How emerging adults navigate the autonomy–connection dialectic with parents via information communication technology (ICT) choices

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Renee Bourdeaux,Nancy DiTunnariello,Carrie Anne Platt
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12886

RESEARCH

How emerging adults navigate the

autonomy–connection dialectic with parents

via information communication

technology (ICT) choices

Renee Bourdeaux

1

| Nancy DiTunnariello

2

| Carrie Anne Platt

3

1

Department of Communication Studies,

Northwest University, Kirkland, WA

2

Department of Mass Communication, The

Collins College of Professional Studies, St.

John’s University, Queens, NY, USA

3

Department of Communication, North

Dakota State University, Fargo, ND

Correspondence Renee Bourdeaux, 6300 Tower

Circle, Apt 301, Franklin, TN 37067, USA.

Email: renee@bourdeauxfamily.com

Abstract

Objective: Our study explores how emerging adults navi-

gate the tension between autonomy and connection in

communication with their parents.

Background: For many emerging adults, the first few years

outside of the home have come to be defined more by con-

nection than autonomy. Information communication tech-

nologies (ICTs) are frequently cited as encouraging this

constant contact between parents and emerging adults.

Yet emerging adults also use technologies to develop a

sense of who they are outside of their family of origin.

Method: We used in-depth interviews with 21 college stu-

dents to better understand how emerging adults use ICTs

to keep in touch with their parents, how they make sense

of mediated connections, and how they navigate auton-

omy and connection in their justification of ICT options.

Results: Participants reported communicating with their

parents frequently, often daily. Although communication

behaviors suggested a privileging of connection over auton-

omy, participants’explanations of ICT choice invoked auton-

omy by highlighting personal preferences and compatibility

with their busy lifestyle as justification for choosing how or

when they would communicate with their parents. Partici-

pants also tended to attribute their use of nonpreferred ICTs

to external factors such as situational factors and parents’

limited technology skills.

Conclusion: Participants used ICTs to maintain a connec-

tion with their parents during college, but framed the spe-

cific ICTs they used to communicate with their parents in

terms that emphasized their autonomy as emerging adults.

Author note: We have no conflicts of interest or grant support to disclose.

Received: 22 January 2022 Revised: 28 February 2023 Accepted: 26 March 2023

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12886

© 2023 National Council on Family Relations.

2482 Family Relations. 2023;72:2482–2498.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

Our study contributes to research on emerging adulthood,

family relationships, and technology by providing a new

conceptualization of the autonomy and connection dialec-

tic that recognizes how today’s technologies have collapsed

interpersonal distance.

KEYWORDS

autonomy, emerging adulthood, information communication

technologies (ICTs), interviews, relational dialectics

The transition to college has traditionally been seen as a time of striking out on your own and

finding out who you are apart from your family of origin. But today’s emerging adults are more

persistently connected—in physical, financial, and emotional terms—with their parents than

previous generations. Advancements in technology have allowed emerging adults to keep in

constant touch with their parents, to the extent that social critics have described the mobile

phone as an “electronic umbilical cord”(LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011, p. 400). Economic insta-

bility has made emerging adults more likely to live at home during college and after graduation

(Bleemer et al., 2017), and pandemic-related changes have resulted in record-high levels of

emerging adults moving back home (Fry et al., 2020). On a broader sociological level, changes

in parenting have displaced a strict hierarchy of family roles with a more informal environment

in which parents and children are more likely to view each other as “friends”(Twenge &

Campbell, 2009). From the perspective of relational dialectics (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996),

the first few years of adulthood have come to be defined more by connection (interpersonal

closeness and dependence) than autonomy (distance and independence).

The concept of “emerging adulthood”has been advanced by developmental scholars to cap-

ture these changes (Arnett, 2004). Research in this area illuminates how emerging adults experi-

ence reduced autonomy during their college years. We know that emerging adults report not

feeling like true adults (Arnett, 1994; Nelson & McNamara Barry, 2005), and that their sense of

protracted adolescence is heavily influenced by continued reliance on their parents as they con-

front new situations, new expectations, and new relationships in adult life (Arnett, 2000,2006,

2007; Arnett & Tanner, 2006; Carlson, 2014,2016). Emerging adults still crave parental connec-

tion, especially because that support is vital to helping them adjust to living on their own

(Mann-Feder et al., 2014). Yet expectations of independence persist as a social narrative, creat-

ing tension between emerging adults’desire to remain connected to their family of origin and

their desire to enact the autonomous selfhood that is still seen as a hallmark of adulthood. This

study adds to the scholarship on emerging adulthood by explaining how technology choices

serve a developmental function for families with emerging adult children.

Research in developmental science has called for greater attention to how emerging adults

negotiate the tension between connection and autonomy with their families of origin (see

Inguglia et al., 2015; Kenyon & Koerner, 2009). Research on family technology use helps us

understand how technologies are used to maintain family connections, but less is known about

how technology use relates to emerging adults’developmental needs. With this study, we

explore how emerging adults use information communication technologies to establish both

connection and autonomy.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Previous scholarship has documented how the tension between autonomy and connection mani-

fests in personal relationships, how technology plays an increasing role in keeping emerging

HOW EMERGING ADULTS NAVIGATE AUTONOMY 2483