Chapter 9 HDFS PCR

The Role of Parents in Young adults Assumptions of Adult Roles:

A: In the last several decades, there has been a progressive delay of transition into adult roles, such as living independently, having steady full-time work, getting married, becoming parents

B: Launching of young adults is normative but there is much diversity in patterns of leaving home

C: The timing of when young adults leave home is related to their gender, their parents marital status, their perceived availability of material and nonmaterial resources, geographical region, their ethnicity, and unmarried parenthood

The factors explained:

A: American young adults typically leave home between the ages of 18 and 19 (to go to college, marry or live with partner, live independently)

B: Women usually leave home at a younger age than men (they complete college earlier, form cohabiting unions earlier and marry about two years earlier)

→ Also there are different expectations to sons and daughters (ex: house chores)

C: Parental divorce and remarriage is also associated with earlier home leaving

More factors:

A: Regionally, co-residence is much higher in Northeast US due to higher costs of housing, higher rates of college attendance and later entry into full time employment

B: Family ethnicity also influences the delay of leaving home

→ Staying at home through early 20s more common among Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans, NOT Whites (greater emphasis on family closeness and interdependence coupled with placing less value on independence influence these decisions)

Nonmarital Motherhood and Co-Residence with Parents:

A: There is complicated home-leaving progression for lower-income women; increasing probability of nonmarital parenthood

B: Cohabitation or marriage linked to earlier home departure for young women, nonmarital parenthood usually works in the opposite direction

→ in the past, most of these young parents would have married before or shortly after the birth of their child, today they often turn to parents for economic and social support (these young mothers and their children tend to fare better if they remain in the parents’ home during the 1st of 2 years of the child’s life, but fare somewhat worse if they fail to move out thereafter)

Launching Young Adult Children:

A: Empty Nest Syndrome- depression and emptiness

VS

B: Spacious Nest- Positive aspects (ex: more time and energy to invest in their Marriage)

When Young People Move Back Home:

A: Boomerang Kids: Typically describe the return of adult children for economic reasons, often due to financial stability, such as low wages, high debt, or unemployment

Vs

B: Cluttered Nest Kids: Refer to the situations where adult children return home to live with parents, but the arrangement is more about the desire to maintain a close relationship with them rather than economic necessity

C: A period of military service and/or early divorce are other reasons for returning home

→ Those living with parents get along better with them when they are studying, working, or looking for work

→ Most young adults have greater closeness to and fewer negative feelings about their parents after moving out

When Young Adults Establish Separate Residences:

A: These changes require both generations to readjust their expectations of each other

B: There are also different degrees of leaving home:

    → College students in the US usually live in college residences, and go home for holidays, many weekends, and the summer

    → When they go home, they often are surprised that younger siblings have a status in the family hierarchy they previously held

    → Parents of young adult college student frequently are taken aback by their adult children new independence

When New Members are Added to the Family System:

A: Family systems (rules and roles) are modified when young adults enter into marriage or other partnerships

    → Its important to respect the feelings of all family members (incorporate the needs of old and new family members)

    → For parents specifically, their relationships with their adult children require alterations (to support their children’s allegiance to their spouses or partners

The Arrival of Children:

A: The transitions into roles of mother and father require significant adaptions (we learned earlier that these changes reflect a strong nesting movement toward new parents nuclear family and less time spent with friends)

B: New parents also negotiate roles related to taking care of the child and meeting household and unemployment obligations

C: Their use of social Networks keeps them connected with friends and family members and is related to parenting satisfaction and parenting self-efficacy

Enduring Bond between Young Adults and Their Parents:

A: Bonds can be observed in their economic interdependence

    → In countries like China, India, and Mexico, working to help support the family is expected of young adults

B: In many industrialized societies, young adults are not expected to financially assist their parents (in these societies, financial aid typically is given from the parent to the child

Parental Support of Young Adults:

A: Parents financial and economic support of education helps adult children

    → They help protect against economic decline or relationship breakups by reducing damaging effects of credit constraints, and increasing resources as they move into the labor market

    → Most young adults are given substantial gifts of time (help with laundry, moving, household repairs and free childcare for those who become parents)

B: But not all young Adults have access to parental financial support

    → Those who experience SES disadvantage while growing up get less coresidential and financial support

    → The access to fewer economic resources explain less help in African American families (but they, plus Latino families, compensate for these differences with co-residence

