Social Disadvantage and Instability in Older Adults' Ties to Their Adult Children
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12503 |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| Author | Alyssa W. Goldman,Benjamin Cornwell |
A W. G Cornell University
B C Cornell University∗
Social Disadvantage and Instability in Older Adults’
Ties to Their Adult Children
Objective: The authors examine whether racial
and socioeconomic factors inuence older
adults’ likelihood of experiencing instability
in their social network ties with their adult
children.
Background: Recent work shows that socially
disadvantaged older adults’ social networks
are more unstable and exhibit higher rates of
turnover, perhaps due to greater exposure to
broader social–environmental instability. The
authors consider whether this network instabil-
ity applies to older adults’ ties with their adult
children, which are often among the closest and
most valued social ties in later life.
Methods: The authors use two waves of data
from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging
Project (N =1,456), a nationally representative,
longitudinal study of older Americans. Through
a series of multivariate regression models, the
authors examine how race and education are
associated with how frequently older adults
reported being in contact with child network
members, and how likely older adults were to
stop naming their children as network members
over time.
Cornell University,Department of Sociology, 345 Uris
Hall, Ithaca, New York14853 (awg22@cornell.edu).
∗Cornell University,Department of Sociology, 342 Uris
Hall, Ithaca, New York14853.
Key Words: aging, education, family relations, inequalities,
parent–child relationships, race.
Results: African American and less educated
individuals reported signicantly more frequent
contact with their adult child network members
than did Whites and more educated individu-
als. Nevertheless, African American and less
educated older adults were also more likely to
stop naming their children as network condants
over time.
Conclusion: African American and less edu-
cated older adults may be at greater risk of los-
ing access to the supports and other resources
that are often provided by adult children, or of
not being able to consistently draw on them as
they age, despite the fact th at these ties demon -
strate greater potential for support exchange at
baseline.
Later life is a time of transitions and
challenges—a time when individuals and those
around them must sometimes adapt to sudden
changes in life circumstances. A growing body
of research emphasizes the implications of
social network ties for important outcomes
such as loneliness and well-being during this
period of life (e.g., Ashida & Heaney, 2008;
Steptoe, Shankar, Demakakos, & Wardle, 2013;
York Cornwell & Waite, 2009), so more social
scientists have begun to study how, exactly,
older adults’ social networks change with age.
This work provides evidence that, contrary to
the stereotypical image of social idleness, social
networks in later life are typically characterized
by considerable change—the loss of old ties,
the addition of new ones, and varying degrees
1314 Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (October 2018): 1314–1332
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12503
Social Disadvantage & Parent–Child Tie Instability 1315
of turnover (Schwartz & Litwin, 2018). These
changes affect even the closest of older adults’
social ties. For example, one study nds that
93% of older adults experience some form of
change or turnover in their core discussion net-
works during a 5-year period (Cornwell et al.,
2014).
One important pattern that has begun to
emerge in this body of work is that the kinds of
changes that occur within older adults’ social
networks appear to vary by social disadvantage.
Building on the observation that disadvantaged
groups are more likely to be exposed to an
entire constellation of adverse circumstances
that give rise to social–environmental instability
(e.g., higher rates of unemployment, eviction,
neighborhood disorder, and health problems
and mortality among one’s family and friends),
scholars have begun to explore the possibility
that network instability is more common within
socially and materially disadvantaged groups.
Indeed, researchers have found that the nature
of changes in important features of social net-
works, such as their composition, varies by race
and socioeconomic status (Ajrouch, Antonucci,
& Janevic, 2001; Shaw, Krause, Liang, & Ben-
nett, 2007). African Americans and individuals
of lower socioeconomic status (SES) experience
more losses or departures of core social network
members during a given period of time than do
Whites and higher SES individuals (Cornwell,
2015; Fischer & Beresford, 2015; Schafer &
Vargas, 2016). Even prior to entering later life,
African Americans are more likely than Whites
to experience the death of a member of their
immediate family network (Umberson et al.,
2017). This is not to say that we would not
expect to see variation in levels of network
stability among more advantaged social groups,
such as Whites and highly educated profession-
als, especially when there is variation in their
exposure to specic adverse life circumstances,
but the above ndings do suggest that socially
disadvantaged older adults in particular have
less stable social networks in general.
To date, we know little about how, exactly,
the material and social aspects of disadvantage
shape older adults’ social networks or through
what mechanisms. Perhaps more important, we
know little about how far these aspects of disad-
vantage reach into older adults’ social networks.
Does social disadvantage in later life entail such
extreme social–environmental turbulence that it
shakes the very core of older adults’ social
networks? To explore this question, we assess
the impact of disadvantage on what are usu-
ally seen as the strongest and most durable ties
that older adults can maintain—their ties to their
adult children. Relationships with adult children
are usually thought to provide the broadest and
most robust pathways of support and resource
exchange in later life (Fingerman, Sechrist, &
Birditt, 2013; Swartz, 2009). As older adults
often face the loss of key sources of social sup-
port (such as a spouse), bonds with adult children
often become increasingly important with age
(Fingerman, Sechrist, & Birditt, 2013). Indeed,
the availability and quality of parent–adult child
relationships have been linked to a range of out-
comes for aging parents, including psychologi-
cal and physical well-being as well as mortal-
ity risk (Fingerman, Pitzer, Lefkowitz,Birditt, &
Mroczek, 2008; Silverstein & Bengtson, 1991;
Swartz, 2009; Umberson, 1992; Ward, 2008).
The stability of the parent–adult child tie is an
important issue for many reasons. Growing evi-
dence suggests that socially disadvantaged indi-
viduals have less access to valuable forms of
social capital (e.g., Lin, 2000; McDonald, Lin,
& Ao, 2009), including in later life (Ajrouch
et al., 2001). This may especially be the case
for African American and less educated older
adults who are less likely to marry than are
Whites and more educated individuals (Cherlin,
2010). Likewise, givent he higher mortality rates
among African Americans and socioeconomi-
cally disadvantaged individuals (Levine et al.,
2001), even those who do marry are more likely
to lack spousal support as they age. As intergen-
erational exchange is a key means of accessing a
range of social resources (e.g., Lin & Wu, 2014),
unstable social network ties to adult children
may be especially problematic for the available
resources and well-being of socially disadvan-
taged older adults. Understanding variation in
the stability of network ties to adult children
by race and SES may highlight an overlooked
dimension of inequality in the aging process
and even advance our understanding of health
disparities among older Americans (e.g., Adler
& Stewart, 2010).
In this study, we examine whether some
older adults’ relationships with their adult chil-
dren are particularly unstable, as evidenced
by the loss or exclusion of their adult chil-
dren from their core social networks over
time. Using data from Waves 1 and 2 of the
National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project
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