Strong Support but Uneasy Relationships: Coresidence and Adult Children's Relationships with Their Parents

Abstract

Using data on a sample of 435 young adults who were interviewed in 1992 and their parents who were interviewed in 1988, we examine the effects of coresidence on multiple dimensions of parentchild solidarity. Results show that coresident young adults give, receive, and perceive more support from their parents than nonresident children, but that they report significantly, albeit modestly, lower affective relationships with their parents. The effects of coresidence are more positive when children are more adult and responsible (older, employed, in school). Coresidence and proximity are strongly related to parent-child solidarity, but parents' reports of the quality of prior family relationships have surprisingly little effect on the likelihood of coresidence or on children's reports of current relationships. Key Words: coresidence, exchange, parent-child relationships, proximity, solidarity. A substantial amount of research in the last decade has charted the demographic and life course factors associated with patterns of leaving home and returning to home among young adults. (See White, 1994, for a review.) However, much less is known about how residence patterns influence parent-child relationships during the transition to adulthood. A prolonged transition to adulthood and delayed age at marriage have meant that more children are living at home longer and often returning home after a period of independent living (Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1994). Among those remaining unmarried until middle age, a substantial minority continue to live with their parents, and three recent studies using different data sets concur in estimating that one of seven parents over age 65 still has children living at home (Aquilino, 1990; Speare & Avery, 1993; Ward, Logan, & Spitze, 1992). Thus, the effect of coresidence on parent-child relationships is an issue for many American families. In this study we draw on research from social network perspectives and transition-to-adulthood perspectives to address multiple dimensions of the relationship between coresidence and parentchild solidarity. We use a national sample of 435 young adults from the Marital Instability over the Life Course Study to examine the following questions: Does coresidence raise levels of exchange at the expense of the quality of the parent-child relationship? How important is home leaving compared with other markers of the transition to adulthood (e.g., age, employment, and school leaving) in affecting parent-child relationships? Finally, how important are parental assessments of prior quality of the family relationship in affecting coresidence patterns and parent-child solidarity? The child interviews that we analyze are attached to a multiple-wave study of their parents, allowing us to link offspring reports to their parents' prior reports of the quality of their family relationships. We combine parents' and children's reports over two points in time, which allows us to extend previous studies to form a more complete picture of the effects of coresidence on parent-child relationships. BACKGROUND Conceptual Frameworks Structural arguments. Two recent models of family solidarity, proposed by Rossi and Rossi (1990) and Roberts and Bengtson (1991), concur in giving proximity an integral role in influencing family solidarity. Conceiving of family solidarity as a multidimensional construct that includes exchange, affective closeness, interaction, normative obligations, and value consensus, as well as proximity, these models suggest that proximity is not merely a facilitator of family solidarity but an essential element. If we think of coresidence as a special case of close proximity, then these models would suggest both more exchange and more positive sentiments when parents and children coreside than when they live apart. Although such an expectation fits in neatly with earlier social exchange theory drawn from small groups research (for example, Homans', 1950, trilogy of interaction-activities-sentiments), two recent theoretical arguments challenge the notion that proximity and interaction necessarily lead to more positive sentiments. …