Relationships between women and their parents: implications for midlife well-being

The rapid changes in women's roles during the 1970s gave the graduates of the Radcliffe College class of 1964 opportunities for life experiences markedly different from those of either their mothers or their fathers. This longitudinal study of 89 Radcliffe graduates examined the ways in which women in midlife find continuity with their parents and the implications of experiences of continuity for women's relationships with parents and for women's self-esteem and well-being. Support was found for a model linking women's educational and occupational similarity to their parents to later perceptions of parental influence, perceived parental influence to parent-daughter relationship quality, and parent-daughter relationship quality to self-esteem and subsequent well-being. The quality of women's relationships with their fathers did not predict subsequent well-being, perhaps because of fathers' decreased involvement in their adult daughters' lives.