Taking the Negative with the Positive: Status Transitions and Parents' Ambivalence Toward Adult Children

Parents' and children's lives are intrinsically connected throughout the life course. Transitions that occur in the parents' and children's lives, whether normative or non-normative in nature, may be associated with changes in parents' ambivalence toward their adult children. This study used the 2006 and 2010 rounds of the Health and Retirement Study to examine how parents' or children's normative or non-normative status transitions relate to parents' feelings of ambivalence toward children and whose transitions− parents' or children's− matter most when considering ambivalence toward children. This study found that children's non-normative transitions significantly increase parent's ambivalence toward children. The findings from this study also suggest that children's transitions, rather than parents' transitions, are most associated with parents' feelings of ambivalence toward children. Yet as parents today undergo more status transitions than generations past, it may be increasingly important to examine the association that parents' status transitions have with ambivalence toward adult children.