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“I’M NOT GOING TO LEAVE HER HIGH AND DRY”: Young Adult Support to Parents during the Transition to Adulthood

Laura Napolitano* Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

The transition to adulthood is a critical time in the life course, and the role of parental support

during the transition has been one of the most prominent discussions in this literature. Yet while

research has focused attention on the support passed from parents to young adult children

during the transition, it has generally ignored the support that young adults may provide their

parents. Utilizing qualitative interviews, this article explores the types of support one group of

young adult children provide to their families during this time in the life course. It then exam-

ines how this assistance to parents intersects with young adults’ ability to meet their own social

and human capital goals.

INTRODUCTION

The transition to adulthood is a critical time period in the life course. During this time, young adults attempt to establish independence: they complete education and begin employment, move out of their natal home, and often begin their own families. Although the economic context in the middle of the 20th century allowed these transitions to occur relatively straightforwardly, particularly for middle-class young adults (Furstenberg et al. 2004), the current transition is much longer (Furstenberg, Rumbaut, and Settersten 2005). Young adults are currently taking extended time to complete education (Fitzpatrick and Turner 2007) and find stable, long-term employment (Farber 2007). They often cohabit with one or more romantic partners (Bumpass and Lu 2000), and wait until their late 20s to marry (Bumpass, Sweet, and Cherlin 1991; Fitch and Ruggles 2000; Goldstein and Kenney 2001; Cherlin 2004; Furstenberg et al. 2004; Coontz 2005; Danziger and Rouse 2007). Among the most advantaged young adults, the onset of childbearing is also significantly later (Cherlin 1992; Rindfuss, Morgan, and Offutt 1996; Ellwood and Jencks 2004; Furstenberg et al. 2004).

For many young adults, the successful navigation of this elongated transition would not be possible without parental support. One of the most prominent findings in the literature has been young adults’ increasing reliance on parents during the transition to adulthood (Schoeni and Ross 2005; Swartz 2008; Wightman, Schoeni, and Robinson 2012). This is particularly noteworthy as inequality has continued to rise among

*Direct all correspondence to Laura Napolitano, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal

Justice, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 405-407 Cooper Street, Camden, NJ 08102; e-mail:

[email protected]

doi: 10.1111/tsq.12088 The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253

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families during the last several decades (Goldin and Katz 2009), leading to dramatic differences in family support to young adults across the socioeconomic spectrum. For young adults from well-resourced families, increasing levels of parental support allow them to pursue educational and employment goals without the burden of worrying about how they will support themselves (Settersten and Ray 2010). Parents in these families are willing and able to “scaffold” youth as they increase their human capital and set themselves up for success in later adulthood (Swartz 2008). Yet relatively little research, in comparison, has focused on the support that young adults might give to parents during this time period (Lareau 2011).

Previous discussions of intergenerational support in the transition to adulthood lit- erature have been fairly narrow. For one, most of this research focuses on the resources passed from parents to children in families with the most financial resources. Further, and arguably consequently, little research has investigated what supports young adults might be providing to their own parents during this time in the life course, particularly in families with less resources (for exceptions, see Fuligni, Tseng, and Lam 1999; Fuligni and Pedersen 2002; Fuligni 2007; Fuligni, Rivera, and Leininger 2007; Sassler, Ciambrone, and Benway 2008). This study begins to address these gaps in the literature using qualitative data from a sample of young adults transitioning to adulthood in an urban area. While cultural differences have been invoked to explain different levels of support to parents among diverse young adults, structural and socioeconomic factors influence the upward flow of family assistance in young adulthood.1 Specifically, this article explores the various ways young adults with fewer familial resources provide support for their families during the transition. It then examines the relationship between this support and young adults’ ability to meet their social and human capital goals.

FAMILY SUPPORT AND THE TRANSITION

The role of support from parents to young adult children has been particularly promi- nent in both academic and nonacademic discussions of the current transition to adulthood. Parents provide support to their young adult children in multiple ways (Fingerman et al. 2009), although researchers most commonly examine financial trans- fers and housing (Swartz et al. 2011). Utilizing the Transition to Adulthood supple- ment of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Wightman et al. (2012) find that over 60 percent of young adults receive financial transfers from parents. Nearly half of the young adults in the Youth Development Survey, a longitudinal study of youth in St. Paul, Minnesota, received either housing support or financial assistance from their parents (Swartz et al. 2011).

Parents across the socioeconomic spectrum are generally willing to provide support for their young adult children (Schoeni and Ross 2005; Swartz et al. 2011; Wightman et al. 2012), although the amount of monetary assistance they are able to provide is clearly dependent on their income. Schoeni and Ross (2005) estimate that parents spend, on average, over $38,000 on their young adult children from the ages of 18

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

through 34. However, young adults from families in the highest income quartile receive three times more assistance than their counterparts in the bottom quartile (Schoeni and Ross 2005). These estimates include financial transfers to young adults outside of the home, as well as the costs associated with young adults residing with parents.

Living at home is an increasingly common way for young adults to navigate the often bumpy waters of adulthood (Newman 2012; Qian 2012). Newman (2012) cat- egorizes families wherein adult children live with their parents as “accordion families” because of the “stretching” families must do as they negotiate these living arrange- ments. Goldscheider (1997) argues that parent(s)’ homes are a “safety net” for young adults as they undertake this time in the life course (see also Swartz et al. 2011). Young adult experiences living at home are likely shaped by their families’ socioeconomic background (Newman 2012). For example, while more advantaged young adults are able to use their home as a launching pad for their adult lives without many obligations to the household, less advantaged young adults who reside at home are not likely to have the same luxuries and are more likely to be required to support their families (Newman 2012). Yet the transition to adulthood literature has generally neglected this important aspect of the transition (Lareau 2011; for exceptions, see Sassler et al. 2008; Newman 2012).

This gap in the literature likely stems, in part, from the focus on the transition as a time of “emerging adulthood” (Arnett 2004). In the emerging adulthood framework, young adults utilize this time in the life course to explore new opportunities, engage with employment and educational possibilities, and develop “the capacities, skills, and qualities of character deemed by their culture as necessary for completing the transi- tion to adulthood” (Arnett 1998:312, 2004). While the emerging adulthood framework identifies this time in the life course as one of numerous options, researchers have cri- tiqued it for too heavily relying on the experiences of more advantaged young adults, who are more likely to have the capacity to explore various opportunities during this time than their less well-resourced peers (see Benson and Furstenberg 2007 for an extended review).

