Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 102, February 2022, 102643
Social Science Research

There at any distance? Geographic proximity and the presence of adult children in older Europeans’ core discussion networks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102643Get rights and content

Abstract

Adult children are key confidants for their aging parents, often providing emotional and advisory supports. Still, adult children are not a guaranteed presence in older people's core discussion networks. Geographical distance is a leading explanation for why some children are excluded from the confidant network, but we hypothesize that certain parent- and dyadic-level factors make these intergenerational ties more or less resilient to distance. Using wave six of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, we identified whether a living adult child was also a member of the parent's egocentric confidant network. We found that fifty-eight percent of children were excluded from a parent's network and that such network exclusion was more common the greater the distance between parent and child. Random slope logit models indicate that parents with higher education were less sensitive to longer distances when listing a child as a confidant, whereas poor parental health exacerbated distance consequences. We also observed regional differences, with Northern Europeans being more impervious to geographical distance than older adults living in areas of the continent considered most familistic. Together, results point to the contingency of distance, as a number of demographic factors and personal and social resources contribute to the elasticity of parent-child ties across geographic space.

Section snippets

Does distance matter?

Over the past several centuries, social change including urbanization and industrialization, the globalization of labour markets, the development of automobile travel and mass transit systems, and advances in communication technology has put people on the move and altered the way they sustain ties to family and community. We identify three perspectives on how geographical distance may now impact the form and function of personal networks, including the presence of children in such networks

Sample

We test the link between distance and network inclusion/exclusion using the sixth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a study of Europeans aged 50 and above initiated in 2004. We use the main household respondent sample, as spouses (included in the expanded sample) did not report on key child-level information used in the analysis. The sixth wave was collected in 2015 and included the following 18 countries: Austria, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France,

Results

Characteristics of the SHARE older adult sample are displayed in Table 1. Nearly half of the sample has two children, and about 22% have only one living child. Relatively few older Europeans have four or more children (10.4%). Nearly two-thirds of the sample is currently partnered. The sample is relatively healthy, with over 60% reporting good, very good, or excellent health. On the other hand, SHARE respondents take a more pessimistic view of their computer skills, with 69% of adults

Discussion

Though adult children are strong and enduring ties for most people as they age (e.g., Silverstein and Bengtson, 1991; Umberson, 1992; Ward, 2008), a majority of sons and daughters, in fact, fall outside older adults' confidant networks. The current study proposed that geographical distance between the generations may shed light on this apparent paradox, explaining why some children are selected as core discussion partners while others are more peripheral. Research on family sociology and social

Conclusion

This study elaborated three perspectives on how distance shapes the presence of adult children in older adults' close networks. Results indicate that consequences of distance are contingent, not irrelevant or intransigent. Though the gendered combination of parent-child had little to do with whether far-off children fit within older people's confidant networks, multiple other factors either heightened or diminished the role of distance. Still, the consequences of geographical space for family

Acknowledgement

We thank the SSR reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 6 (DOIs: 10.6103/SHARE.w6.710), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. The SHARE data collection has been funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N°227822, SHARE M4: GA N°261982,

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