Impact of Childhood Family Disruption on Young Adults' Relationships with Parents

Abstract

This article explores the long-term implications of childhood family disruption and children's living arrangements after family disruption for parent-child relations in adulthood. Research on consequences of parental marital dissolution for children has focused primarily on the social, emotional, and cognitive adjustment of children under age 18. Considerably less attention has been given to the long-term effects of childhood family structure on adult development and on parent-child relations in adulthood (Cooney & Uhlenberg, 1990; Glenn & Kramer, 1985). My objective in this research is to examine how the complex life course trajectories of children after family disruption influence adult intergenerational relationships, with a primary focus on transitions into single-parent and stepparent family types. I examine the impact of physical custody after parents separate, remarriage of the custodial parent, the timing of family structure transitions, and the number of family transitions. The effects of childhood family structure may vary by sex of child and sex of parent. Models are fit separately for relationships with mothers and fathers and, within each model, sex of child by family structure interactions are tested. Throughout this study parent-child relations are analyzed from the perspective of the young adult child (ages 19-34). Multiple indicators of relationship quality are used: the child's global assessment of relationship quality, frequency of contact, geographic proximity, exchange of help and support, and financial transfers between parent and child. LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES Children's lives have become increasingly complex as rates of nonmarital birth, marital dissolution, remarriage, and second divorce surged over recent decades (Bumpass, 1984a, 1984b; Bumpass & Raley, 1993; Glick, 1989). Over half of children born in the mid-1980s will live in a single-parent family before age 18 (Bumpass, 1984b), in most cases due to divorce and nonmarital birth rather than death of a parent (Furstenberg, 1988). Mother's sole physical custody remains the dominant form of custody arrangement after divorce (Maccoby, Depner, & Mnookin, 1988), although joint legal custody and sole father custody (Meyer & Garasky, 1993) are increasing. Parental remarriage is experienced by many children after divorce, but over half of children whose parent remarries will experience a second divorce (Bumpass, 1984a). Remarried households also are quite complex; in most cases, at least one partner brings children from a prior relationship into the marriage (Cherlin & McCarthy, 1985). These demographic realities raise questions of the long-term implications of family transitions for children's lives and for parent-child relations. Longitudinal studies suggest that divorce rearranges parent-child relations (Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980) through custody and visitation arrangements, and the alignment of children with one parent or the other. Childhood family disruption appears to have long-term effects on men's intergenerational relationships. Divorce harms relations between noncustodial fathers and adult children (Cooney & Uhlenberg, 1990; Rossi & Rossi, 1990), and loss of a close relationship with a noncustodial father has been linked to higher depression among young adults (Drill, 1986). This article expands the existing literature by exploring father-custody arrangements and noncustodial motherhood, as well as the more typical mother-custody situations, and by estimating the effects of parental remarriage, the timing of family structure transitions, and the degree of family instability. In addition to comparisons with intact families, differences among the various forms of nonintact childhood living arrangements are estimated. IMPACT OF CUSTODY ARRANGEMENTS ON MOTHER-ADULT CHILD RELATIONS Relations with custodial mothers. There is little doubt that single parenting after divorce is burdensome (Arendell, 1986). …