Middle aged fathers' and mothers' support of adult children

Yen-Pi Cheng, Purdue University

Abstract

Previous research examining parent/offspring ties has focused primarily on mothers, excluding fathers. This study compared middle-aged mothers’ and fathers’ provision of different types of support to their grown children and hypothesized that (a) mothers would provide greater support than fathers across all types of support; (b) the patterns of support between mothers and fathers would be different; (c) offspring gender and parental marital status would moderate parental gender differences in support; (d) emotional and normative solidarity would mediate parental gender differences support. Participants (302 fathers, 331 mothers) indicated how often they helped each grown child (n = 1,384) with seven types of support. Findings from ANCOVA and repeated measures ANOVA revealed that mothers provided more total support to each child than fathers. Specifically, mothers provided more companionship, advice, listening to the child talk about daily life, as well as emotional and financial support. Fathers provided more technological assistance and similar amounts of practical support as mothers. Moreover, mother-daughter dyads exchanged more than other parent-child gender combinations while fathers who are not married to children’s mothers gave the least support. However, relationship quality (affectional solidarity) and familism (normative solidarity) did not mediate the gender differences in supporting adult offspring. Findings suggested that fathers contribute less to offspring than mothers on expressive and financial support, but not with regard to practical and technological help. Offspring gender and parental marital status are important factors when investigating downward support between midlife parents and offspring. Since relationship quality and familism were not the reasons underlying parental gender difference, other possible mechanisms may require further examination.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Fingerman, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Gerontology|Individual & family studies

COinS