Parenthood and Socio-Emotional Development of Young Adults:

A: Adults who were securely attached as an infant are more likely to become happily married and adults who were avoidance infants tend to show hesitance to marry

B: There is a positive link between security of attachment and freedom from guilt, anxiety, and resentment parents

C: Attachment to parents related to higher self-esteem and lower anxiety and loneliness

Attachment and Individuation:

A: Individuation tends to occur without altering the quality attachment that young people have with their parents

B: One way that young adults and their parents stay connected is through ongoing communication

    → On days spent talking with parents 30 minutes or more, they consume more fruit and veggies and are more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous exercise and healthier lifestyles

    → Those who communicate more with parents consume fewer drinks and are less likely to engage in heavy drinking and less risky behaviors

Role of Parents in Promoting Young Adults Achievement of Intimacy:

A: Young adults bring their intimate relationship behaviors from their relationships with their parents (There are gender differences though)

    → Positive relationships with mother during adolescence related to positive intimate relationships in young adulthood

B: Parental divorce linked with young adults low level of relationship quality due to

    → Pessimistic attitudes toward marriage

    → Lack of commitment to current relationships

(However, high intimacy with at least 1 parent is linked with positive adjustment)

Parenthood and Achievement of a Sense of Generativity:

A: Young adults participation in simultaneous relationships with their parents and their children contribute to a sense of generativity

B: Today, both parents are likely to be working and need to coordinate family and work obligations

    → Role overload (when demands of work and family roles result in a person feeling strained and overwhelmed) negatively affects family relationships and mothers are more negatively affected than fathers

    → Working mothers do not necessarily suffer role-overload

Generativity Achievement and Culture:

A: At the cultural level, differences in generativity achievement relate to individualism and collectivism

    → Parents in collectivist cultures, more likely generativity to communal living

    → For parents in individualist cultures, generativity might mean being the best parents they can be, achieving individual success in their occupational roles, or seeking to be the best parents possible while being highly competitive in their occupational role

B: Generativity is a Two-Way Street

    → Young adults development of a sense of generativity is also related to being responsive to their parents needs (but at the same time, young adults still rely on parents support and parents still needs to be needed

    → examples of that interdependence: When young adults involve their parents in important family events, when they regularly visit, have family meals together, and share caregiver responsibilities

Generativity Issues of Cohabiting Young Adults and Their Parents:

A: The cohabitation of young adults is related to less parental support (ex: less likely to be giving and receiving assistance with household tasks)

    → also less likely to participate in the behaviors that strengthen intergenerational ties (ex: visiting on vacations, spending holidays together, or involving parents in family events and rituals)

    → young cohabiting couples level of satisfaction with their parental relationship is lower than their married peers

Generativity Issues of Lesbian and Gay Adults and Their Parents:

A: Gay and Lesbian adults who become parents recieve less parental support (it might create stress in their relationships with their partners/spouses and affect the lives of their children

B: For trans people, they experience barriers related to transition-related care, social exclusion and transphobia, invisibility in institutional settings, high levels of discrimination and rejection, harassment, violence, and poverty

Parenthood and Vygotsky’s Concept of Scaffolding:

A: He defined scaffolding as “the role of teachers and other in supporting the learners’ development and providing support structures to get to that next stage”

    → Parents do this by providing financial, practical and emotional support

    → Assistance with child care is the most common way in which parents scaffold young adults children’s childrearing

    → Parental scaffolding of unmarried young parents efforts is particularly important because these young parents are the most vulnerable

    → An aspect of scaffolding seen in two-parent families is emotional support of each other’s parenting efforts

The Parallel Role Development of Young Adults and Their Parents:

• Parents & young adult children exert a strong influence on each other’s role development through a process of paralleled development

• To achieve parallel development, young adults must develop filial maturity

• Filial maturity describes an adult’s capability of responding to the needs of the parent

• which represents a move away from egocentrism and a step toward the development of a more mature adult role

Dimensions of Filial Maturity:

• parental distancing and parental comprehending essential to filial maturity

• Distancing allows each party a certain level of independence from one another

• Comprehending serves to keep the parent and adult child close to each other

• Then, in the reconnecting phase:

• a more realistic perception of the parent contributes to a greater appreciation of the parent as an individual

• Mothers are comprehended before fathers

• Mothers are typically comprehended during early 20s, fathers not until 40