Parent-child Relationships
Most studies focusing on the parent-child relationship provided
information about potential changes within this relationship as the
offspring aged. For instance, Lefkowitz (2005) demonstrated that most
emerging adults reported changes in parent-child relationships once they
began college, portraying them as mainly positive (e.g., feeling closer
to parents). Consistently, Jensen et al. (2004) found that emerging
adults lied less to their parents and, especially females, considered
this behavior less acceptable compared with adolescents.
Parra et al. (2015) found that
communication frequency, conflict, and affection decreased from late
adolescence to emerging adulthood, whereas cohesion increased from
adolescence to emerging adulthood. Specifically, female emerging adults
reported higher communication and affection and lower conflict compared
with males. Findings from S. C. Nelson et al. (2015) also attested to
lower parent-child conflict during emerging adulthood. The main topics
of conflict appeared to be peer issues (for mother-daughter dyads),
material possessions (for father-daughter dyads), independence (for
mother-son dyads), and school issues (for father-son dyads) (Renk et
al., 2007).
Changes in the parental bond were examined by van Wel et al. (2000), who
found decreases during adolescence for both sexes and increases after
adolescence through the early twenties for girls. Shulman and Ben-Artzi
(2003) showed that the intensity of affective relationships with fathers
and mothers was lower for young adults (26-29 years) when compared with
adolescents. Maternal cohesion, following a decrease in adolescence, was
found to stabilize in emerging adulthood; however, for participants with
non-married parents, paternal cohesion declined not only during
adolescence but also during emerging adulthood (Tsai et el., 2013).
Maternal relationship satisfaction, unlike paternal relationship
satisfaction, was found to improve for two-year post-transition
participants (Levitt et al., 2007). Additionally, daughters appeared to
have closer relationships with mothers than with fathers (Bertogg &
Szydlik, 2016; Padilla-Walker et al., 2008; Tsai et al., 2013).
Furthermore, Sestito and Sica (2014) identified that most second-year
college students reported a close, warmth, horizontal, and mutual
parent-child relationship, which has been transformed over time.
However, last year-students seemed to live an internal conflict: despite
describing horizontal parent-child relationships in which parents
treated them as adults, they did not feel they had already attained such
status. Kloep and Hendry (2010) found that more than half of their
interviewed parents ended up delaying their offspring’s independence,
and about 32% were reluctant to let their children go, as they
experienced difficulties in accepting offspring’s increasing autonomy
and felt that their role as parents was diminishing.
Finally, parents and children appeared to be significant sources of
support for each other (Bucx et al., 2012). Fingerman et al. (2016)
showed that emerging adults often reported receiving six types of
support: emotional, practical, companionship, advice, financial
assistance, and listening. Except for emotional support, younger
children received more support than the older ones; mothers were found
to provide more support to children than fathers, except for financial
support; and female emerging adults received more support than males.
Assessing both paternal and maternal support, Levitt et al. (2007) found
an association between being male and receiving more support from
fathers. Bucx et al. (2012) demonstrated that advice was exchanged more
often than practical or financial support and it was specially received
from and provided to mothers. Regarding the role of ethnicity, practical
support was more frequently reported by emerging adults from Hong Kong
and Korea in comparison with participants from Germany and the US
(Fingerman et al., 2016); and African-Americans felt less support from
fathers as compared with their European-American, Asian-American, and
Hispanic-American counterparts (Levitt et al., 2007). Furthermore,
emerging adults reported providing little support to parents, with
implicit forms of support (e.g., listening) being the most regular
(Cheng et al., 2015; Fingerman et al., 2016). Girls were found to be
more likely than boys to provide advice and practical support to parents
(Bucx et al., 2012).
Parent-child relationships and family structure. Specific
studies investigated parent-child relationships in adoptive families.
Walkner and Rueter (2014) showed that self-reported and observed
conflict were higher in these families as compared with non-adoptive
ones, and that adoptive mothers were observed to have higher closeness
with adoptees compared with nonadoptive ones. Farr et al. (2014)
revealed that emerging adults described their communication with their
adoptive parents as positive, and open communication about adoption in
these families was viewed as fundamental. Darlington (2001) identified
three main patterns of current parent-child relationships of emerging
adults subjected to a custodial process during childhood or adolescence:
positive parent-child relationships through life; continued negative
perception of one of the parents; and the progressive positive
acceptance of a previously non-preferred parent. In addition, Bertogg
and Szydlik (2016) verified that divorce during an offspring’s childhood
promoted a looser intergenerational relationship of emerging adults with
fathers.
Findings from Fingerman et al. (2016) and Levitt et al. (2007) suggested
that married parents provided more support to children than non-married
ones. Specifically, Bucx et al. (2012) showed that divorced parents were
less likely to provide and receive advice and practical support from
children. Wells and Johnson (2001) found that willingness to provide
care for fathers depended on their marital status, which could be
explained by a possibly weaker bond to fathers (usually the
non-custodial parent), according to the study authors.
The role of co-residence in parent-child relationships. Living with parents was associated with positive (e.g., laugher) and
stressful (e.g., irritations) experiences with them (Fingerman et al.,
2017), higher closeness (Bertogg & Szydlik, 2016), as well as higher
likelihood of receiving multiple types of parental support (Fingerman et
al., 2016; 2017). Moreover, some parents reported guilty feelings linked
to the unsuccessful launch of their children who had returned to the
parental house after graduation (Lewis et al., 2016). Feelings of
ambivalence concerning co-residence were also shown by some children,
who reported being stressed by their return even though they enjoyed the
comfort of home (Lewis et al., 2016). Co-residence was, in fact,
perceived as a pleasant experience, with most emerging adults not
feeling obliged to move out (Sestito & Sica, 2014). Specifically, lower
SES co-resident emerging adults, providing financial resources to
parents, preferred to live independently, and reported having had
difficulties in managing household responsibilities with their own
individual capital goals (e.g., the desire of getting married)
(Napolitano, 2015).
Different views on parent-child relationships . Studies
suggested that parents viewed the relationships with their children as
being closer than their sons and daughters did (Bertogg & Szydlik,
2016), reporting higher levels of family cohesion and communication
(Givertz & Segrin, 2014), as well as higher parental knowledge
(Padilla-Walker et al., 2008) and legitimate authority (Padilla-Walker,
Nelson, & Knapp, 2014). Cheng et al. (2015) found that children claimed
providing more emotional, practical, technological, and financial
support, as well as advice, than parents recognized. In addition,
mothers had higher levels of child-reported parental knowledge,
reporting warmer relationships with their children (L. J. Nelson et al.,
2011) and higher connectedness (Yanir & Guttman, 2011) in comparison
with fathers.