Living Together or Communicating at a Distance: Structural and Associational Solidarity Between Mid-life Parent and Adult Child in New Zealand

Abstract

This article draws on the theoretical construct of micro-level intergenerational solidarity developed by Bengtson and others to establish the factors influencing the associative and structural dimensions of solidarity for the dyad of mid-life parent and young adult child. This dyadic relationship may be subject to the constraining effects of responsibilities associated with mid-life, and the increasingly complex process associated with youth transition to adulthood, suggesting the potential for weakened intergenerational bonds of co-residence and communication. Empirical analysis, using multivariate logistic regression techniques draws on data from a 1997 New Zealand sample survey examining intergenerational relations between individuals aged 40-54 and their children and ageing parents. Results indicate that marital status, gender, religion and ethnicity exert a particular influence on both dimensions of solidarity, and that the potentially constraining factors of household income, employment, family size and the presence of ageing parents do not appear to weaken them unduly. Results do suggest that both dimensions of solidarity are weakened by parental divorce and separation, but remain the strongest when children share a biological link with parents.

Older Parent–Child Relationships in Six Developed Nations: Comparisons at the Intersection of Affection and Conflict

“…The intergenerational solidarity paradigm, though developed and validated with data from the United States, has been used in many countries around the world-for example, in Japan (Koyano, 1996), Germany (Steinbach, 2008), the Netherlands (Van Gaalen & Dykstra, 2006), New Zealand (Hillcoat-Nalletamby, Dharmalingam, & Baxendine, 2006), and Canada (Rosenthal, 1987). Formal cross-national comparisons using the solidarity paradigm have been carried out between an urban center in the United States and Wales (Silverstein, Burholt, Wenger, & Bengtson, 1998); between the recently reunified East and West Germany (Szydlik, 1996); and among England, Germany, Israel, Norway, and Spain (Daatland & Herlofson, 2003;Lowenstein, 2007).…”