“I'll Give You the World”: Socioeconomic Differences in Parental Support of Adult Children

Research has shown that parents with higher socioeconomic status provide more resources to their children during childhood and adolescence. The authors asked whether similar effects associated with parental socioeconomic position are extended to adult children. Middle‐aged parents (N = 633) from the Family Exchanges Study reported support they provided to their grown children and coresidence with grown children (N = 1,384). Parents with higher income provided more emotional and material support to the average children. Grown children of parents with less education were more likely to coreside with them. Parental resources (e.g., being married) and demands (e.g., family size) explained these patterns. Of interest is that lower income parents provided more total support to all children (except total financial support). Lower income families may experience a double jeopardy; each grown child receives less support on average, but parents exert greater efforts providing more total support to all their children.     

Parent–Child Coresidence: Who Moves in With Whom and for Whose Needs?

Using administrative data on all adult children living in The Netherlands age 30–40 and their parents (N = 1,999,700), we investigated the extent to which situations and events associated with the support needs and privacy needs of either generation determine intergenerational coresidence and the transition to coresidence. Logistic and multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that both generations' support needs increased the likelihood of coresidence and of a move of the generation in need into the other's home. Turning to privacy needs, we found that coresidence and the transition to coresidence was less likely when a partner or stepparent was present and more likely when the adult child was a never‐married single parent.     

Do Young Mothers and Fathers Differ in the Likelihood of Returning Home?

Building on research examining “boomerang” adult children, the author examines multigenerational living among young parents. Returning home likely differs between young mothers and fathers given variation in socioeconomic characteristics, health and risk taking, their own children's coresidence, and union stability. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), the author finds that more than 40% of young parents (n = 2,721) live with their own parents at their first child's birth or subsequently. Mothers are generally less likely to move home than fathers but only when not controlling for child coresidence and union stability. Individuals who live with all their children are less likely to return home, and controlling for child coresidence reverses gender differences, though this association disappears in the full model. Young parents who are stably single and those who experience dissolution are highly likely to return home compared to the stably partnered, with the association significantly stronger for fathers than mothers.     

Single Motherhood,Living Arrangements,and Time With Children in Japan

The authors examined relationships between single parenthood and mothers' time with children in Japan. Using data from the 2011 National Survey of Households with Children (N = 1,926), they first demonstrate that time spent with children and the frequency of shared dinners are significantly lower for single mothers than for their married counterparts. For single mothers living alone, less time with children reflects long work hours and work‐related stress. Single mothers coresiding with parents spend less time with children and eat dinner together less frequently than either married mothers or their unmarried counterparts not living with parents, net of (grand)parental support, work hours, income, and stress. The findings suggest that rising divorce rates and associated growth in single‐mother families may have a detrimental impact on parents' time with children in Japan and that the relatively high prevalence of intergenerational coresidence among single mothers may do little to temper this impact.     

The Legacy of Leaving Home: Long‐Term Effects of Coresidence on Parent – Child Relationships

This study investigated how early, “on‐time,” and late home leavers differed in their relations to parents in later life. A life course perspective suggested different pathways by which the time spent in the parental home may set the stage for intergenerational solidarity in aging families. Using fixed‐effects models with data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 14,739 parent – child dyads), the author assessed the effects of previous coresidence on intergenerational proximity, contact frequency, and support exchange more than 5 years after children had left home. The results indicated that, compared with siblings who moved out “on time,” late home leavers lived closer to their aging parents, maintained more frequent contact, and were more likely to be providers as well as receivers of intergenerational support. Overall, this evidence paints a positive picture of extended coresidence, revealing its potential to promote intergenerational solidarity across the life course.     

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.     

Socioeconomic differences in parental financial support,coresidence, and advice: A portrait of undergraduate students in the Canadian Prairies

In this paper, we examine the intersections of parental support and family socioeconomic background within an undergraduate sample (N = 596) in a mid-sized Canadian Prairie city. Coresidence, financial support, and parental and professional financial advice are examined as types of ‘family capital’ that may be distributed unequally across socioeconomic groups. In keeping with previous literature, findings showed that students whose parents had university education and higher incomes received more robust coverage of their housing and school expenses. Students whose parents were university-educated were also more likely to be living with a parent, though no relationship was found between parental income and coresidence. Contrasting with previous literature, few relationships were found between socioeconomic background and receipt or influence of financial advice. These results contribute to the literature by generalising claims about family capital to a Canadian student sample, where relatively few studies have empirically examined intergenerational transfers as mechanisms for transmitting privilege during the transition to adulthood. With increasing demands for higher education and simultaneous declines in government subsidisation of its costs, disparate access to family capital is likely to intensify the reproduction of social inequality across generations.     