Another possible explanation for the lack of scholarly attention regarding young adult transfers to parents during the transition is that there is limited quantitative evi- dence suggesting that young adults provide support to their families during this time period (Swartz 2009). Yet this is potentially due to methodological issues that do not take full account of the experiences of low-income young adults (Swartz 2009). For example, surveys that ask only about large sums of support given to parents likely miss the various smaller, and perhaps more frequent, token amounts of support that less advantaged young adults are likely to provide their families (Swartz 2009; see also Stack 1974). As this article will suggest, surveys are also likely to miss various types of less easily quantifiable aid that young adults provide to their parents, such as providing alternatives to day care by watching siblings or taking care of household repairs. Stack (1974), in her classic examination of the myriad ways that poor, urban African Ameri- cans support each other in the face of extreme poverty, argues that quantitative data, often based in middle-class assumptions about the patterns of family life, miss the

Laura Napolitano Young Adult Support to Parents

varied ways poor black families provide for, and support, each other. Along similar lines, it seems likely that current surveys that discuss transfers during the transition to adulthood might be missing the varied ways less advantaged young adults support their families during this time period.

The small subset of work that has looked at the intersection of young adult support to family and the transition to adulthood has focused primarily on immigrant groups (Fuligni et al. 1999, 2007; Fuligni and Pedersen 2002; Fuligni 2007; Sanchez et al. 2010). Fuligni and colleagues find that recent immigrant high school students feel greater obligations to their families as they enter adulthood, which impacts both their choices and experiences during this time in the life course. Utilizing 32 qualita- tive interviews with low-income Latino youth, Sanchez et al. (2010) also discuss the role of obligations to family during the transition to adulthood. The youth in their sample often consider their extended family’s needs before their own, believe they should be positive role models to other family members, and spend time with extended family (2010:869). The authors find that these youth have “multiple respon- sibilities” (2010:872) as a result of their family obligations in addition to their chang- ing roles and financial circumstances. This makes the transitional period particularly stressful for these youth.

The aforementioned work suggests that the impetus for helping parents is cultural, and not structural. However, the interviews with young people in this study provide evidence that structural and socioeconomic factors are important reasons why young adults help their families during their transition. While all of the young adults in this sample are white, their experiences in helping families are similar to those discussed earlier. Similar to those peers, the young adults in this study who have the resources, and even some who arguably do not, provide support to their families in myriad ways. Also similarly, the provision of this support complicates, at the very least, their own transition during a time wherein their more advantaged peers are building on their already expansive resources. These data seem to indicate that the reasons for providing support, as well as the consequences of this provision, are more related to structural and socioeconomic realities than cultural background.

While there have been various discussions in the literature emphasizing the impor- tance of understanding the variability of intergenerational support during the transi- tion (Schoeni 1997; Fingerman et al. 2012), these studies almost exclusively focus on variations in what parents provide young adults. Consequently, they neglect to examine the types of support young adult children provide for their parents. Although the small qualitative sample in this study cannot be generalized to all young adults, the narratives of these young people provide a crucial next step in examining familial relationships among young adults during the transition to adulthood. Consequently, the following research questions guide this analysis.

1. What types of support do young adults provide to their families during the transition to adulthood?

2. How does the provision of this support impact them during this time in the life course?

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

SAMPLE AND METHODS

This article is based on data collected from a qualitative, longitudinal study of young adults who came of age in a predominately white, inner-city neighborhood in Philadel- phia. This neighborhood was chosen for both practical and theoretical reasons. In terms of practicality, the author was part of the research team that collected data from this neighborhood during the first wave of data collection, when the neighborhood was one of several being examined.2 Therefore, the author was most familiar with this neighborhood and the youth involved in the study, and returned to the neighborhood to see how their transitions were unfolding. Theoretically, while the study of family life in urban areas once focused predominately on social class differences, more recent examinations of urban family life have focused more on racial and ethnic differences (Furstenberg 2007). The broader project on which this article is based focuses on how neighborhood, and family social class background, impact the transition to adulthood. Further, most of the prominent discussions in the transition to adulthood literature, and particularly in popular accounts of the transition, have focused on the experiences of white, middle- and upper-class young adults and their families. Yet the rising inequality among families over the last several decades (Goldin and Katz 2009) means that the transitional experiences of young adults are likely greatly influenced by their family’s socioeconomic resources. By focusing on white, less advantaged youth, this study sheds light on the divergences in experiences and opportunities these youth, from the same racial background, experience.

The first wave of study interviews took place from 2003 to 2004, and follow-up interviews took place from 2009 to 2010. Table 1 provides demographic information comparing the neighborhood to the city as a whole at both interview waves. The neighborhood covers slightly over two square miles and contains densely packed streets with traditional Philadelphia-style rowhomes.3 In 2003, 94 percent of the neighborhood was white, over one-third of residents had less than their high school diploma, and 15 percent of families lived below the poverty line. Median family income in the neighborhood was approximately $45,000.4 Additionally, the neighbor- hood had a violent crime rate 3.5 times the city average and a murder rate twice its average (Carr, Napolitano, and Keating 2007). Crime rates in both the neighborhood and the city declined between interview waves, reflecting national trends (Philadelphia Police Department 2010; Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report 2011). The neighborhood is also well known for its illicit drug trade, which one-third of the young adults in the sample (N = 11) have participated in during their transition.

At the second wave interview, the neighborhood was still over 90 percent white, although the border areas had an increase in minority residents. The percentage of families in poverty was slightly lower and the median family income was slightly higher than in 2003 (American Community Survey Five-Year Estimates). Over the last decade, various parts of the neighborhood have seen an influx of gentrification. Although the majority of adult residents still had a high school degree or less at the second wave, in

Laura Napolitano Young Adult Support to Parents

comparison to 2003 a higher percentage of residents held a bachelor’s degree, reflecting this trend (American Community Survey Five-Year Estimates).

