Family Experiences and the Erosion of Support for Intergenerational Coresidence

Abstract

FRANCES K. GOLDSCHEIDER Brown University LEORA LAWTON TechSociety Research* We test the affluence interpretation of the decline in intergenerational coresidence, which implicitly affirms that close kin would still offer housing to those in need, by examining the factors that influence attitudes about coresidence with young adult children and aging parents. Using national data, we model the effects of living in a multigenerational household in childhood and living independently from parents prior to marriage on respondents' obligation to allow aging parents and adult children who are in need to coreside. We find strong effects of living arrangements experiences on attitudes that differ by the type of intergenerational coresidence. Key Words: affluence, attitudes, coresidence, intergenerational relations, living arrangements. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in. Robert Frost, Death of the Hired Man Shelter is a fundamental resource that family members attempt to provide each other when necessary. Although levels of intergenerational coresidence have declined dramatically in recent decades in the United States and in other developed countries, most analysts interpret these changes as the result of increases in affluence that have allowed previously dependent relatives to split off from the nuclear family to live in a home of their own (Kuznets, 1978; Michael, Fuchs, & Scott, 1980). Given that splitting off increases the privacy of both those who split off and their relatives, the increased number of young adults leaving home prior to marriage (Goldscheider, 1997) and the greater likelihood that widowed parents live alone (Ruggles, 1996) are usually seen as strictly beneficial. The affluence interpretation underlies this positive view, and it suggests that although the necessity for coresidence has declined, there has been no reduction in the commitment to provide it. Rather, ascribing change to affluence implicitly affirms that close kin would still offer housing to those in need. However, changes in preferences may have been as important as increases in affluence in the splitting off of extra relatives from American families (Pampel, 1983). The outcry in the popular press (Cowan, 1989; Gross, 1991; Lindsay, 1984) and from some scholars (Schnaiburg & Goldenburg, 1989) against the recent increase in grown children living with parents, despite the dramatic increases in housing costs and youth unemployment (Levy, 1987), suggests that Americans may have become increasingly opposed to parents and adult children sharing a residence, even if the parent or child is in a difficult situation and lacks the physical or financial resources to make separate living feasible. In fact, the commitment to provide housing to close kin in need may be weakening. Many may no longer feel that they have to let you in. These two explanations-changes in affluence and changes in preferences-are not contradictory, given that changes in attitudes and preferences are likely to occur as a result of changes in behavior. The decline in coresidence has been under way for most of the twentieth century (Ruggles, 1994). Through social-psychological behaviorist mechanisms of social learning and through the interpretation of experiences via processes such as those set forth by cognitive theorists, people develop attitudes about their family relationships and obligations (Caspi & Elder, 1988; Sroufe & Fleeson, 1988). Children watch what significant others like their parents do, hear what they say, and learn by imitating many of their parents' attitudes and behavioral choices. If increases in affluence mean that families need to provide intergenerational coresidence less often, children are less likely to observe such living arrangements and are more likely to conclude that such solutions are inappropriate or unnecessary. Of course, not all learning takes place in childhood, and most people find that the economic and family commitments of adulthood restructure their choices and priorities and increase their concern for the needs of others. …