The analyses presented here suggest that direct and indirect measures of intergenerational ambivalence may not be tapping the same underlying construct, particularly in the case of adult children and especially sons. Furthermore, direct measures may have an advantage over indirect measures when including sons in the study design. We conclude that direct and indirect measures cannot be used interchangeably across the combination of generation and gender.

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Relationships between mothers and their children are expected to be lifelong and rewarding for both members of the dyad. Because of the salience of these ties, they are likely to be disrupted only under conditions of extreme relational tension and dissatisfaction. In this work, the authors drew on theoretical arguments regarding societal norm violations and value similarity to examine the processes that lead to estrangement between mothers and adult children. To address this issue, they used quantitative and qualitative data on 2,013 mother–adult child dyads nested within 561 later life families, including 64 in which mothers reported being estranged from at least 1 of their children. Value dissimilarity was found to be a strong predictor of estrangement, whereas violation of serious societal norms was not. Qualitative data revealed that value dissimilarity created severe relational tension between mothers and adult children leading to estrangement.

Data were collected from 708 adult children nested within 274 later-life families from the WithinFamily Differences Study to explore the role of perceived maternal favoritism in the quality of sibling relations in midlife. Mixed-model analyses revealed that regardless of which sibling was favored, perceptions of current favoritism and recollections of favoritism in childhood reduced closeness among siblings. Recollections of maternal favoritism in childhood were more important than perceptions of current favoritism in predicting tension among adult siblings, regardless of age. Taken together, the findings from this investigation are consistent with childhood studies showing that siblings have better relationships when they believe that they are treated equitably by their parents. KeywordsAdult siblings < Sibling Relations; Mother-child relations < Parenting < Parenting and Parenthood; Parental favoritism; Within-family design < Method Literature, history, and popular culture abound with stories of siblings vying for their parents' favor, from the Biblical account of jealousy among Jacob's sons to the rivalry * Please direct all correspondence to J. Jill Suitor, Department of Sociology/Center on Aging and the Life Course, Purdue University, 700 Stone Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 (jsuitor@purdue.edu). Phone: 765-496-1718; FAX: 765-496-1476 between Ray Romano and his brother Robert in the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." Such rivalry is fueled by a concern that some children receive an unfair share of their parents' emotional or instrumental resources. Parents' differential treatment of their offspring in childhood and its effects have received substantial attention by scholars across an array of disciplines (for a review see Suitor, Sechrist, Plikuhn, Pardo, & Pillemer, 2008). In contrast, there has been a dearth of attention to within-family differences in parents' relationships with their children during adulthood.In the present paper, we extend the study of within-family differences by examining the consequences of perceived parental favoritism on sibling relations in adulthood. Specifically, we investigate whether siblings' closeness and conflict are affected by adult children's perceptions of mothers' current favoritism or their recollections of favoritism in childhood. To address these questions, we use data collected from 708 adult children nested within 274 later-life families as part of the Within-Family Differences Study. The Role of Parental Favoritism in Sibling RelationsThe literature on within-family differences in childhood has demonstrated convincingly that parental favoritism has consequences for children's lives. For example, consistent with classic arguments by Freud (1961) and Adler (1956) empirical evidence has shown that being the disfavored child in the family is associated with decreased well-being, whereas being the favored child is associated with increased well-being under some circumstances (Suitor et al., 2008). Favored children are also more likely to gar...

The importance of parental favoritism in childhood and adulthood has been well documented; little is known, however, about changes over time in such within‐family differentiation. Drawing on theories of life course processes and developmental psychology, the authors used 7‐year panel data collected from 406 older mothers about their relationships with 1,514 adult children to explore patterns of favoritism regarding caregiving and emotional closeness. The findings demonstrated continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism. Mothers tended to prefer the same children across time, particularly regarding preferred caregivers. It was anticipated that children's social‐structural characteristics, similarity to their mothers, structural position in the family, and support provision to mothers would predict favored child status across time; however, only similarity and support processes were strong and consistent predictors of change and continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism.

Growing social and economic inequalities in the UnitedA central focus of family scholarship is the role that family plays in aspects of inequality. Across

Ambivalence has become an important conceptual development in the study of parent–adult child relations, with evidence highlighting that intergenerational relationships are characterized by a mix of positive and negative components. Recent studies have shown that ambivalence has detrimental consequences for both parents' and adult children's psychological well-being. The underlying assumption of this line of research is that psychological distress results from holding simultaneous positive and negative feelings toward a parent or child. The authors question this assumption and explore alternative interpretations by disaggregating the positive and negative dimensions commonly used to create indirect measures of intergenerational ambivalence. Data for the analyses were collected from 254 older mothers and a randomly selected adult child from each of the families. The findings suggest that the negative component is primarily responsible for the association between indirect measures of ambivalence and psychological well-being. Implications of these findings for the study of intergenerational ambivalence are discussed.

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