Parental Financial Assistance and Young Adults' Relationships With Parents and Well-Being.

Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined the impact of parental financial assistance on young adults' relationships with parents and well-being. Conditional change models were estimated to evaluate the effects of parental financial assistance reported in Wave 3 (ages 18-28) and Wave 4 (ages 24-34) of the study. The results (TSLs ranged from 9,128 to 13,389 across outcomes) indicated that financial assistance was positively associated with changes in depressive symptoms and closeness to both mothers and fathers in both periods. Changes in self-esteem were less robustly linked to parental financial assistance. Although the observed pattern with respect to parent-child relations held regardless of the progress young people had made in the transition to adulthood, the effects for wellbeing, which were also relatively small in magnitude, did not. In particular, changes in depressive symptoms associated with financial assistance were concentrated among individuals occupying adult social roles.Key Words: financial assistance, parent-child relationships, transition to adulthood, well-being.The transition to adulthood is elongating and diversifying, with old models of movement from school to work less viable in the new economy. With more young people pursuing higher education and for longer periods of time (Fitzpatrick & Turner, 2007) and with wages for those without a college or university degree eroding (Lemieux, 2006), young people are taking longer to achieve financial independence (Danzinger & Ratner, 2010). Young people are now more frequently in a semidependent state for a number of years as they invest in higher education, job training, or struggle to make ends meet in poorly paying jobs. In this context, parents are often providing significant practical and financial assistance well past their children's 18th birthday (Schoeni & Ross, 2005; Settersten & Ray, 2010).Financial assistance from parents fosters higher educational attainment, reduces college dropout, and facilitates movement into career-related work (Johnson & Benson, 2012; Public Agenda, 2010). Young adults' living standards are improved through parental financial investments toward education and home buying (Semyonov & Lewin-Epstein, 2001). As such, financial support during young adulthood is now recognized as an important mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES; Fingerman, Cheng, Tighe, Birditt, & Zarit, 2012; Henretta, Wolf, Van Voorhis, & Soldo, 2012; Settersten & Ray, 2010; Swartz, 2008).While evidence mounts that financial support shapes attainment, much less is known about the effects of this extension of support on other aspects of young adults' lives. Does it bolster young adults' socioemotional health during a major transition period, softening or eliminating the blows to well-being that might stem from financial difficulty? Or is it less salutary, if young adults feel they ought to be able to make it without parents' help? For similar reasons, are emotional ties with parents supported though these transfers, or are they weakened?In this study, I drew from multiple waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Flealth (Add Health; see http:// www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth) to examine whether financial support during young adulthood affects parent-child relationships as well as young adults' well-being. I also examined whether movement into adult social roles moderates these relationships. Although there is evidence that the prevalence of parental support varies according to whether or not their offspring have taken on adult roles (e.g., left school, marriage, etc.), signaling progress in the transition to adulthood (Fingerman, Miller, Birditt, & Zarit, 2009; Siennick, 2011; Swartz, 2009; Swartz, Kim, Uno, Mortimer, & O'Brien, 2011), little is known about whether the consequences of parental support vary by the young adult's progress in the transition to adulthood. …