19.3 Emerging Adults and Their Parents

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the family during any time of the life span. Although a family is composed of individuals, it is much more than the persons who belong to it. In the dynamic synergy of a well-functioning family, children grow, adults find support, and everyone is part of an unit that gives meaning to, and provides models for, his or her aspirations and decisions.

If anything, parents today are more important to emerging adults than ever. Two experts in human development write, “with delays in marriage, more Americans choosing to remain single, and high divorce rates, a tie to a parent may be the most important bond in a young adult’s life” (Fingerman & Furstenberg, 2012).

Linked Lives

Emerging adults set out on their own, leaving their childhood home and parents behind. They strive for independence. It might seem as if they no longer need parental support and guidance, but the data show that parents continue to be crucial. Fewer emerging adults than in the past have established their own families, secured high-paying jobs, or achieved a definitive understanding of their identity and their goals.

All members of each family have linked lives; that is, the experiences and needs of family members at one stage of life are affected by those at other stages (Macmillan & Copher, 2005). We have seen this in earlier chapters: Children are affected by their parents’ relationship, even if the children are not directly involved in their parents’ domestic disputes, financial stresses, parental alliances, and so on. Brothers and sisters can be abusers or protectors, role models for good or for ill.

The same historical conditions that gave rise to the stage now called emerging adulthood have produced stronger links between parents and their adult children. Because of demographic changes over the past few decades, most middle-aged parents have only one or two offspring, and no young children who need constant care.

Brilliant, Unemployed, and Laughing Not an unusual combination for contemporary college graduates. Melissa, in Missoula, Montana, graduated summa cum laude from George Washington University and was one of many college graduates who lived with their parents. The arrangement provides many financial and family benefits, but who cooked dinner and who will wash the dishes?

WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES

Many emerging adults still live at home, though the percentage varies from nation to nation. Almost all unmarried young adults in Italy and Japan live with their parents. Fewer do so in the United States, but many parents underwrite their young-adult children’s independent living if they can afford to do so (Furstenberg, 2010). When they do not live at home, emerging adults see their parents, on average, several times a week and phone them even more often (Fingerman et al., 2012b).

Strong links between emerging adults and their parents are evident in attitudes as well. A detailed Dutch study found substantial agreement between parents and their adult children on contentious issues: cohabitation, same-sex partnerships, and divorce. Some generational differences appeared, but when parents were compared with their own children (not young adults in general), “intergenerational convergence” was apparent, especially when the adult children lived with their parents, as did about one-fourth of the sample (Bucx et al., 2010, p. 131).

Financial Support

How Old Is He? Appropriate financial planning is one of the skills of adulthood that is beyond the grasp of many emerging adults.

P.C. VEY/THE NEW YORKER COLLECTION/CARTOONBANK.COM

Parents of all income levels in the United States provide substantial help to their adult children, for many reasons. A major one is that the parent generation has more income. On average, households with the highest average income are headed by someone aged 45 to 54 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2012). Often parents of emerging adults are employed, with some seniority, and are not yet paying for their own health or retirement. In nations such as the United States, where neither college nor preschool education is free, parental financial help may be crucial (Furstenberg, 2010).

This observation is not meant to criticize earlier cohorts; parents have always wanted to help their offspring. Now, however, more of them are able to give both money and time. For example, very few young college students pay all their tuition and living expenses on their own. Parents provide support; loans, part-time employment, and partial scholarships also contribute.

Valuable, but Increasingly Unaffordable This chart shows percent of increase, compared to 1983 (set at 100 percent), when public education was supported primarily by public funds, with low tuition for students.

Sources: The College Board, Annual Survey and Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012 Current Population Reports By Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith, Issued September 2013 and calculations by the author.

About one-half of all emerging adults receive cash from their parents in addition to tuition, medical care, food, and other material support. Most are also given substantial gifts of time, such as help with laundry, moving, household repairs, and, if the young adult becomes a parent, free child care. Earning a college degree is especially hard without family help.

In most European nations college tuition is free or less expensive, early childhood education is considered a public right, and housing and health care are less costly. Accordingly, emerging adults in Europe are less likely to need parental financial support. However, parents support their adult children in many other ways—it seems that the urge to support grown children is universal, with the specifics dependent on what is needed and on what the parents can afford (Brandt & Deindl, 2013).