Adolescent respondents were recruited using a variety of strategies at Wave 1. Many youth were recruited from community organizations, either formal ones such as recre- ation centers or more informal ones such as parks or other local gathering spaces for youth. The study team also used referrals to recruit respondents, but limited these to three per person. Overall, the team was able to recruit youth from various areas of the neighborhood and those in a variety of circles of friends and acquaintances. We also purposively worked to obtain a sample with gender equity as well as a relatively equal distribution of officially delinquent and nondelinquent youth, given crime trends within the neighborhood. At the first wave interview, youth provided contact informa- tion for various family members and friends. This information, as well as neighbor- hood contacts, was combed extensively at Wave 2 to relocate respondents.

Reflecting the neighborhood composition, all of the respondents in the sample are white.5 Twenty-one are male and 18 are female. Table 2 identifies all of the youth in the sample, along with pertinent characteristics across interview waves. At the first wave interview, 90 percent of the young people lived with parents. Two youth at the

TABLE 1. Demographic Profile of the Neighborhood and the City at Wave 1 and Wave 2a

Wave 1 Wave 2

Neighborhood City Neighborhood City

Population 7,320 1.5 million 12,155 1.5 million Gender

% Male 49.6 46.4 49.1 47.1 % Female 50.4 53.6 50.9 52.9

Race % African American 2.5 43.0 4.5 43.6 % Other 3.0 11.9 2.1 14.9 % White 94.5 45.1 93.4 41.5

Hispanic population % Hispanic 4.7 8.4 4.5 12

Educational attainment—

population 25 and older % Less than high school 35.4 28.7 18 20 % High school diploma only 34.8 33.3 34 35.2 % BA or more 18.1 22.8 26.5 22.6

Income and poverty Median household incomeb 45,171 39,593 45,210 36,669 % in poverty 15.4 22.8 13.4 20.5

aWave 1 data are based on the 2000 Census. Wave 2 data are based on the 2005–2009 American

Community Survey Five-Year Estimates. bMedian household income is shown in 2009 dollars.

BA, bachelor or arts.

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

time were already cohabiting with partners, one lived with a grandparent, and the remaining youth lived with a friend. At the follow-up interview, 65 percent of the sample resides with a parent or grandparent, 13 percent are incarcerated, and 31 percent lives with partners or roommates. Only 11 percent of the sample lives outside of the neighborhood at the second interview.6 Six young adults were parents at the first wave, and nine additional youth have either become parents or are expecting a child at the second wave. Youth averaged 16.9 years old at the first wave and 22.5 years old at the second wave.

Just under half (44 percent) of the noninstitutionalized youth in this sample have been “disconnected” (Fernandes and Gabe 2009) from work and school for at least one year at the second interview wave. This number is significantly higher than the 5.1 percent of the 16- to 24-year-olds who are identified as disconnected youth nationally using the March 2008 Current Population Survey (Fernandes and Gabe 2009). At the first interview, nearly two-thirds of the sample was in school, and 20 percent had left school without obtaining a high school or general equivalency diploma. At the second wave, over 35 percent of youth have completed less than their high school education and 15 percent have general equivalency or high school diplomas, respectively. The remaining one-third of youth have some postsecondary experience, although this ranges from currently attending a two-year (N = 6) or four-year (N = 2) college, a com- pleted postsecondary certificate (N = 1), and previous postsecondary attendance but no degree or certification (N = 4).

Less than one-third of the noninstitutionalized sample is working at the time of the second interview. Of these youth, nine are working fulltime. However, only four are receiving health and other benefits with their positions. The remaining youth are working “under the table” and without benefits. Young men in the sample are typically employed in either union-sponsored jobs or in “off-the-books” manual labor jobs. Young women are most commonly employed as administrative assistants. Eleven young adults are receiving government assistance at the second wave, primarily young women with children and individuals receiving drug treatment. Over three-quarters of youth in the sample report that their individual incomes are under $15,000 annually. The next largest group of youth (N = 5) report annual incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 annually, and the remaining youth (N = 3) report annual incomes between $25,000 and $55,000.

One youth can be categorized as coming from a middle-class family, as both of her parents held four-year degrees and professional jobs. The remaining youth can broadly be categorized as coming from lower-middle-class/working-class families (N = 18) and working/nonworking poor families (N = 20).7 Of the working/nonworking poor fami- lies, slightly under two-thirds of parents were consistently unemployed throughout the course of the study. Working poor parents generally had some employment over interview waves, although this was not stable work. Examples of these jobs include bar- tenders, cashiers in local delis, or intermittent security guard work. For the young adults from lower-middle-class/working-class families, parents were more consistently employed over the course of the study and often had more stable jobs. These jobs were

Laura Napolitano Young Adult Support to Parents

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Laura Napolitano Young Adult Support to Parents

typically in professional settings as administrative assistants and other lower-level pro- fessionals, or in service- or labor-oriented unions, respectively.

The author conducted one-third of the Wave 1 interviews and all of the Wave 2 interviews. Respondents received stipends8 for their participation at both interview waves. Prior to each respondent’s second wave interview, the author reread the first wave transcript as well as any relevant field notes. This allowed each interview to be tai- lored to the particular experiences and expectations of the respondent at the first wave, and to ensure that relevant experiences and themes from the first interview were fully explored in the second wave. First wave interviews covered multiple topics, including experiences and expectations in education and employment, family background and relationships, perceptions of neighborhood safety, experiences of victimization, self- reported and official delinquency, experiences with police, and peer relationships. Similar themes were explored in the second wave with developmentally appropriate questions. For example, questions regarding education dealt with high school experi- ences and educational aspirations in the first wave, whereas educational questions in the second wave were tailored to young adult’s experiences since high school and deci- sion making surrounding postsecondary education. While family relationships were explored during both waves of interviews, the themes reported in this article became prominent during data collection and analysis.

