Intergenerational Relationships

Intergenerational Relations and Developmental Stages

Intergenerational relations vary across the life span in response to needs associated with each stage of development, and throughout the life [Page 1188]span, parents and children respond to each other’s developmental needs. Starting at birth, infants express themselves to parents through physical cues and parents respond to these behaviors. The parent–infant relationship is one of complete physical dependency. However, when children become toddlers and start walking, they begin making the earliest transition from total dependency to autonomy. For the first time in their lives, children can actually physically move away from their parents and establish outside ties. This process of increased independency continues throughout childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and into midlife. In middle childhood, children engage in more self-directed activities and start to receive additional socialization outside the home; however, children are still largely influenced by their parents. Adolescence is a time of biological (i.e., sexual maturity), psychological, and social change that can have an impact on parent–child relations and how parents and children view one another. Emerging adulthood often marks a time of increased autonomy, as this is when young adults often make multiple transitions (e.g., leaving the parental home, making decisions regarding school and work, entering serious romantic relationships, and having children of their own). However, during these transitions, young adults often still rely on their parents for many of their physical, emotional, and financial needs. Contrary to earlier stages in the life span, adult children in midlife often begin to develop more reciprocal relationships with their parents. Typically, it is not until later life when parents experience their own changes (i.e., psychological and physical declines) that adult children give more support to their parents than they receive.

Intergenerational Relationship Quality

Intergenerational relationships comprise multiple dimensions. This entry focuses on three distinct qualities of parent–child relationships that are most common in the literature on intergenerational ties: closeness, conflict, and ambivalence. The intergenerational solidarity perspective, which emphasizes cohesion in families, has influenced the study of later life family relations since the 1970s. This perspective has been used to highlight emotional closeness in parent–child relations. In opposition to viewing the family as unidimensional, however, scholars have called for additional perspectives that accommodate more complex views of intergenerational ties. In particular, there has been an emphasis on the potential for conflict and estrangement between older parents and their adult children. In the late 1990s, the concept of intergenerational ambivalence was introduced to integrate these positive and negative dimensions of parent–adult child relations. The following subsections discuss how closeness, conflict, and ambivalence vary across the life span.

...