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.