DATA ANALYSIS

All interviews were coded utilizing Atlas.ti qualitative software. The coding and data analysis for this article follow LaRossa’s (2005) grounded theory framework in family research. In the first or open stage of coding, the author coded the transcripts accord- ing to the general themes of the interview guide. Examples of these codes include “family,” “finances,” “housing,” and “neighborhood change,” among many more. In the axial or second level of coding, the author refined these codes into more specific codes. Some examples of these codes include “family-parents,” “belief in individual,” “employment-instability,” and “support-received,” among others. In the final stage of coding, the author selected the codes most relevant to this analysis and explored them more fully. For this article, the relevant codes relate to family and support, including “family-extended,” “family-parents,” “family-siblings,” “support-give,” “support-lack of,” and “support-received,” among others. During coding, all types of support were included under the respective “support” codes, that is, financial, instrumental, emo- tional, and so on. Coded text included all variations of support to ensure that the full extent of support given and received by respondents and their families was captured. I focus on instrumental and financial support in this article as these types of support were discussed most prominently by respondents. Coded text was read repeatedly, both within individual transcripts and across respondents, to ensure accurate analysis of the data. Utilizing both methods of analysis ensures that themes presented in this article are identifiable across the sample as well as within individual narratives.

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While a handful of youth (3 of 39), primarily in the most disadvantaged families, reported providing support to parents during adolescence, this was not a common theme among respondents during the first wave of interviews. Consequently, this article focuses primarily on the second wave of interviews, when youth were in the midst of their transition to adulthood.

FINDINGS

Youth in this sample fall into three categories regarding their support of family. Just under one-third of the sample (12 of 39) is incapable of providing support. Young people in this group are either incarcerated (N = 5), dealing with severe drug addiction and/or treatment (N = 6), or have serious mental health issues (N = 1) at the second wave interview. These youth are neither employed nor in school. Only one youth dealing with a serious drug addiction provides financial support to his family, as will be discussed below. Although some of these youth are relying on their family for housing, this group of youth is not able to provide any type of support to family.

The second group of youth (12 of 39) does not provide support to family, although they have less vulnerability than their peers above, and consequently are more capable of providing different types of support, although they are not currently doing so. Half of these young adults (6 of 12) are, similar to their peers above, “disconnected” from school and work. These young adults average 23 years old. They generally live outside of the parental home, rely on intimate partners for income, and are struggling to provide for themselves with limited resources.9 Their peers in this category (6 of 12), who average 20 years old, are also not providing support to families, although under different circumstances. These young adults are attempting to engage in the experience of “emerging adulthood” (Arnett 2004).10 Generally, although not exclusively, these young people come from the lower-middle-class families in the sample. The young adults in this group are currently attending educational institutions and generally being supported by parents, or as in the case of Samantha, a grandparent. While these families are commonly not paying for their children’s postsecondary attendance, with young adults overwhelmingly relying on loans for schooling, their provision of housing, either in their own homes or by paying for off-campus housing, and some limited financial support are important benefits to these young adults during their transition. While parents are providing as much support as they can, the path to educa- tional attainment and employment stability has not been straightforward for most of these youth (Napolitano 2011).

The final group, the largest in the sample (15 of 39), is providing support to their families in some way during their transition. These young adults come from working, lower-middle-class, and poor families, and average 22 years old at the second interview. The most common trait that unifies these youth is their employment status. However, there are also several youth lacking employment who still provide support to families, primarily through sharing of government assistance and/or provision of caregiving.

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As the earlier discussion indicates, a substantial proportion of young adults who are able to provide some support to families, that is, those who are not incarcerated or suffering from severe drug addiction or mental health issues, are helping their families in some way during their transition. While the youngest adults in the sample are pri- marily engaged in “emerging adulthood,” age is otherwise not related to provision of support.

The remainder of the article focuses on the narratives of these young adults in the sample. The narratives clearly articulate that prior understandings of familial relation- ships in young adulthood must be expanded in order to capture the full experience of young adults during the transition to adulthood. Young adult support is broken down into two primary categories: financial and instrumental assistance. As Table 3 indicates, however, most youth who provide support to families do so in multiple ways. As I argue below, young adults’ willingness to support their families is an admirable trait, and arguably further evidence against the characterization of this generation of young adults as unwilling to grow up and have responsibilities beyond themselves (e.g., Grossman 2005). Yet it also complicates their transition in ways that, to this point, have been underdeveloped in the literature.

ASSISTANCE TO FAMILIES: FINANCIAL

As stated earlier, the vast majority of young adults in this sample are struggling eco- nomically in young adulthood. Despite this, over three-fourths of youth (12 of 15) who provide support are providing financial resources. Although a few young men have

TABLE 3. Provision of Support to Family

Financial

Home

maintenance Caregiving

Pete X X Jackie X X Charlie X X X Ryan X X Kevin X X David X X Bertha X Brian X X Hannah X Liz X X John R. X Derrick X Michelle X X Brenda X Kelly X X

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been able to attain union employment, the majority are working in nonunionized low- wage jobs as the union jobs that previous generations of men in the neighborhood had come to rely upon continue to diminish (Danziger and Rouse 2007; Danziger and Ratner 2010). While union jobs have never been much of an option for these young women, their economic situations are also precarious: only four young women are working at the time of the second interview. Yet despite their limited incomes, the over- whelmingly majority of youth who are able to provide support to their families through their employment are doing so.

For many young adults, their financial support involves keeping the family afloat by helping with living expenses. Eighty percent (12 of 15) of youth who are providing support to families do so financially. Pete,11 27 and working fulltime as an overnight janitor in an office building, has been living in the same house with his family since the first interview. Although he would prefer to move out on his own, he does not because his income is used to maintain the household. Pete’s younger sister is currently attend- ing a four-year college, and although she and her parents are taking out loans to support her education he reports that the family overall is “strapped for cash and they’re sucking money from me. And I make the least amount of money.” Because of their fiscal situation, Pete has a great deal of regular financial responsibility toward his house. When I ask how this situation works, he responds

I pay the electric. The water. We don’t have a gas bill, we’ve moved over to the elec- tric to kind of focus it all into one bill. And the electric can be high sometimes. They [freaking] get me with the cable bill. . . . It’s kind of freelance with the way I pay bills, too, because they’ll tell me what bills they need me to pay, and I’ll pay them. . . . So what will happen is, I’ll think I’m good, because I get my money Friday, I pay the electric or whatever, and then I won’t get asked for money. So I’ll be like, all right, good, I paid my bill, I’m good. Then out of nowhere, “Oh, I need you to pay the [cable] bill.” And I can’t tell them no, but they always got the best timing. It’s always just when I got a couple dollars to make through something and they want me to pay a bill.

