Child’s educational disruptions during adolescence and parent’s physical health in later life

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 3: Life Course Experiences and Exposures and Long-Term Health Trajectories

Abstract

Family members’ lives are fundamentally interconnected across the life course, with parent-child relationships involving reciprocal exchanges that evolve over time. As children mature, they are increasingly expected to provide support to aging parents, making their life course transitions consequential for parents’ long-term well-being. Yet research has predominantly examined how parents influence children’s outcomes while largely neglecting these bottom-up intergenerational processes. This study explores associations between children’s educational disruptions during adolescence and parents’ physical health in later life. Drawing on the theory of linked lives and the concept of adult children’s support capacity, I examine whether educational disruptions are associated with parents’ health through two pathways: children’s educational attainment and economic resources.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and the Add Health Parent Study (N = 2,247), I examine associations between children’s experiences of suspension, expulsion, and grade repetition during adolescence and parents’ self-rated health and chronic disease burden measured two decades later. Adjusted multiple regression analyses suggest that children’s grade repetition—but not suspension or expulsion—is associated with poorer parental health outcomes (b = -0.189 for self-rated health, p < 0.01; b = 0.248 for chronic diseases, p < 0.001), net of sociodemographic factors. Mediation analyses using Sobel tests suggest that children’s educational attainment may account for approximately 21% of this association, while personal earnings show no significant mediating effect.
These findings contribute to understanding how family members’ experiences shape each other’s well-being across generations and illuminate grade retention as a potentially consequential educational experience with long-term implications for family health dynamics. The results suggest that intergenerational support processes linking children’s human capital development to parents’ health in later life may be an important dimension of family ties across the life course.

Author

• Hyewon Son, The University of Texas at Austin