Childhood Living Arrangements and Adult Children’s Relations with their Parents

We examine the relationship of childhood living arrangements to adult child-parent relations. Compared with adult children raised in intact families, adult children whose parents divorced have less frequent contact with their parents and report a lower-quality relationship with their parents. We observe these negative effects for both custodial and noncustodial parents, although the effects are larger for noncustodial parents. Remarriage of the custodial parent tends to offset the negative impacts of divorce on relations with the custodial parent and to amplify the negative impacts on relations with noncustodial parents. Further, the longer the adult child lived apart from the parent, the weaker the relations with noncustodial parents.