Additionally, he often works as the maintenance man for the house and fixes things when problems arise. Although Pete is grateful to his parents that he does not have to pay rent, he is frustrated by the conditions within his home and would like to live inde- pendently, a topic I return to shortly. John, 24 and a high school dropout and recover- ing drug addict, similarly helps support his family financially. John is currently on a methadone maintenance treatment plan and living on his father’s couch. He is the only youth in the sample currently receiving drug treatment and attempting to support his family. His father is on disability and unable to work so John provides for the house- hold through the drug dealing that he began as an adolescent. When asked if his father knows how he is supporting the family, he responds, “Yeah, he does. He don’t like it, [but] I mean it helps with the bills.” John would like to stop his illicit activities “because I’m so stressed out about getting locked up. . . . I pray on it every day. It’s scary, it really

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is.” However, he does not believe he can stop because “I feel like I have to [sell drugs more] to start the [proposed family] business, to help support my dad and all, save and stuff. . . . I mean I give my sister money, everybody, like my mom.” John’s sister cor- roborates how important her brother’s income is to her survival, mentioning that if it wasn’t for him “I don’t know where we’d be.” Despite the danger of his work, and the extremely precarious nature of his own addiction, John feels a responsibility to con- tinue providing money to the family through his drug dealing (see Anderson 1999 for similar discussions regarding urban African-American males).

ASSISTANCE TO FAMILIES: INSTRUMENTAL

The provision of financial assistance, as well as other household support, is a common theme in the sample. For example, Kevin, 19 at the second interview, pays his father rent and also takes on the responsibility for some of the utilities, including the cable bill, and household repairs. At the moment, he is supervising the renovation of their kitchen, which has included him hiring the workers and ensuring the process is going smoothly.

Jackie, 24 and employed fulltime as a waitress at a local diner, provides financial assistance to her parents when necessary and also helps maintain the household, albeit in a different form than Kevin. She relates that, in terms of financial support, “if my mom needed a little bit of money for some bill I would just give it to her like a hundred, two hundred, like whatever.” Additionally, she provides support to her parents, and her older sister, in the form of household organization and day care. She explains that “I help them out a lot with stuff so. . . . Like with the kids . . . doing stuff around the house . . . make sure everyone’s like in order because I am, I’m like the drill sergeant . . . like at nighttime I just try to keep everything together . . . get all their school uniforms ready and stuff.” Similar to the young men discussed earlier, Jackie provides financial and household assistance to her family, although her household assistance is in the form of caregiving not maintenance. Over 85 percent of youth (13 of 15) who provide support do so through household duties, primarily home mainte- nance or caregiving.

The provision of caregiving was common among the young women providing support in the sample. Liz, 21, dropped out of high school during her junior year and has been working as an administrative assistant at a variety of offices since. During this time, Liz took responsibility for her newborn nephew when her sister, a drug addict, could not. She relates, “I raised my nephew for like seven, eight months when he was born. I took care of him and he lived with me.” Her response to an inquiry about how that experience was for her indicates the level of support she provided. “It was just dif- ferent having a child actually living in your house. And waking up every morning and you have to get the baby ready before work and then drop him off to my grandmom’s and then pick[ing] him up after work. . . .” Liz provided this support while earning just above minimum wage at her full-time office job and struggling to maintain a house- hold with her boyfriend, also a low-wage worker.

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

The narratives of the young adults discussed earlier provide a glimpse into the various ways young adults in this sample provide support to their families. Youth who provide support do so through both financial and instrumental assistance to family members. This includes taking care of bills and other financial obligations, as well as performing home repairs and maintenance and providing caregiving. As I discuss in more detail shortly, most youth frame their decisions as an obvious, and mostly unquestioned, willingness to help family. Yet it is clear that the provision of this help intimately ties into their experiences during their transition to adulthood. The remainder of the article explores how young adults’ willingness to help family intersects with their ability to establish independent lives, develop and maintain intimate relationships, and meet their own human capital goals. I then explore why, despite these challenges, young adults do not hide from aiding their families.

IMPACT OF OBLIGATIONS ON THE TRANSITION: INDEPENDENCE AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

While the desire to live independent from family in young adulthood is not a universal expectation (Kerckhoff and Macrae 1992; Newman 2012), many young people capable of providing support and living with parents or grandparents reported wanting to be on their own at this point in the life course (10 of 17). While speaking of living at his grandmother’s house, which he also shares with his girlfriend and their two-year-old son, Derek, 23, states “who wants to live with their grandmom? I’m being honest. [It]’s called not accomplishing.” Similarly Ryan, 22 and working off the books at a local busi- ness, would also like to move out of his mother’s house. He relates at one point in the interview “who wants to live at home with their mom their whole life?” Yet Ryan is cur- rently handling major renovations on the house, which his mother tried to start on her own. However, she lost $15,000 to an unscrupulous contractor and so Ryan has taken control of project oversight. Given these obligations, Ryan chooses to stay home and help his household.

For some youth, this desire to be independent is tied into struggles maintaining and developing their own intimate relationships. Michele, 23 and unemployed, would like to move out of her parents’ house and engage fully in a relationship with the father of her two-year-old son. While she does not work, she provides finan- cial assistance to both her household and her boyfriend’s household through her monthly welfare benefits, and cares for her seriously ill mother. She provides one example of her frustration with her lack of independence in her mother’s household through her discussion of the rather mundane task of cleaning up after dinner. She relates:

at my boyfriend’s, I have a dishwasher. So if [we] get up, I just throw [the dishes] right in there, leave them, and then go back. But my mom, when I’m here at my

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mom’s, I can’t just put them in there. I have to just do them right away. Do them right away. She has certain rules that you go by . . . I mean, I do all the same things [at my boyfriend’s house], but I do them at my time and when I’m able to do them with the baby.

