Whole-Family Relationships
Most studies addressing whole-family relationships were supported by emerging adults’ reports on the general properties of the overall family system. Almost half of the participants from Crocetti and Meeus (2014) mentioned significant changes within family relationships. Most of them felt that they had more mutual family relationships characterized by better communication, especially reported by individuals who had already left the parental home, and by an increased reciprocity, mainly reported by participants who were still living with their parents.
Tsai et al. (2013) verified that family respect declined during adolescence and stabilized after this period, whereas the importance of family to an emerging adult’s identity increased across emerging adulthood. In addition, females presented a more solid sense of family importance to identity during emerging adulthood (Crocetti & Meeus, 2014; Tsai et al., 2013).
Moreover, most emerging adults viewed family, or a specific family member, as the most important contributor to meaning in life (Lambert et al., 2010). Smit (2011) found that most emerging adults perceived family rituals as promoters of a sense of belonging to the family system, as well as of their uniqueness. Preserving family rituals was viewed as an opportunity to connect with family history, contributing to the development of an intergenerational self. Lastly, Kins et al. (2013) showed that separation anxiety can be represented as a personal characteristic, as a specific feature of the mother–child and father-mother dyads, as well as of the family climate as a whole.
Support at the family level was investigated in three longitudinal studies. Fuligni and Pedersen (2002) found increases in the sense of obligation to assist, support, and respect the family from the period extending from secondary school into young adulthood. Group differences were verified: (a) offspring from two-parent families appeared more willing to support the family in the future compared with those from single-parent families; (b) Latin American and Filipino participants reported a stronger sense of familial obligation compared with those from East Asian and European backgrounds; (c) poorer participants reported steeper increases in family obligation compared with those from higher income families; and (d) females gave more importance to current and future family support than males. Tsai et al. (2013) verified that the sense of family obligation decreased during adolescence, with family respect and future support stabilizing in the following years. Guan and Fuligni (2016) showed that across the transition to young adulthood, participants from European American backgrounds reported increases in parental support, whereas this feature remained stable for those from Asian and Latin American backgrounds. Females described higher levels of parental and sibling support at the 12th grade, which remained constant two and four years after high-school.