Institute for Social Research, Ford School of Public Policy, and Department of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Demography. 2022 Oct 1;59(5):1821-1842. doi: 10.1215/00703370-10177468.
We examine older partnered parents' time spent with adult children in biological and step families, treating time together as an indication of relationship strength. Using a unique national sample of U.S. time diaries from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we investigate time with all adult children combined and with each adult child. We find that time together depends on family structure and parent-adult child dyadic relationship type embedded in family structure. In analyses of all adult children combined, an older parent is more likely to spend time with adult children in biological families than in stepfamilies only when there is no shared biological child in the stepfamily. In dyadic analyses, a parent's tie with an adult child who is a biological child of both partners is stronger in stepfamilies than in biological families. Moreover, among stepfamilies, ties are not uniformly stronger with biological children relative to stepchildren; differences emerge only in more complex families when each partner has biological children from previous relationships. Our findings challenge the view that ties with older parents are always weaker with stepchildren in stepfamilies and point to the importance of considering parent-child relationships in the broader family context.
我们考察了老年已婚父母与亲生子女和继子女在时间上的相处情况，将相处时间视为关系强弱的一个指标。我们利用来自收入动态面板研究的美国独特的全国时间日记样本，调查了父母与所有成年子女以及每个成年子女相处的时间。我们发现，相处时间取决于家庭结构和家庭结构中嵌入的父母与成年子女的二元关系类型。在对所有成年子女的综合分析中，只有在继父家庭中没有共同的亲生子女的情况下，老年父母才更有可能与亲生子女在亲生家庭中相处，而不是在继父家庭中。在二元分析中，父母与既是双方亲生子女的成年子女的关系在继父家庭中比在亲生家庭中更强。此外，在继父家庭中，与亲生子女的关系并不一定比继子女的关系更强；只有当每个伴侣都有来自以前关系的亲生子女时，在更复杂的家庭中才会出现差异。我们的研究结果挑战了这样一种观点，即与继父家庭中的继子女的关系总是比亲生家庭中的关系弱，这表明在更广泛的家庭背景下考虑亲子关系的重要性。
