Families as niches during communism in East Germany: Consequences for parent–child relationships during times of change

Abstract

This study brings together two main theoretical traditions in order to better understand how parent–child relationships are influenced by the societal conditions around the family. The concept of the ecological niche has been used to describe the way in which East German families dealt with government institutions during communism, while we used the concept of individuation to describe relationships between parents and their children. Using a model predicting individuation within a family we demonstrate that the type of niche predicts individuation even after intrafamilial variables, such as the level of parent–child conflict, agency and time of the interaction have been controlled for. By employing hierarchical log-linear techniques to analyze narrative interviews of parents and their adult children from 34 families, we found that families who were more balanced in their interactions with communist government institutions were also more balanced in their parent–child individuations.