Home Alone? The Effects of Children Leaving and Returning Home on Parental Well-being

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Parent-Child and Sibling Relationships

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of children leaving and returning home on parental well-being, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the time period between 1984 and 2010. It demonstrates that children leaving home are initially associated with a short-term reduction in parental well-being, which is stronger for empty nest than for partial launch. However, the short-term reduction is followed by a long-term rise in parental well-being, whereby parents that are typically assumed to suffer relatively more from role conflict during parenthood also feel a relatively greater relief from children leaving home, in particular those that are female and those that live in high-income households. Conversely, children returning home unambiguously reduce parental well-being in the short-run and in the long-run. However, the short-term reduction is statistically insignificant when controlling for individual and household characteristics of parents. As it turns out, the transmission mechanisms through which children leaving home affect parental well-being are mental health in general and role-emotional functioning, as specified in the Short-Form (SF12v2) Health Survey, which has been incorporated into the SOEP.

Author

• Christian Krekel, German Institute for Economic Research