Intergenerational Transmission of Relationship Quality in Later-Life Families

This article examines the transmission of older women's relationship quality with their mothers and fathers to their relationship quality with their own adult children in midlife. We also investigate how the transmission is moderated by the dimension of relationship quality (closeness vs. strain) and the gender of both the older women's parents and their adult children.

Prior research has primarily examined parents' transmission of relationship quality to young children with little attention to whether and when this pattern occurs in later-life families.

We conducted multilevel analyses using data collected from 249 older women and 643 of their adult children as part of the Within-Family Differences Study-I.

We found evidence for transmission of older women's reported closeness and tension with their mothers and fathers to their reported closeness and tension with their adult children. Adult children's reports also revealed that older women's closeness with their own mothers was transmitted to their adult children's reported closeness with the older women themselves. Mother-child closeness was transmitted more strongly than mother-child tension, and mother-child closeness was transmitted more strongly to daughters than sons, based on adult children's reports.

This study demonstrates the continuity of intergenerational influence in later-life families and highlights the essential roles that selective social learning and social structural position (i.e., gender) play in conditioning the socialization process.