ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with social interaction between parents and children, a necessary basis for the analysis of the extent and type of help that is exchanged between the generations. To make most efficient use of interview time in a study designed to explore many dimensions of the parent-child relationship, we framed questions concerning contact that embraced initiative from either side of the relationship. The predictor variables embrace an array of characteristics of both the parent and the adult child and the quality of the relationship between them: the child’s age, marital and employment status, gender, and the parent’s health condition, and family size. Full time employment on the part of adult children may play a similar role, particularly in the frequency of contact between older women and their married daughters. The adult child’s age shows a significantly negative coefficient on contact frequency; the older the children, the less often they are in contact with their parents, particularly in phone contact.