Although she would much prefer to live outside of the neighborhood with her son’s father, her family’s precarious economic situation does not allow her this luxury. Her boyfriend provides support to his disabled father in his house, and is also unwilling to renege on this support and move in with Michele.

The influence of family assistance on romantic relationships is not uncommon among youth providing support to family (8 of 15). Kelly, 23 at the second interview, became the legal guardian of her 17-year-old brother when she was 22 due to her father’s death and mother’s substance abuse. This has put both emotional and financial stressors on her young household, which includes her brother, fiancé, and two-year-old daughter. Regarding the latter, she relates that although her brother does get some social security benefits,

He only gets so much and you know you have to pay for bills . . . and you have to buy him school stuff and . . . he has his car insurance and he wants gas money, he wants to go out on the weekends and . . . for us doing that for him is when time frees up, when me and [my fiancé] have time we don’t have money to go out, we don’t have time to do that.

Although Kelly and her fiancé would like to get married, the financial struggles they face taking care of their own family, in addition to her brother, make saving for a wedding particularly difficult. She comments that “money wise, you know, taking care of my brother and then now the baby and the house. Like the, the house isn’t cheap, you know. Food, bills, car insurance like it’s sometimes it’s like we go paycheck to pay- check and there’s like no money to free up at all.” As the economic bar for marriage has risen, lacking financial stability to marry is a common refrain among low-income adults (Edin and Kefalas 2005).

While some youth try to negotiate intimate partner relationships in the midst of these obligations, other young adults do not feel they can begin relationships in their situations. Pete, who we met earlier, lives with his mother, who suffers from a serious mental illness and hoards cats in their home. Although he tries to clean the house to the best of his ability, he still is not comfortable bringing anyone, including potential romantic suitors, to his house.12 He relates that living at home has “really put a damper on my social life recently, with females. Because I used to be aight [alright], I used to be able to bring chicks through, or at least do a little something. Now I gotta at least rent a hotel room, I got to get a hotel, I got to act like crazy.” Yet his commitment to helping his family as his sister navigates postsecondary education means he will deal with these inconveniences until the family is more financially secure.

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

INTERFERING WITH INCREASING HUMAN CAPITAL

In addition to the relationship between young adult’s assistance to family and their inability to establish the independent lives and intimate relationships they desire, youth also find themselves struggling to balance household responsibilities with their own human capital goals.

David, 23 years old, is employed fulltime and is financially secure enough to move out of the house he shares with his unemployed mother at the second interview. Similar to the youth discussed earlier, David desires his independence. Although he has looked into moving out several times, given that he is the sole provider of the household, this is a complicated task. He relates that while he would like to establish his own residence,

I don’t want to leave [my house] and leave my mom like stranded. That’s one of my things. But if she—as soon as she gets a job or whatever, because she’s been looking, I’m pretty much gone. . . . If I left now, she’d probably have to put this house up for sale or something like that, and I’d feel awful. So I’m not going to leave her high and dry.

While David is also currently taking community college classes with the hopes of transferring to a four-year school, his progress has been stymied by his financial assis- tance to his house. One particular example of this occurred when the water heater in David’s house broke. Since his mother did not have any money, and the contractor who had recently fixed it had disappeared, David himself had to pay the over $700 to replace it. At this time, he was also in the midst of attending classes and wanted to take a summer course in order to better position himself to transfer to a four-year school. However, he was unable to do this because, as he states, “I just couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t pay $500 for a class when I got all the bills here and I got heaters blowing up.” David is eager to get through his community college classes so he may move on to a four-year school, and hopefully increase his chances for employment that will pay him more, be more personally rewarding, and less physically exhausting. Yet he is slowed down in this pursuit by his financial obligations to his family.

Similarly, Brenda’s obligations to her home during her transition to adulthood did not allow her to pursue her desired educational track. At the time of her first interview Brenda, now 23 and married with two children, was living with her mother in a run- down house in the neighborhood. She had plans to leave the neighborhood to attend Job Corps so that she could make a better life for herself. In between interview waves, Brenda was able to achieve her high school diploma and several certificates while at Job Corps. As her time there drew to a close, she developed plans to remain in the area so that she could take some college-level classes and also avoid returning to the tension and difficulties back in her neighborhood. However, she had to abandon these plans and come back to the neighborhood because her mother told her that she needed Brenda home in order to survive. As Brenda states, “[My mother] asked me, she begged me to come back because I wasn’t going to come back. She told me that she need[ed]

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my help paying rent and stuff, buying food and stuff. I said okay.” Since that time, Brenda has not been able to achieve any additional postsecondary credentials and has bounced among several low-wage jobs.

FEELINGS OF RESPONSIBILITY

While Brenda was particularly frustrated by her mother’s request for her help, most youth (13 of 15) who provide support to family do not report similarly negative feel- ings regarding their aid of family members. Given the complications their aid provides, as well as the proliferation of popular accounts of young adults of this age as self- involved, an obvious question appears to be why these young people are so willing to help their families during this already hectic time in the life course. For most young people in this sample, the question itself is confusing. The overwhelming majority of youth in this sample who provide support to families describe this support not as a burden, but as an obvious choice they make in order to provide needed support to family members. Although Pete seems to indicate that he is burdened by his current situation in the earlier discussion, this is related more to the haphazard way his family requests money and not the provision of support itself. When asked why he simply does not leave his parents’ home, he replies, “If not for the fact that, you know, I said my sister with the schedule and everything, I might be trying to move out right now, but I guess until she gets out of school, I’m good on that.” He further identifies the responsibility he feels toward his family when discussing his declining criminal involve- ment over interview waves. He relates that “if I lived by myself, and I got locked up, it wouldn’t mean nothing. I live with my mom and my sister; if I got locked up for any- thing like that, it’d be horrible. I wouldn’t do that, at all.” While it does not hurt that his current financial obligations are slightly smaller than what he would pay to live on his own, he is committed to staying primarily because he feels responsible to help the family.

