“The interpersonal is political”: Understanding the sociological ambivalence created in parent and adult offspring cohabiting relationships

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Sherree Dawn Halliwell,George Karl Ackers
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12627

RESEARCH

“The interpersonal is political”: Understanding the

sociological ambivalence created in parent and

adult offspring cohabiting relationships

Sherree Dawn Halliwell

1

|George Karl Ackers

2

1

School of Humanities and Communication,

University of Southern Queensland,

Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

2

School of Education and Sociology,

University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth,

Hampshire, UK

Correspondence

Sherree Dawn Halliwell, University of

Southern Queensland, West Street, Darling

Heights, Toowoomba, Queensland 4350,

Australia.

Email: sherree.halliwell@usq.edu.au

Abstract

Objective: This article considers the ambivalence generated

in familial cohabitation where adult offspring have never

left or have returned to live with their parents.

Background: Ambivalence is commonly used in psychology to

describe contradictory emotions at the interpersonal level.

Method: A thematically analyzed ethnographic study of

eight cohabitating families living in North Wales, in the

United Kingdom, explored both generations’perspectives

on cohabitation.

Results: Although our study found evidence of ambivalence at

the interpersonal level, we suggest that this was drawn from a

structural contradiction, namely, that although cohabitation

was the result of structural issues, such as graduate underem-

ployment and the affordable housing crisis, societal values

labeled it the personal consequence of a failed adulthood. This

caused these families feelings of shame and guilt that created a

barrier blocking the interpersonal negotiations needed to

develop more positive living arrangements and family roles.

The generational contradictions in values of self, family, and

society produced irreconcilable personal and political tensions.

Conclusion: This study concludes that two changes are

needed to better negotiate ambivalence in family cohabitation.

First, the social narrative that responsibilizes young adults for

their failure to attain financial and residential independence

needs to be challenged. Second, to address current structural

contradictions, the social contract on the provision for family

social care needs political renegotiation.

Implications: Building on the concept of sociological

ambivalence, this article suggests that studies of ambiva-

lence need to take a critical perspective that questions the

structural forces that produce and constrain interpersonal

familial relationships.

Received: 20 May 2020Revised: 29 December 2020Accepted: 3 April 2021

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12627

© 2021 National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2022;71:1247–1265. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 1247

KEYWORDS

cohabitation, emerging adulthood, ethnography, family,

intergenerational ambivalence

INTRODUCTION

The title of this article was inspired by the classic feminist statement “The Personal Is Political,”

drawn from the title of Hanisch’s(

2000; originally published in 1969) paper on women’s libera-

tion. Hanisch uses “political”(p. 1) in the broad sense of the word, as having to do with power

relationships, not the narrow sense of electoral politics. Hanisch’s definition of political seems

very relevant to our study. We argue that cohabiting for the families in our study was framed

by the current political contexts and that social and generational inequality shaped power

within the families’interpersonal relationships. We conducted an ethnographic study of eight

cohabitating families living in North Wales, United Kingdom, where adult offspring had never

left or had returned to live in the family home. This type of cohabitation has been pejoratively

labeled as failure to launch, where leaving the family home is delayed, or boomerang, where

adult offspring return home after a period of independent living (see Burn & Szoeke, 2016). We

use the term adult offspring to avoid the infantilizing inference of children as meaning

preadulthood.

We also find the terms failure to launch and boomerang problematic and only use these

terms critically and to locate the article in the current cohabitation literature with the aim of

challenging these discourses. This study found that cohabitation caused growing ambivalence

between parents and adult offspring. To understand the ambivalence the cohabiting families

experienced, we build on Lüscher and Hoff’s(

2013) dynamic model of intergenerational ambiv-

alence. The families in our study seemed to be trapped at a stage Lüscher and Hoff called the

“captivation”stage, with cohabitation the underlying cause of continued negative feelings that

could not “be expressed adequately in words”(p. 44).

However, this ambivalence was not just the product of a failure to communicate misaligned

generational values. Instead, ambivalence arose from a structural contradiction, and although

cohabitation had resulted from structural issues such as the housing and “underemployment”

crises, societal values still labeled it the personal consequence of failed adulthood. Therefore, in

line with Connidis (2015; Connidis & McMullin, 2002), we propose that studies of ambiva-

lence be framed by a critical theory perspective that foregrounds the structural forces that

produce and constrain interpersonal familial relationships. Further, we advance Connidis’s

(2015; Connidis & McMullin, 2002) conceptualization of sociological ambivalence as a

means to understand how constraints created by social structures and the economic disparity

of family members generated ambivalence in this study.

First, we discuss the literature on intergenerational ambivalence to suggest, in line with

Connidis (2015), that people’s feelings of intergenerational ambivalence are not only personal

but also embody contradictions and inequalities at a structural level. Next, we outlinethe

study’s intergenerational ethnography and thematic data analysis. The study’s themes suggest

that both generations were held captive by the social values that economic and residential

independence were prerequisites of a successful adulthood and that individuals of each genera-

tion were responsible for attaining this status.

The decline of council housing (i.e., government-provided social housing) alongside the

growth of poorly paid and insecure employment means that for cohabiting family relationships

to be affirming there is a need for change at both the structural and interpersonal levels. On the

structural level, we suggest the social contract on the provision of generational care and housing

undergo a profound renegotiation. On the interpersonal level, we suggest that, although socio-

logical ambivalence cannot be resolved by cohabiting families alone, if families are able to

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