ABSTRACT
This chapter describes evidence to suggest that many contemporary Americans, at least, experience continued parental imperatives that are rooted in the adult child’s continued need for security and the parent’s enduring desire to protect the welfare of continuing generations of their families. Models for understanding the importance of parent-child relationships over the life course may focus on the individual, the dyad or family system, or the larger sociocultural system. One of the difficulties in assessing the importance—or irrelevance—of parenting after children move into adulthood has been the scarcity of good research with “normal” families. Reports on the parent-child relationships reflect responses from seventy-four male and seventy-six female young adults, 134 of their mothers, and 108 of their fathers. The young-adult respondents in the Parkville study were interviewed about their relationships with both parents. These interviews were coded systematically for various dimensions of autonomy and relatedness.
