Parenting Young Adults in Australia: New expectations and new tensions

• In Event: 50261 - Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Childrearing & Parenthood

Abstract

There is increasing attention to the way extended youth transitions are intertwined with growing expectations of parental support extending into young adulthood. While there is a body of literature looking at inter-generational patterns of support, youth studies work on extended transitions is not often connected to debates in parenting research about changing expectations on parents (which tends to focus on parenting children and teenagers). This paper attempts to make this connection in the context of changing demands on the parents of young adults in Australia. Using interviews with 30 parents of young adults aged between 18-25 we investigate how they navigate providing tangible and intangible supports to their adult children, how they see this affecting their own life course patterns and how they understand parenting demands as shifting over time. The participants do report providing substantial tangible (financial and practical) and intangible (emotional) support to their young adult children and tie this to social changes to the transition to adulthood but report a tension between recognizing social change and new needs attached to it while also navigating the continuing value of ‘independence’ for their young adult children. While the participants hope that the emotional support they give their children may be reciprocated as they age, in most cases tangible (including financial) support was considered as rightly passing down the generations, if it did not hinder the development of independence and the next generation ‘standing on their own two feet’.

Authors

• Dan Woodman, University of Melbourne, Australia

• Rachel Brooks, University of Oxford

• Julia Cook, University of Newcastle, Australia