ABSTRACT
This chapter reports two lines of analysis from a larger study of the parent–adult child relationship: first, the structure of normative obligations toward a range of specified kinpersons, which permits us to specify the respects in which obligations toward parents and children differ from the obligations felt toward less closely related kin; and second, an overview of the help exchanged between parents and adult children from the early adulthood of the children to the very elderly years of the parents (Rossi & Rossi, 1990). We begin, however, with a discussion of the major issues posed in the study, and their translation into the research design we adopted to pursue them, so that these two more specific themes reported in later sections can be located in the framework of the larger study.