Even those young adults who would pay similar amounts of money to live indepen- dently reflect ideas of responsibility and commitment to family discussed in cultural explanations of family support and the transition (i.e., Fuligni et al. 1999, 2007; Fuligni and Pedersen 2002; Fuligni 2007; Sanchez et al. 2010). For example, David would like to live on his own and could financially support himself. However, he is committed to helping his mother care for his childhood home, even though he is frustrated with the restrictions she puts on him and her unwillingness to find employment. When asked about how he manages taking care of all of the household bills, he responds that “I do it because it has to be done. I mean, I don’t like it, but it has to be done.” While he “does not like” having full responsibility for the house, he continues to do so because he feels responsible to his mother and is unwilling to risk her facing financial catastrophe without him. Michelle, who takes care of her mother in addition to her two-year-old son, relates that “it is hard but I do it, because I know I have to. Like if my mom needs something, I’ll do it. If [my boyfriend] needs something, I’ll do it.” Kelly, one of the few respondents able to leave her parental home and still provide support, also invokes

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these feelings of responsibility. While Kelly currently is struggling to maintain her household, she also feels a sense of responsibility, and guilt, regarding not being able to care for her youngest brother, who is currently living in a flop house with her mother. She relates that “I feel like I should take him but I don’t have like no room, I don’t have the money. . . .” Kelly’s desire to help her youngest sibling, despite her own tenuous situation, is a clear indication of the sense of responsibility youth feel toward family.

The way in which youth in this sample think about family support is similar to pre- vious discussions of the responsibility toward family that young minority and immi- grant adults express during their transition to adulthood (e.g., Fuligni et al. 1999; Fuligni and Pedersen 2002; Fuligni 2007; Sanchez et al. 2010). Also similarly, these obli- gations to family complicate their transition to adulthood in a way that more resourced young adults do not encounter. As Fuligni (2007) suggests, support of family during the transition to adulthood is an important contextual factor in the experiences of young adulthood among those who provide support. Yet while there has been previous work on the role of strong social ties among the less advantaged, these relationships have not been adequately analyzed within the current transition to adulthood litera- ture. Stack (1974) shows how the strong reciprocal relationships among low-income African-American family members allow families to maintain with limited resources. Yet these ties can also serve to hold back those who otherwise might possibly be able to move ahead (Stack 1974; DeSousa Briggs, Popkin, and Goering 2010). This is particu- larly important to consider during the current transition to adulthood, when more advantaged young adults are increasingly relying on parental support to aid them during the long process of adulthood. Not only do the young adults in this sample gen- erally not have that type of support from parents, but they are doubly burdened by their parents’ own reliance on them for help during this crucial time.

DISCUSSION

One of the most prominent findings in the transition to adulthood literature over the last several decades has been the increasing importance of parental support for young adults during this time in the life course (Schoeni and Ross 2005; Swartz 2009; Wightman et al. 2012). Yet while much research has focused on support provided from parents to children, little research has examined the support young adults provide their families. The narratives in this article paint an important picture of the support that young adults are providing for their own families during this time. In the best of these circumstances, youth are involved in a reciprocal relationship of support with their parents. Their parents provide a “safety net” (Goldscheider 1997; also Swartz et al. 2011) for them in that they are given housing and some other basic necessities such as food, but youth also put significant amounts of money into the household themselves and are relied on for larger issues, such as monthly expenses, maintaining household projects, or watching over other family members. Yet, in other cases, young adults must support themselves and other family members with no help. Pete, with the large amounts of money he pays to his house as his family attempts to put his younger sister

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through college, is one of the clearest examples of the reciprocal aspect of family obli- gations. Kelly, on the other hand, receives absolutely no support from her drug- addicted mother and has taken on the legal guardianship of her 17-year-old brother, which makes the financial strain already being felt by her own young family more acute. These findings paint a broader picture of the relationship between parents and young adult children during the transition to adulthood than has been previously discussed.

Swartz (2009), in her review of the literature on intergenerational support, finds little quantitative evidence that young adult children provide much support to their parents. This article provides preliminary evidence to support the possibility that larger quantitative surveys are not accurately measuring the types of support that might be occurring between young adult children and their parents as Swartz (2009) suggests, particularly in less advantaged families. Although a majority of youth in the sample did not provide support to their families, either by choice or circumstance, a significant portion of this disadvantaged population still managed to provide aid to families. Nearly all of the youth who are employed in this sample, and several youth who are not, are providing some form of support. There is evidence among youth in this sample that small, more frequent amounts of support might be more common within some families, such as Jackie offering that she gives her mother “a couple hundred dollars here and there” when she has the chance. While there has been some qualitative work on immigrant families and this reversal of support in the transition to adulthood (Fuligni et al. 1999; Fuligni and Pedersen 2002; Fuligni 2007), this article calls for further research that examines how support is given within families with less resources across racial and ethnic groups during this time period.

This is not to argue that young adults should be more selfish and not provide support to families when they need it. Providing support to parents is a noble and worthwhile undertaking for youth that has been shown to have some advantages. For example, prior research with children of immigrant parents has found that strong ties to family, as well as ethnic identification, is related to positive educational aspirations and that youth do not view these ties as particularly burdensome (Fuligni et al. 2007). Yet in the context of a broader transition to adulthood, wherein those with the most resources are utilizing their families to gain time-consuming, and often expen- sive, experiences in the world to increase their own human capital, it seems likely that the provision of support to parents is another way in which young adults with less parental resources are disadvantaged during the transition.

This is particularly salient as these young adults transition to adulthood during a time when inequality has risen tremendously. While the advantages and disadvantages of social class build upon each other over the life course (Furstenberg 2003), the diver- gence of opportunity during the transition to adulthood is particularly profound. It is at this point that youth with extensive parental resources are arguably truly able to catapult beyond their peers as they utilize their parents’ resources in numerous ways to pull ahead. This may involve attendance at postsecondary institutions, particularly more prestigious ones, without the burden of financial concerns regarding tuition.

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These youth are also privileged with more flexibility to build their resumes with unpaid internships and other potentially risky job opportunities with relatively little concern about how they will provide for themselves. While their parents provide the financial backing for these experiences, there is little scholarly evidence that they require much in return in terms of support. Ultimately, young adults with these resources are able to use their numerous advantages to fully engage in “emerging adulthood” (Arnett 2004) and advance themselves at a time when their peers are simply struggling to get by.

