Using longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (analytic sample N = 712), we investigate how age, adult role acquisition and attainments, family resources, parent-child relationship quality, school attendance, and life events influence support received from parents in young adulthood. Parental assistance was found to be less forthcoming for those who had made greater progress on the road to adulthood, signified by socioeconomic attainment and union formation. The quality of mother-child and father-child relationships affected parental support in different ways, positively for mothers, negatively for fathers. School enrollment, negative life events, and employment problems were associated with a greater likelihood of receiving support. The findings suggest that parents act as "scaffolding" and "safety nets" to aid their children's successful transition to adulthood. Keywords family relations; intergenerational transfers; longitudinal; parent-child relations; social support; transition to adulthoodDuring the mid-twentieth century, most individuals could expect to take on adult roles and attain independence from their parents by their early-to-mid-20s. In recent decades the transition to adulthood has changed greatly. Structural and cultural changes have resulted in an extension of this life stage; young people spend more years pursuing education and take longer to establish careers and set up independent households in an economy that features unstable employment, low wages for the young, and high housing costs (Bell, Burtless, Gornick, & Smeeding, 2007;. Some scholars now consider the contemporary transition to adulthood, rather than being concentrated in the early 20s, to span the ages of 18-34 (Furstenberg, Kennedy, McLoyd, Rumbaut, & Settersten, 2004).Many parents are responding to the elongated transition by providing their young adult children with continued assistance (Aquilino, 2005; Fingerman, Miller, Birditt, & Zarit, 2009;Schoeni & Ross, 2005;Yelowitz, 2007). Some academics and public commentators have expressed concern that parental support in young adulthood prolongs dependence (e.g., Bahney 2006;Cote, 2000; Tyre, 2002). Others have argued that parental aid helps young people navigate the numerous challenges of early adulthood and supports their capacities for (tswartz@umn.edu). The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health. (Aquilino, 2005;Eggebeen, 2005) by enabling young adults to develop the skills and experience needed to succeed in adult roles (Aquilino, 1999). In any case, for many families active parenting now extends beyond adolescence as the young adult's goal of independence becomes a "joint enterprise" (Scabini, Marta, & Lanz, 2006 (Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1999;Schoeni & Ross, 2005;Yelowitz, 2007). Coresidence may be an especially protective form of support in a difficult economy, as young adults who ...

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic’s social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic’s short- and long-term consequences unfold.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This article examines the effects of work intensity on adolescent mental health, academic achievement, and behavioral adjustment. Questionnaire data were collected yearly from an initial panel of 1,000 randomly selected ninth graders (14-15 years old). Consistent with other studies, students who worked at higher intensity engaged in more alcohol use. The methodological strengths of this research (a representative panel studied prospectively over a 4-year period with minimal attrition and an analysis incorporating key control and lagged variables) provide strong evidence that adolescent work fosters alcohol use. The contention that work of high intensity has deleterious effects on mental health, academic achievement, and 2 other indicators of behavioral adjustment did not withstand our stringent tests. However, high school seniors who worked at moderate intensity (1-20 hours per week) had higher grades than both nonworkers and students who worked more hours per week.

No abstract

Whereas sociologists have long recognized that adolescence marks the start of the socioeconomic career, the importance of this period has been attributed to school performance, aspirations, and significant others' influence that support educational attainment to a greater or lesser degree. The underlying premise of this study is that adolescent work is an expression of instrumental action with consequences for socioeconomic attainment. Using data from the Youth Development Study, we find that part-time work during high school is linked with patterns of schooling and working that persist during the succeeding years and are more or less conducive to the receipt of a BA/BS degree. Moderate work coupled with school appears to especially facilitate the educational attainment of low promise youth.