Cultures differ in when and how families are destructive or helpful. For example, a study of enmeshment (e.g., parents involved in the thoughts and actions of their children) found that British emerging adults were less happy and successful when their parents were too intrusive. However, emerging adults in Italy seemed to remain close to their parents without hindering their own development (Manzi et al., 2006).

Some Westerners believe that family dependence is more evident in developing nations. There is some truth in this belief. For example, many African young adults marry someone approved by their parents and work to support their many relatives—siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, and so on. Individuals sacrifice personal goals for family concerns, and “collectivism often takes precedence and overrides individual needs and interests,” which makes “the family a source of both collective identity and tension” (Wilson & Ngige, 2006, p. 248).

In cultures with arranged marriages, parents not only provide practical support (such as child care) and emotional encouragement, they may also protect their child. If the relationship is a disaster (for instance, the husband severely beats the wife, the wife refuses sex, the husband never works, or the wife never cooks), then the parents intervene. Again, each couple within each culture judges intervention differently: What is expected in, say, Cambodia, would be unacceptable in, say, Colorado.

Young adults from low-income families are likely to remain within the low-SES population because their parents cannot pay for college and living expenses during emerging adulthood (Fingerman et al., 2012b). Children in foster care face a particular problem: At age 18, they are considered adults, able to take their place in society. Given all that is now known about emerging adults, this is far too young (Avery & Freundlich, 2009); most 18-year-olds are not ready to manage life on their own.

There is a downside to parental support: It may impede independence. The most dramatic example is the so-called helicopter parents, hovering over their emerging adult child, ready to swoop down if any problem arises (Fingerman et al., 2012a).

The rise in the number of college students living at home, or attending colleges near home, could be ascribed to financial concerns, and that certainly is part of it. But it also could result from parental reluctance to let go. Parents do many things for their emerging adult college students—washing their laundry, sending them cookies, editing their college papers, paying their phone bills—but these very efforts may keep the child dependent, not learning from their mistakes.

Who decides? Ariana’s first day at the University of Iowa seems to bewilder her but not her parents, who figure out what goes where in her dorm room.

BRIAN RAY/AP PHOTO

One mother explains that her son doesn’t come home from college as often as she would like, but when he does, he bring bags of dirty laundry that she washes and

Parent assistance to emerging adults not only slows down maturation, it may create another problem. If a family has more than one child, the children may perceive favoritism. Often one sibling seems to receive more encouragement, money, or practical help from the parents. Differential treatment because of gender or age seems unfair to the less favored child.

In addition, mothers are more protective of a child who is emotionally dependent, and fathers seem more pleased with a more successful one. Interestingly, although most adults feel closer to their mothers than to their fathers, fathers are particularly influential for emerging adults, for good or ill (Schwartz et al., 2009).

From the parents’ perspective, each child has different needs, and that means different treatment. But such variations may not only be resented; they may reduce sibling closeness, increase conflict, and lead to depression, in the favored as well as the less favored child (Jensen et al., 2013).

Family involvement has many advantages, especially if the young adult becomes a parent and the new grandparents provide care. Free infant care from relatively young parents may be one reason why parenthood begins much earlier in poor nations. By contrast, parenthood before age 25 in the United States is a major impediment to higher education and career success, which may explain why emerging adults postpone it (Furstenberg, 2010).

Nationally and internationally, it is a mistake to put too much emphasis on whether or not a young adult still lives at home. Sharing living quarters is not the best indicator of a supportive relationship. Emerging adults who live independently but who previously had close relationships with their parents are as likely to avoid serious risks to their health and safety as those who never left.

As we think about the experiences of emerging adults overall, it is apparent that this stage of life has many pitfalls as well as benefits. These years may be crucial to long-term well-being as “decisions made during the transition to adulthood have a particularly long-lasting influence on the remainder of the life course because they set individuals on paths that are sometimes difficult to change” (Thornton et al., 2007, p. 13).

Fortunately, most emerging adults, like humans of all ages, have strengths as well as liabilities. Many survive risks, overcome substance abuse, combat loneliness, and deal with other problems through further education, maturation, friends, and family. If they postpone marriage, prevent parenthood, and avoid a set career until their identity is firmly established and their education is complete, they may be ready and eager for all the commitments and responsibilities of adulthood (described in the next chapters).