This article showcases an additional level by which some youth are disadvantaged. In addition to not receiving the financial support from parents that is more typical of their middle- and upper-class peers, these young adults find themselves utilizing their limited resources to support their own struggling families, and not their own goals, during this time. For example, David, who is working fulltime and taking community college classes, is stymied as he tries to continue with his education because of financial obligations to his household. Although there is a chance that middle-class young adults would do the same for their parents if the situation called for it, the provision of this support would likely not be as detrimental to personal advancement as it is in David’s case. The tenuous economic position of the youth in this sample, and their families, means that the impact of unexpected incidents or expenses has a much greater likeli- hood of setting back youth significantly than it would for their middle-class peers. Further, since youth over the age of 18 are seen as independent adults by most social systems,13 young people without parental resources are generally on their own to fend for themselves (Furstenberg et al. 2005; Settersten 2012).

CONCLUSION

Although the transition to adulthood has gained substantial attention over the last several decades, researchers still know much less about how the transition is experi- enced by nonmiddle- and upper-class youth (Furstenberg 2010). This article provides additional evidence of the struggles some of these youth face during their transition. The advantages of parental resources during the transition to adulthood have become particularly important as inequality has risen over the last several decades (Swartz 2009; Kefalas and Carr 2011). Differences in intergenerational support have an immense impact on transitioning young adults, as those who are more advantaged are able to use their families’ resources to increase their own human capital and gain addi- tional advantages, while many low-income youth are left to support themselves during this increasingly complicated stage of the life course (Swartz 2009). Yet it is not only that parents can invest in their children, but that those without parental resources must use part of their limited resources to invest in their own families, which sets them back even further in their transition to adulthood.

While the vast majority of transition to adulthood research has focused on the role of parental support to young adult children, this article calls attention to multiple ways that young adults might be relied upon by their parents during this time period. Although the young adults in this article are from a small sample in one particular

Laura Napolitano Young Adult Support to Parents

neighborhood context, their narratives provide insights into the potential ways young adults are called to support families. This article has several implications for future research. While these findings cannot necessarily be generalized to broader popula- tions, they do serve as a call for researchers to be more attuned to how family relation- ships play out in the lives of young adults across the socioeconomic spectrum during the transition to adulthood. In particular, researchers should investigate how young adults across the socioeconomic spectrum, both residing with parents and independently, provide assistance to families during this time in the life course. This could be achieved through both in-depth qualitative methods as well as future surveys of intergenerational support that focus on different ways support might mani- fest itself.

Relatedly, while there has been some recent work on the impact of the transition from the perspective of both parents and young adults (see Fingerman et al. 2009, 2012; Newman 2012), the vast majority of literature on the transition explores the experiences of young adults and parents separately. Yet understanding how families as a whole are dealing with the changing transition, and the role of intergenerational support in this process, is an important aspect of the transition that needs to be explored further. In-depth research that examines how parents and young adult chil- dren negotiate requests for assistance would be particularly useful. Research of this kind would also be well suited to further explore how young adults feel their current situation impacts their experiences both during their transition to adulthood as well as throughout their life course.

The transition to adulthood is a critical time in the life course. While this has always been the case, the increasing importance of educational credentials and the con- tinued increase in inequality in the United States arguably make the transition to adult- hood at this point in American history particularly important. Future research that examines how this transition plays out, particularly for nonmiddle- and upper-class youth, is needed as scholars and policymakers seek to understand how to help those young adults who do not have high levels of support from parents succeed during this time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Frank Furstenberg, Patrick Carr, Grace Kao, Annette Lareau, Deborah Gorman-Smith, Jessica McCrory Calarco, and Patricia Tevington for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. All errors are solely my responsibility.

NOTES

1I would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for their comments crystallizing this

point. 2The parent study, for which this sample was initially recruited, focused on the experiences

of youth in three distinct, racially homogenous high-crime urban neighborhoods: a Latino

Young Adult Support to Parents Laura Napolitano

neighborhood, an African-American neighborhood, and a white neighborhood (Carr et al.

2007). The main focus of the parent study was to comparatively assess youth experiences with

police, crime, and victimization across racial groups in high-crime neighborhoods. 3Neighborhoods in the original study were identified based on resident and citywide percep-

tions of neighborhood boundaries (see Carr et al. 2007 for more information). 4All numbers are in 2009 dollars. 5Fifty-one youth were interviewed for the first wave of the study. After extensive searches, 39

youth were relocated and interviewed for the second wave, a 76 percent response rate. After

exhaustive searches, I was unable to find any information on only three youth. Although I know

some information about the remaining youth, I was not able to interview them for a variety of

reasons, including refusal (N = 3), and those who I had good contact information for but was not able to connect with (N = 6).

6Given the information I have about the additional respondents who I did locate but who did

not participate, including their location, these young adults do not appear to be significantly

different from those who participated in the second wave of interviews. 7While young adults did report their parents’ income range, more often than not they stated

that they were guessing their parents’ income level. I, therefore, rely on their parents’ employ-

ment status and occupations over interview waves as a better indicator of the family’s economic

situation. 8At Wave 1, respondents received $25 for their participation. At Wave 2, respondents received

$50. 9Despite their limited financial resources, these young people could reasonably be expected to

provide support to families in the form of nonfinancial assistance. This ability distinguishes

them from their much more vulnerable peers in the first group. 10To be clear, youth do not discuss their experiences in these terms. However, their experience is

most similar to what is referred to in the emerging adulthood literature. 11All names are pseudonyms. Some identifying characteristics have been altered to protect

respondents’ identity. 12While the vast majority of interviews with respondents were conducted in their homes, the

interview with Pete occurred in a park by his house during a blustery November afternoon. 13Some social systems have recognized these changes in the transition and altered policies

accordingly. One example of this at the federal level is the Fostering Connections to Success and

Increasing Adoptions Act (http://www.fosteringconnections.org/about_the_law?id=0001). This law allows, among other provisions, for states to apply for federal Title IV-E money for youth to

remain in foster care until the age of 21. To date, however, only a minority of states are utilizing

this resource. Another recent example is the ability of young adults to remain on their parents’

health insurance until the age of 26 due to changes in the Affordable Care Act.

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