Close To You? How Parent-Adult Child Contact Is Influenced by Family Patterns.

Objectives: Intergenerational contacts occur in the context of other family relationships. We examine how in-person contacts among parents and all adult children affect each other, focusing on proximity and other predictors to assess whether and how visiting is correlated across adult children.

Methods: We use a modeling approach derived from an adaptation of multilevel models to provide a convenient mechanism by which to write child-specific equations, each with its own set of predictors, and wherein one child's attribute values can be attached to other children's records.

Life-course changes and parent-adult child contact.

Despite increased interest in parent-adult child relations, there has been little attention to how these are influenced by changes in their lives, reflecting transitions and linked lives within a life-course perspective. Hybrid multilevel models are used to analyze the change in parent-adult child contact over two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Changes in parent-child proximity, parent and child marital status, and child parental status are associated with change in contact; continued coresidence with another adult child is related to contact with non-coresidential children; but change in parent health does not affect contact.

CROSS-SIBLING EFFECTS IN PARENT-ADULT CHILD EXCHANGES OF SOCIOEMOTIONAL SUPPORT.

We use National Survey of Families and Households first wave data and innovative modeling to examine how one parent-adult child pair may affect other pairs. Three conceptual models guide our analyses of parents' giving and receiving of socioemotional support, representing enhancement, compensation, and independence. Giving support to one child is related to more giving to others (enhancement), but receiving support from one child is related to less receipt from others (compensation).

GROWING UP WITHOUT SIBLINGS AND ADULT SOCIABILITY BEHAVIORS.

We use data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine a range of sociability behaviors for adults who grew up with and without siblings. Compared to adults who grew up with siblings, adults who grew up without siblings have less frequent social activities with relatives, and the difference is greater among those who did not live with both parents growing up. Differences in engaging in certain social events between adults who grew up without and with siblings vary by age.

Chronic illness self-care and the family lives of older adults: a synthetic review across four ethnic groups.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the literature on family and social ties among older ethnic minority men and women with the literature on chronic illness self-care among elders in these groups, in order to increase understanding of social influences on self-care behavior, raise questions for future research, and inform culturally appropriate interventions to maximize the health-promoting potential of social relationships. The paper presents demographic and chronic illness prevalence information, and then summarizes literature about patterns of chronic illness self-care behaviors for older African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and American Indians in the U.S.

Marital implications of parent-adult child coresidence: a longitudinal view.

Objectives: This study assesses implications of changes in coresidence with adult children for parents' marital relations, hypothesizing that transitions into coresidence lower marital quality and transitions out of coresidence increase marital quality.

Methods: Panel data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households are used to analyze whether change in three measures of marital quality-time together, happiness, and disagreements-is related to adult child coresidence.

Results: When adult children move out, parent couples increase their time together; there is a tendency for reduced time together when the nest "refills.