INTERGENERATIONAL PANEL STUDY OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN

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This is a proposal to study important family and household decisions made by children during their transition to adulthood. The specific family and household decisions to be examined include: (a) residential separation from the parental household; (b) dating, premarital sex, and cohabitation; (c) marriage; and (d) childbearing. The rapid pace of recent change in familial behavior and attitudes and the importance of young adult decisions for their future lives make research into the determinants of these family and household decisions particularly timely. This research will be conducted by extending an existing body of data on a cohort of young adults and their parents. The existing data base comes from a longitudinal study of women interviewed six times over the 18-year period from 1962 to 1980 and their 18-yearr-old children who were also interviewed in 1980. We propose to reinterview these women and children in 1985, extending the existing data to cover the experiences of the children and their families as the children make the transition to adulthood. Eighty-five percent of the families interviewed in 1962 participated in the study in 1980, and we expect that this high level of cooperation will continue during the 1985 interviews. For each family and household decision--residential living arrangements, dating and cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing--the following issues will be studied: (a) the effects of the parental family on the family choices and experiences of their young adult children, including the effect of family structure, parental socioeconomic status, parental attitudes and aspirations for their children, and the quality of the child-parent relationship; (b) how the incidence, timing, and sequencing of these major family decisions are interrelated; (c) the interrelationship of these family decisions with educational and occupational aspirations and achievements; (d) the ways in which teenage attitudes and plans are subsequently implemented and modified as young people make the transition to adulthood; and (e) how the life course decisions and experiences of children, their parents, and their grandparents are intertwined.