conditioned on their own educational attainment whereas mothers give advice unconditionally (consistent with the gender hypothesis).     

Household Disorder,Network Ties,and Social Support in Later Life

Family relationships, social interactions, and exchanges of support often revolve around the household context, but scholars rarely consider the social relevance of this physical space. In this article the author considers social causes and consequences of household disorder in the dwellings of older adults. Drawing from research on neighborhood disorder and social connectedness in later life, she describes how network characteristics may contribute to household disorder and how household disorder may weaken relationships and reduce access to support. This is explored empirically by estimating cross‐lagged panel models with data from 2 waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. The results reveal that household disorder reflects a lack of social support, and it leads to more kin‐centered networks and more strain within family relationships. The author concludes by urging greater attention to how the household context shapes—and is shaped by—the social interactions and processes that occur within it.     

Still the Favorite? Parents' Differential Treatment of Siblings Entering Young Adulthood

This study examined within‐family stability in parents' differential treatment of siblings from adolescence to young adulthood and the effect of differential treatment in young adulthood on grown siblings' relationship quality. The author used longitudinal data on parent–child and sibling relations from the sibling sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 1,470 sibling dyads). Within‐dyad fixed effects regression models revealed that the adolescent sibling who was closer to parents went on to be the young adult sibling who was closer to and received more material support from parents. Results from an actor–partner interdependence model revealed that differential parental financial assistance of young adult siblings predicted worse sibling relationship quality. These findings demonstrate the lasting importance of affect between parents and offspring earlier in the family life course and the relevance of within‐family inequalities for understanding family relations.     

Parental Financial Assistance and Young Adults' Relationships With Parents and Well‐being

Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined the impact of parental financial assistance on young adults' relationships with parents and well‐being. Conditional change models were estimated to evaluate the effects of parental financial assistance reported in Wave 3 (ages 18–28) and Wave 4 (ages 24–34) of the study. The results (Ns ranged from 9,128 to 13,389 across outcomes) indicated that financial assistance was positively associated with changes in depressive symptoms and closeness to both mothers and fathers in both periods. Changes in self‐esteem were less robustly linked to parental financial assistance. Although the observed pattern with respect to parent–child relations held regardless of the progress young people had made in the transition to adulthood, the effects for well‐being, which were also relatively small in magnitude, did not. In particular, changes in depressive symptoms associated with financial assistance were concentrated among individuals occupying adult social roles.     

Parental Responsibilities: Dilemmas of Measurement and Gender Equality

Over the past half‐century, enormous changes have occurred in gendered divisions of housework and child care across many countries, with a growing consensus that there is a slow but steady pace of change in gendered divisions of time and tasks but one that is combined with a puzzling persistence of gender differences in parental caregiving responsibilities. Rooted in a 14‐year qualitative and ethnographic research program that focuses mainly on breadwinning mothers and fathers who self‐identify as stay‐at‐home or primary caregivers and guided by genealogical and relational sociological approaches, the author argues that the concept of parental responsibility requires greater attention and that its theorization and conceptualization have critical implications for if and how it can be measured, the methodological approaches that might be used to assess it, and the conceptual fit between parental responsibilities and gender equality.     

Intergenerational Transfers to Adult Children in Europe: Do Social Policies Matter?

Understanding the role of social policies in intergenerational transfers from old to young people is especially important in times of population aging. This paper focuses on the influences of social expenditures and social services on financial support and on practical help from older parents to their adult children based on the first two waves from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, N = 60,250 dyads from 13 European countries). Multilevel models showed that social policy plays an important role for intergenerational transfer patterns: The more public assistance was provided to citizens, the more likely parents supported their adult children financially and practically, but this support was less intense in terms of money and time given. Thus, the analyses support the specialization hypothesis that posits a division of labor between family and state for downward intergenerational transfers.     

Parenting Stress,Parental Reactions,and Externalizing Behavior From Ages 4 to 10

The association between parenting stress and child externalizing behavior, and the mediating role of parenting, has yielded inconsistent findings; however, the literature has typically been cross‐sectional or unidirectional. In the current study, the authors examined the longitudinal transactions among parenting stress, perceived negative parental reactions, and child externalizing at 4, 5, 7, and 10 years old. Models examining parent effects (parenting stress to child behavior), child effects (externalizing to parental reactions and stress), indirect effects of parental reactions, and the transactional associations among all variables were compared. The transactional model best fit the data, and longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting stress and externalizing behavior. The mediating role of parental reactions was not supported; however, indirect effects suggest that parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behavior. The complex associations among parent and child variables indicate the importance of interventions to improve the parent–child relationship and reducing parenting stress.     

Exploring Parents' Experiences and Reactions to Adolescents' Hyperactivity,Impulsivity, and Attention Problems

Adolescents' hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention problems (HIA) have been shown to make parents feel powerless. In this study, the authors examined whether these feelings were dependent on parents' experiences with their older children. Two models that offer different predictions of how parents make use of their earlier experiences when raising their later‐born children were explored: the learning‐from‐experience model and the spillover model. The authors used reports from 372 parents with 1 child (M_age = 11.92) and 198 parents with 2 children (M_age = 11.89 and 14.35) from a small town in a European country. The results did not support a learning‐from‐experience process. Instead, consistent with a spillover process, parents felt particularly powerless about their younger children with HIA if they also felt powerless about their older children. This study suggests that parents' experiences of raising their older children are important for their reactions to HIA in their younger children     

Ambivalence in the Relationship of Adult Children to Aging Parents and In‐Laws

The concept of ambivalence emphasizes the complexity of family relations and the potential for individuals to evaluate relationships as both positive and negative. Using multilevel models, we investigate ambivalence in adult children's relationships with their aging parents and in‐laws (N= 1,599). We focus on factors predicting adult children's ambivalence toward parents and in‐laws within a gendered kinship structure that shapes these relations. We conclude that ambivalence is a useful concept for representing the complexity of parent‐child relationships and is produced within the context of social relations structured by gender and kinship. Results show greater ambivalence among dyads of women, toward in‐laws, among those in poor health, for daughters providing assistance, and for adult children with poor parental relations in early life.     

Ambivalence Toward Adult Children: Differences Between Mothers and Fathers

The authors examined how ambivalence toward adult children within the same family differs between mothers and fathers and whether patterns of maternal and paternal ambivalence can be explained by the same set of predictors. Using data collected in the Within‐Family Differences Study, they compared older married mothers' and fathers' (N = 129) assessments of ambivalence toward each of their adult children (N = 444). Fathers reported higher levels of ambivalence overall. Both mothers and fathers reported lower ambivalence toward children who were married, better educated, and who they perceived to hold similar values; however, the effects of marital status and education were more pronounced for fathers, whereas the effect of children's value congruence was more pronounced for mothers. Fathers reported lower ambivalence toward daughters than sons, whereas mothers reported less ambivalence toward sons than daughters.     

Continuity and Change in Mothers' Favoritism Toward Offspring in Adulthood

The importance of parental favoritism in childhood and adulthood has been well documented; little is known, however, about changes over time in such within‐family differentiation. Drawing on theories of life course processes and developmental psychology, the authors used 7‐year panel data collected from 406 older mothers about their relationships with 1,514 adult children to explore patterns of favoritism regarding caregiving and emotional closeness. The findings demonstrated continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism. Mothers tended to prefer the same children across time, particularly regarding preferred caregivers. It was anticipated that children's social‐structural characteristics, similarity to their mothers, structural position in the family, and support provision to mothers would predict favored child status across time; however, only similarity and support processes were strong and consistent predictors of change and continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism.     

Extending the Intergenerational Stake Hypothesis: Evidence of an Intra‐individual Stake and Implications for Well‐being

The intergenerational stake hypothesis suggests that parents are more invested in their children and experience better quality parent–child ties than do their children. In this study the authors examined variation in reports of relationship quality regarding parents and children intra‐individually (do people report better quality ties with their children than with their parents?) and whether within‐person variations have implications for well‐being. Participants age 40–60 (N = 633) reported on their relationship quality (importance, positive quality, and negative quality) with their parents and adult children. Individuals reported their relationships with children were more important and more negative than relationships with parents. Individuals with feelings that were in the opposite direction of the intergenerational stake hypothesis (i.e., greater investment in parents than children) reported poorer well‐being. The findings provide support for the intergenerational stake hypothesis with regard to within‐person variations in investment and show that negative relationship quality may coincide with greater feelings of investment.