Close To You? How Parent-Adult Child Contact Is Influenced by Family Patterns.

OBJECTIVES: Intergenerational contacts occur in the context of other family relationships. We examine how in-person contacts among parents and all adult children affect each other, focusing on proximity and other predictors to assess whether and how visiting is correlated across adult children. METHODS: We use a modeling approach derived from an adaptation of multilevel models to provide a convenient mechanism by which to write child-specific equations, each with its own set of predictors, and wherein one child's attribute values can be attached to other children's records. RESULTS: We find that parent-adult child visiting is positively correlated across siblings, but the frequency of visiting within families is not directly reciprocated. Rather, visiting responds to common family factors. Visiting declines with distance, but there are strong discontinuities in the effect. Distance between parents and a focal child is positively associated with visiting with other children. DISCUSSION: The empirical patterns we report can be framed within enhancement and compensation models. Positive correlations and cross-sibling interactions that juxtapose levels of visiting against not seeing a child in last 12 months are consistent with the enhancement model. The cross-sibling interaction for distance, whereby one child's farther distance leads to more visits reported with others, provides evidence of a countervailing, though, weaker, pattern of compensation for proximity.

Life-course changes and parent-adult child contact.

Despite increased interest in parent-adult child relations, there has been little attention to how these are influenced by changes in their lives, reflecting transitions and linked lives within a life-course perspective. Hybrid multilevel models are used to analyze the change in parent-adult child contact over two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Changes in parent-child proximity, parent and child marital status, and child parental status are associated with change in contact; continued coresidence with another adult child is related to contact with non-coresidential children; but change in parent health does not affect contact. Some patterns are stronger for daughters and biological children who tend to have stronger relationships with their parents. These analyses demonstrate how life-course transitions of parents and adult children can be examined in family context to understand how changes in the life of one family member may influence relations with another.

CROSS-SIBLING EFFECTS IN PARENT-ADULT CHILD EXCHANGES OF SOCIOEMOTIONAL SUPPORT.

We use National Survey of Families and Households first wave data and innovative modeling to examine how one parent-adult child pair may affect other pairs. Three conceptual models guide our analyses of parents' giving and receiving of socioemotional support, representing enhancement, compensation, and independence. Giving support to one child is related to more giving to others (enhancement), but receiving support from one child is related to less receipt from others (compensation). Cross-sibling interactions do not reveal significant effects of distance of one child on exchanges with others, nor of gender or stepchild status of adult children. Cross-sibling interactions differ by race, suggesting enhancement in receiving support among Blacks and enhancement in giving support among non-Blacks. These analyses demonstrate the value of examining how parent-adult child ties are influenced by each other and by their family context.

GROWING UP WITHOUT SIBLINGS AND ADULT SOCIABILITY BEHAVIORS.

We use data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine a range of sociability behaviors for adults who grew up with and without siblings. Compared to adults who grew up with siblings, adults who grew up without siblings have less frequent social activities with relatives, and the difference is greater among those who did not live with both parents growing up. Differences in engaging in certain social events between adults who grew up without and with siblings vary by age. Differences in participation in sports, youth, or school related group activities for those who grew up without and with siblings vary by gender. Thus, there are some differences in adult sociability behaviors between those who grew up with and without siblings; however, our pattern of findings suggests that these differences are not large or pervasive across a range of sociability behaviors and may grow smaller with age.

Chronic illness self-care and the family lives of older adults: a synthetic review across four ethnic groups.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the literature on family and social ties among older ethnic minority men and women with the literature on chronic illness self-care among elders in these groups, in order to increase understanding of social influences on self-care behavior, raise questions for future research, and inform culturally appropriate interventions to maximize the health-promoting potential of social relationships. The paper presents demographic and chronic illness prevalence information, and then summarizes literature about patterns of chronic illness self-care behaviors for older African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and American Indians in the U.S. For each group, the sociological literature about residential, cultural, and socioeconomic patterns, family lives, and other social ties is then reviewed, and the self-care literature that has accounted for these patterns is discussed. Finally, six themes are outlined and related questions are identified to further illuminate the social context of older adults' chronic illness self-care.

Marital implications of parent-adult child coresidence: a longitudinal view.

OBJECTIVES: This study assesses implications of changes in coresidence with adult children for parents' marital relations, hypothesizing that transitions into coresidence lower marital quality and transitions out of coresidence increase marital quality. METHODS: Panel data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households are used to analyze whether change in three measures of marital quality-time together, happiness, and disagreements-is related to adult child coresidence. RESULTS: When adult children move out, parent couples increase their time together; there is a tendency for reduced time together when the nest "refills." However, there are no effects of moves in or out on the marital happiness of parents or the number of marital disagreements they have. There is also no effect on time together or on marital quality when one adult child moves out but another moves in during the same period. The presence of younger children has more consistent associations with marital quality. DISCUSSION: Coresidence with adult children does not appear to be an experience that disrupts the quality of marital relations. It may be that qualitative dimensions of coresidence experiences with adult children matter more than coresidence per se.