Boomerang kids and parents’ well-being: adaptation, stressors, and social norms

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

June 15, 2020

Summary:

Previous research has shown that living with an adult child affects the well-being of parents. However, little is known about parental adaptation to changes in living arrangements or about concomitant stressors that may moderate the effect of adult children returning to the parental home. Drawing on data from eight waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–2017), I use distributed fixed effects linear regression models to analyse changes in parents’ symptoms of depression before, during, and after a child’s return to the parental home. The results show that parents experience an increase in symptoms of depression when a child returns home but recover to their previous levels of mental well-being in the subsequent year. Unemployed and low-income children returning home are associated with larger increases in parents’ symptoms of depression, whereas there are no effects with regard to union dissolution. These findings support the hypothesis that children returning home are more detrimental to older parents if it occurs in concomitance with an economic crisis in the child’s life. However, after a short-term decline in their well-being, parents are able to adapt to boomerang moves and accustom themselves to the new family dynamics.

Published in

European Sociological Review

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 36 , p.460 -473

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcz068

ISSN

2667215

Subjects

#525984

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest