Socially Mobile Daughters and Sons of the Elderly: Mobility Effects within the Family Revisited

This study examines the effects of intergenerational occupational mobility on relationships between elderly parents and their adult children, using a geographically restricted random sample of parents and a derivative sample of their children. Several explanations for the existence of mobility effects are distinguished and empirically tested: that mobility in-troduces cultural disparities, invidious status comparisons, or greater residential separation between mobile children and their parents. Survey data from a paired sample of older parents and one of their children indicate that mobility effects depend on the direction of mobility, the gender of the child, and the perspective of the reporting generation, and are limited to feelings and perceptions more than behavior. What happens to family relationships throughout the life span as the socioeconomic fortunes of parents and children diverge? In recent decades family sociologists have consistently reported that intergenerational occupational mobility does not appreciably influence the course of parent-child