Paternal Incarceration and Father–Child Contact in Fragile Families

High rates of incarceration in the United States have motivated a broad examination of the effects of parental incarceration on child well‐being. Although a growing literature documents challenges facing the children of incarcerated men, most incarcerated fathers lived apart from their children before their arrest, raising questions of whether they were sufficiently involved with their families for their incarceration to affect their children. The author used the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,071) to examine father–child contact among incarcerated fathers and found that most incarcerated fathers maintained a degree of contact with their children through either coresidence or visitation. Moreover, the results revealed robust reductions in both father–child coresidence and visitation when fathers are incarcerated—between 18% and 20% for coresidence and 30% to 50% for the probability of visitation. The findings suggest that these reductions are driven by both incapacitation while incarcerated and union dissolution upon release.     

Race/Ethnicity,Attitudes, and Living With Parents During Young Adulthood

Non‐White young adults are more likely to live with their parents throughout their 20s, more likely to return home after going away to college, and less likely to leave again after returning. Scholars have speculated that subcultural differences in attitudes toward marriage and family play a key role in generating racial/ethnic differences in rates of coresidence with parents among young adults. Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (N = 11,228) were analyzed in order to test this hypothesis. Attitudes toward marriage and family were significantly associated with coresidence, especially among young men, but did not substantially account for racial/ethnic differences in living arrangements. Among young non‐White women and young Black men, higher rates of coresidence were related to differences from Whites in socioeconomic or marital status (and sometimes both) that were largely independent of differences in attitudes toward marriage and family.     

Intergenerational Coresidence Among Small Farmers in Brazilian Amazônia

This article examines intergenerational coresidence among rural farm families near Santarém, Pará, Brazil using survey data collected by the authors on 896 children whose parents live in 175 households on 150 farms. Married adult children, daughters, and the best educated are more likely to live off their parents’ rural property (vs. on the property). Results support arguments that coresidence results from the interests of children rather than the control that parents exert over children. These results have implications for our understanding of intergenerational relations in the developing world and for the future development of similar areas.     

Premarital Living Arrangements and the Transition to First Marriage in Japan

This article evaluates the relevance of a popular emphasis on the benefits of extended coresidence with parents as an explanation for the trend toward later marriage in Japan. Estimating hazard models for the transition to first marriage separately by gender, living arrangements, and birth cohort, I find that the trend toward later marriage is indeed more pronounced among young men and women living with parents. Conditional on coresidence, however, there is little evidence that access to parental provision of financial resources and domestic services is negatively associated with marriage. I suggest alternative scenarios in which parental resources may contribute to later marriage by facilitating children's independence rather than by keeping them at home.     

Offspring Migration and Parents' Emotional and Psychological Well‐being in Mexico

In Mexico, offspring migration disrupts familial norms of coresidence and geographic proximity. This article examines how an adult child's migration, both domestically and to the United States, affects the emotional and psychological well‐being of parents who remain in the place of origin. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (N = 4,718), the authors found limited evidence that parents whose offspring emigrated to the United States experience worse outcomes than parents of offspring who did not migrate. Although they found that offspring U.S. migration was not associated with changes in parents' overall depressive syndrome, a child's U.S. migration increased the likelihood of experiencing loneliness and led to a lower likelihood of recovery from parental sadness over time. Children's domestic migration did not affect parental well‐being. These findings add to a growing body of literature that should be considered when assessing the broader impact of migration on family members who remain behind.     

Backup Parents,Playmates, Friends: Grandparents' Time With Grandchildren

Grandparents play varied roles in their grandchildren's lives. Prior work has focused mostly on historical trends in and implications of grandparent coresidence and has not considered more broadly how grandparents and grandchildren interact. Using time‐use diary data for 6,762 person‐years from the 1997 to 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Survey, the authors examine patterns in the amount and activity composition of time American children spent with their grandparents, differentiated by family structure, adult employment, and child's age. Results showed that although only about 7% of children lived with their grandparents, many more children spent time with their grandparents: about 50% of young children, 35% of elementary‐age children, and 20% of teens spent at least some time with their grandparents in a typical week. This suggests that grandparents play a variety of roles in their grandchildren's lives, depending on the amount and kinds of support needed.     

Consequences of Parental Divorce for Adult Children’s Support of Their Frail Parents

Using three waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study, I examined the association of parental divorce and remarriage with the odds that biological, adult children give personal care and financial assistance to their frail parents. The analysis included 5,099 adult children in the mother sample and 4,029 children in the father sample. Results indicate that adult children of divorced parents are just as likely as adult children of widowed parents to give care and money to their mothers, but the former are less likely than the latter to care for their fathers. The findings suggest that divorced fathers are prone to be the population most in need of formal support in old age.     

When Parenting Pays Off: Influences of Parental Financial Socialization on Children’s Outcomes in Emerging Adulthood

This study examined the influences of parental financial socialization during adolescence on emerging adults’ financial outcomes using Family Financial Socialization Theory. It utilized two waves of data from 307 triads—consisting of parents and emerging adults—from a large city in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Time one was reported in 2012 by fathers and mothers when their 13 to 17-year-old children were adolescents and time two in 2017 by their emerging adult children 5 years later. Results of path analyses revealed that responsible parental financial behavior at Time 1 predicted greater financial satisfaction and lower financial independence for their emerging-adult children at Time 2. In addition, parental financial distress at Time 1 predicted lower financial satisfaction, higher financial distress, and higher financial independence for their children at Time 2. Implications for practitioners, educators, and parents are discussed.

