Parental involvement in youth and closeness to parents during adulthood: Stepparents and biological parents
Ivanova,Katya Kalmijn,Matthijs
Ivanova,Katya
Kalmijn,Matthijs
Abstract
We examined a possible predictor of (step)parent–adult child closeness in adulthood, namely, the frequency of parental involvement in different child-rearing tasks during youth. We expected that although involvement in children’s lives would be important for the strength of all intergenerational ties, it would be particularly important for stepparents’ closeness with their adult stepchildren. We used the Parents and Children in The Netherlands survey to test our hypotheses. Our analytical sample consisted of the reports of adults (25–45 years old; n = 5,107) about how frequently different types of parents engaged with them in activities related to school, leisure, and personal communication (including reports about 1,361 stepmothers and 1,489 stepfathers). Our results clearly demonstrate that an increase in the frequency of performing a task was associated with more closeness during adulthood, but this effect was significantly stronger in stepparent–child compared to biological parent–child ties. We interpret this finding as stepparents having to “earn” or more explicitly demonstrate their desire for closeness to stepchildren. An interesting gender difference emerged in the position of divorced biological parents, with adult children’s closeness to divorced biological fathers also being more contingent on parental involvement, whereas that was not unequivocally the case for divorced biological mothers.
Description
Funding Information: This work was partially funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 program (ERC Grant agreement 669334). The findings displayed in this article have been presented by Katya Ivanova at the 9th edition of the Alpine Population Conference, La Thuile, Italy. The fieldwork was carried out in 2017 by Statistics Netherlands, which is bound by the Dutch Personal Data Protection Act. Additionally, the data collection was approved by the Ethics Advisor of the project and the European Research Council officer assigned to this project (ERC grant agreement no. 669334).
Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
CONSEQUENCES, FATHERS, GENDER, LIFE, MARRIAGE, MOTHERS, STEPFATHERS, child rearing, intergenerational solidarity, parent-child closeness, parental involvement, stepparents
Citation
Ivanova, K & Kalmijn, M 2020, 'Parental involvement in youth and closeness to parents during adulthood : Stepparents and biological parents', Journal of Family Psychology, vol. 34, no. 7, pp. 794-803. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000659