ABSTRACT
The process whereby people reduce their connections to the parental family and assume roles more separate from them is marked by a series of transitions: finishing school, beginning work, leaving the parental home, marrying, having children. The relationship between early nestleaving and college attendance seems quite strong, since ethnic differences in college attendance frequently-parallel the differences in early nestleaving. The traditional form allows for economically able children to contribute money and/or services to the household. To examine the connections to intergenerational resource flows, information was collected Rhode Island survey on the direction of income flows between the generations. An important task at the structural level is to relate leaving home to new household formation. National data indicate that a major factor in the increases in the rate of household formation is an increased propensity of young adults to begin lives residentially independent from their parents before marriage.
