Parental Assistance, Negative Life Events, and Attainment During the Transition to Adulthood

ABSTRACT

Responding to the longer and more variable transition to adulthood, parents are stepping in to help their young adult children. Little is known, however, about the extent to which parental support promotes success, and whether parental support has different effects for young adult sons and daughters. Using longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study, we find that parental “scaffolding” assistance for educational expenses predicts college graduation for both men and women. Negative life events experienced during the transition to adulthood are associated with lower earnings by the early 30s, although there is some variation by type of event. More frequent parental support during times of need does not predict long-term economic attainment for sons or daughters.

KEYWORDS:

• Family
• social support
• young adulthood
• parent–adult child relations
• intergenerational relations
• transition to adulthood

Funding

The Youth Development Study was supported by grants, “Work Experience and Mental Health: A Panel Study of Youth,” from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD44138) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH42843). The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of NICHD or NIMH. Youth Development Study data are available for public use at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan.

Notes

1. All descriptive statistics in Table 1 are disaggregated to show differences by gender in our independent and control variables. In supplemental analyses, we use t-tests to examine whether mean differences between men and women are statistically significant (results available on request). All significant differences are noted in the text.

2. Since only 11 respondents received support from “other relatives” and no support from parents, we did not include this source of support in our analysis.

3. When closeness to both mothers and fathers are included in multivariate models, neither measure is a statistically significant predictor of attainment (not shown, available on request). Given the reduction in sample size resulting from missing data, we omit paternal closeness from the models shown in Table 2 and Table 3.

4. In supplemental analyses, we test whether parental support for postsecondary educational expenses through 1997 is similarly associated with the odds of obtaining a bachelor’s degree by 1998 (age 24–25) and 1999 (age 25–26). Results are comparable with those reported in Table 2 (not shown, available on request).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Teresa Toguchi Swartz

Teresa Toguchi Swartz is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. She recently co-edited Crossings to Adulthood: How Diverse Young Americans Understand and Navigate Their Lives (with Douglas Hartmann and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Brill, in press). Her research focuses on intergenerational relations, families, Asian Americans, youth and young adulthood.

Heather McLaughlin

Heather McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. Her research examines how gender norms are constructed and policed within various institutional contexts, including work, sport, and law, with a particular emphasis on women’s participation in gendered institutions during adolescence and young adulthood. Her previous work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Law & Society Review, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, and the Handbook of Social Psychology of Inequality.

Jeylan T. Mortimer

Jeylan T. Mortimer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Youth Development Study. She recently co-edited the Second Volume of the Handbook of the Life Course (with Michael J. Shanahan and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, Springer 2016). Her research focuses on transition to adulthood, the sources of resilience, and intergenerational value transmission.