Abstract
The family is a long-term, intergenerational network of interacting actors. This chapter takes a person-centered approach to examine the dynamics of mother-child relationships from adolescence to adulthood, and the associations of these trajectories with adult child well-being. The authors present empirical findings from the two-generation Youth Development Study, where more than 1000 9th graders have been followed for over two decades. A growth mixture model latent trajectory analysis identified three pathways of G1 mother and G2 child relationship quality: persistently close relationships as youth moved from adolescence to adulthood, initially lower but increasing closeness over time, and diminishing closeness through the transition to adulthood. The chapter reports an examination of these trajectories in relation to G2 adult mental health, finding that the two trajectories indicating problematic mother-child relationships, either in adolescence or in adulthood, are associated with higher adult depressed mood and lower self-esteem.
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Notes
- 1.
Using a question about whether a G1 parent had recently remarried at each time point, descriptive analyses were conducted to assess stability of stepparent relationships (e.g., to ensure that answers about stepmothers did not refer to different stepmothers at different time points). Only one out of those who identified stepmothers as a primary parent indicated that one of their parents remarried. Thus, 97% of respondents with stepmothers indicated no ambiguity about their primary mother figure, suggesting that relationships with stepmothers had a highly stable referent.
- 2.
Missing data was addressed using full information maximum likelihood or multiple imputation depending on the capacity of the statistical software (Johnson and Young 2011).
- 3.
Growth mixture models were also conducted for perceived closeness with fathers from adolescence to adulthood. However, the resulting entropy (separation between classes) was low, suggesting that treating perceived closeness with fathers as a continuous variable was preferable (results available upon request).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Grant R01HD044138 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The Youth Development Study was supported by grants, “Work Experience and Mental Health: A Panel Study of Youth,” from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD44138) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH42843). The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the sponsors.
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Doty, J.L., Mortimer, J.T. (2018). Trajectories of Mother-Child Relationships Across the Life Course: Links with Adult Well-Being. In: Alwin, D., Felmlee, D., Kreager, D. (eds) Social Networks and the Life Course. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_18
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