     

Exploring Nonnormative Coresidence in Urban China: Living With Wives’ Parents

We model histories between two cohorts of urban Chinese couples (N = 1,191) of a rarely studied living arrangement—coresidence with the wife's parents—using a dynamic life history analysis in contrast to previous cross‐sectional studies of coresidence. We examine patterns of entry into and exit from coresidence with the wife's parents, comparing the predictive power of modernization theory to the effect of demographic change and the resources and needs of each generation. Given China's well‐known patrilineal family system, we find a surprisingly high number of couples ever residing nonnormatively, and significant differences between cohorts in what determines the pattern of coresidence. Resources and needs that reflect conscious choices to coreside most strongly influence nonnormative coresidence. Its importance may increase as the children of the One‐Child Family Policy grow up and marry.     

Living with the parents: the purpose of young graduates’ return to the parental home in England

Young graduates in England often return to the parental home after a period of living away during their university studies. Little is known, however, about why they return and how coresidence with parents fits within a life trajectory. This paper reports upon an in-depth cross-sectional qualitative study of young graduates’ coresidence with their parents. It identifies a five-part typology of the purpose of coresidence as perceived by the graduates: a base camp for exploration before settling into adulthood; a launch pad for careers; a savings bank, in particular for future property purchases; a refuge for respite and reflection; and a preferred residence, whether on account of comfort, cultural practice or to support parents. The paper further explores how far these purposes were associated in young adults’ accounts with social structures, individual agency or some combination of these. It concludes that the default understanding of graduates’ return and coresidence as a residual function when other options fail is insufficient. Such a generalisation obscures the different purposes which the return can enable; it overplays some notion of a broken biography rather than the positive contribution of coresidence to graduates’ trajectories towards adulthood and to their life experiences.     

Intergenerational Exchanges of Middle‐Aged Adults With Their Parents and Parents‐In‐Law in Korea

The authors investigated patterns of support exchanges between Korean adult children and their parents and parents‐in‐law, gender differences in these patterns, and implications of children's marital quality for exchange patterns. Data were from a nationally representative sample of married adults (N = 920, age 30–59 years) with at least 1 living parent and 1 living parent‐in‐law. Latent class analysis was applied to 12 indicators of exchanges (financial, instrumental, emotional support given to and received from parents and parents‐in‐law). Five classes of exchanges were identified, 3 showing balanced patterns of exchanges with parents and parents‐in‐law across three types of support and 2 classes with unbalanced patterns (e.g., giving instrumental and financial but not emotional support). The findings revealed variability in intergenerational exchange patterns, with a mix of patrilineal traditional and balanced patterns. Significant associations of exchange patterns with adult children's marital quality suggest the importance of balanced exchanges with parents for marriage.     

Connections with banking institutions and diverse asset portfolios in young adulthood: Children as potential future investors

A central hypothesis of Child Development Accounts (CDA) suggests that savings accounts in childhood lay a foundation for connecting to mainstream banking institutions and diversifying asset portfolios in young adulthood and beyond. While children may have limited savings to invest initially, they are financial actors who may increasingly invest money into different types of savings products over time. This paper uses propensity score weighted, longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements to examine the types of financial and nonfinancial assets owned by young adults and whether or not they are more likely to own these assets when they have savings accounts as children. The most commonly owned assets in young adulthood included savings accounts (89%), vehicles (54%) and credit cards (51%). Smaller percentages owned stocks (9%), bonds (6%), and homes (8%). On average, young adults owned two to three different assets. Having savings accounts in childhood was associated with being two times more likely to own savings accounts, two times more likely to own credit cards, and four times more likely to own stocks in young adulthood, compared to not having savings accounts in childhood. Young adults' ownership of more total financial assets was also associated with having savings accounts in childhood. Findings provide some supporting evidence of demand for children's savings accounts. Policy endeavors that remove barriers to account ownership may be advantageous for children and mainstream banks.     

From Multiracial Subjects to Multicultural Citizens: Social Stratification and Ethnic and Racial Classification among Children of Immigrants in the United Kingdom

This study examines how immigrant parents’ geographic origins correspond to their adult children's ethnic and racial self‐classification; whether discrepancies are associated with socioeconomic status; and the implications of these patterns for assessing socioeconomic inequality. Using linked British census data, we identify immigrants’ children in 1971 and examine how they ethnically/racially self‐classify in 2001. We find that fluidity in classification varies across groups, but higher educational attainment is consistently associated with less white British classification. Therefore, grouping immigrants’ children by ethnic/racial self‐classification underestimates socioeconomic disadvantage for these groups. However, grouping by parental birthplace overlooks variation in racialization and disadvantage among children of immigrants from the same country of origin.