Adult Child-Parent Relationships: Predicting Physical and Emotional Estrangement

Brianne E. Pragg , Pennsylvania State University

It is often assumed that the relationship between parents and children are involuntary and stable throughout the life course. However, a growing literature on the estrangement of adult children from their parents finds that this is not always the case. The current study uses Waves I -- IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the predictors of different dimensions of adult child-parent estrangement. Physical and emotional estrangement are rarely considered separately in quantitative studies, but this study will explore these dimensions of estrangement separately and consider whether the predictors vary between types of estrangement and by gender of both the children and the parents.

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 Presented in Session 4. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions