How Gender Shapes Sibling Tension in Adulthood Following Parental Death

How Intergenerational Estrangement Matters for Maternal and Adult Children's Health

Objective

We compare maternal and adult child health outcomes across 1) estranged (i.e., no contact, or low contact and low quality), 2) socially positive (i.e., high quality, moderate to high contact), and 3) socially negative (i.e., high contact but low quality) maternal-adult child relationships.

Background

We develop intergenerational resource, crisis, and strain theories to test the link between socially positive, socially negative, and estranged maternal-adult child dynamics and the health of both generations.

Method

Regression models of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY79-CYA) data compare self-rated health and CES-D scores across maternal-adult child relationship types (N = 2,609 mothers; 5,590 children).

Results

Mothers with estranged ties report poorer health relative to those with socially positive ties. The health of adult children with estrangement exposure is similar to those in socially negative ties, and those with socially negative ties have worse health relative to socially positive ties. However, estranged adult children's mental health is not statistically different than those in socially positive ties. Family-level analyses incorporating siblings suggest that for mothers, an estranged/socially negative tie with any child is associated with worse self-rated health; for adult children, one's own maternal relationship is more consequential than the sibling context.

Conclusion

This study has implications for research and theory on the health cost of socially negative and estranged intergenerational ties.

Digital Contact as Strain or Support: How Does Type of Contact Shape the Association Between Mother-Child Interactions and Adult Children's Depressive Symptoms in Later-Life Families?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

This paper aims to extend research on the association between mother-child contact and adult children's psychological well-being in later-life families by differentiating between in-person, virtual, and written digital contact, examining the moderating role of children's gender, and exploring the processes that underlie these associations.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Mixed-methods data were collected from 250 adult children nested within 131 families as part of the third wave of the Within-Family Differences Study. On average, adult children were 59 and mothers were 88 years of age.

RESULTS

Multilevel analyses revealed that interacting with mothers through written digital media was associated with higher depressive symptoms among adult children, whereas mother-child in-person and virtual digital contact were not associated with children's depressive symptoms. When stratifying the sample by children's gender, we found that mother-child written digital contact was associated with higher depressive symptoms among daughters, but not sons. Qualitative analyses suggested that adult daughters' psychological well-being was negatively associated with written digital contact with their mothers because this medium of interaction typically fell short of daughters' expectations for emotionally enriching exchanges.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

This study revealed differences in how virtual and written digital contact are associated with psychological well-being among adult daughters, but not sons, suggesting that it is important to consider type of contact, gender of interactants, and content of exchanges when studying the associations between digital communication and relational and psychological well-being and designing intervention programs and digital communication technologies.

A Coordinated Data Analysis of Four Studies Exploring Age Differences in Social Interactions and Loneliness During a Global Pandemic

OBJECTIVES

Examining loneliness and social isolation during population-wide historical events may shed light on important theoretical questions about age differences, including whether these differences hold across different regions and the time course of the unfolding event. We used a systematic, preregistered approach of coordinated data analysis (CDA) of 4 studies (total N = 1,307; total observations = 18,492) that varied in design (intensive repeated-measures and cross-sectional), region, timing, and timescale during the first year of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

METHODS

We harmonized our data sets to a common period within 2020-2021 and created a common set of variables. We used a combination of ordinary least squares regression and multilevel modeling to address the extent to which there was within- and between-person variation in the associations between social isolation and loneliness, and whether these associations varied as a function of age.

RESULTS

Within- and between-person effects of social interactions were negatively associated with loneliness in 1 study; in follow-up sensitivity analyses, these patterns held across early and later pandemic periods. Across all data sets, there was no evidence of age differences in the within-person or between-person associations of social interactions and loneliness.

DISCUSSION

Applying the CDA methodological framework allowed us to detect common and divergent patterns of social interactions and loneliness across samples, ages, regions, periods, and study designs.