PARENT-CHILD SEPARATION IN SPACE: A SOCIa-GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE PARENT-CHILD SEPARATION IN SPACE: A SOCIO-GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

The research purpose here is to have a clearer understanding of the issue of parent-child separation in space in the U.S. from various perspectives. Major fmdings are (1) white population tends to live farther away from their parents than nonwhite population, (2) those who are socially upwardly mobile seem to be farther from their parents than those who are not mobile, (3) the median distance is increasing from lower, middle, to upper social class (based on occupation), and (4) among the middle-class and lower-class groups, urban residents locate themselves far from their parents than nonurban residents do. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to have a clearer insight of the various factors which could influence the spatial separation between parents and their children from various perspectives. This study is prompted partly by the crucial impact of the baby boom in the U.S. history. On average, a parent in that era tends to have quite a few children available for potential support. However, as baby boomers age, they will have relatively less children available for support in their later lives. The significance of understanding the potential determinants of spatial separation becomes more obvious when dealing with specific kinds of support which are more distance constrained by nature, e.g. help in transportation, housework, and home and car repairs. Hence, the spatial separation will become a critical issue for social geographers and have important implications for policy makers as well. LITERATURE REVIEW Basically, interaction and distance are two of the most important variables in the context of family relationship given the strong negative relationship between them. In all relevant studies conducted so far, distance has always been suggested to affect the interaction intensity, among other things. However, very few researchers have discussed how distance is influenced by other variables even though this is an equally important issue. In fact, the question of how far away family members arc from their parental home in the first place has been an under­ researched area. So far, the relevant literature available to us is relatively sparse. Warnes (1984) found that in England daughters lived closer to their retired parents than did sons. Geographical variation in distance of separation was also noted. Later on, Warnes noted that those parents in the higher social classes lived further from their children than those in the lower social classes. Warnes (1986) also found that the children in nonmanual occupations tend to be farther from their parents than those in manual occupations. Social mobility, another important variable, is now discussed. Sundstrom (1986) has found that those who have risen socially are less likely to live very close to their parents. Persons who have declined socially (e.g. middle-class to workers) more often live closer than stable middle-class persons. In fact, there seems to be a combined effect of social and geographic mobility on the physical distance separating parents and their adult children. In Kulis (1987), when distance is the dependent variable, none of the social mobility variables tum out to be significant. At first sight, there seem to be no social mobility effects on distance. However, some doubts can be cast on the validity and generalizability of this fmding since the data were collected in 1978 in the New York City and Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan areas only. In this study I like to reexamine the social mobility effect (and hypothesis) in a much larger setting for more recent timeframe. So in general I believe in the original explanation made by Kulis (1987) which holds that social mobility (especially upward one) usually disrupts family ties by introducing invidious comparisons of occupational prestige, or by creating situations of status inconsistency. However, I propose different directions for this effect on the distance of separation. I agree that upward mobility tends to make a larger distance between respondents and their parents due to the adverse or disruptive impact elaborated in Kulis