Because my mother lives there: The impact of family cohesiveness on intergenerational geographic proximity.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates parent and child influences on the distance mothers and their adult children live from each other. Using data from the 31-year Intergenerational Panel Study of Mothers and Children containing information from 799 families, I develop a longitudinal study design which examines the likelihood mother-child dyads will live near each other when the children are 23 years old. I also study the effects of changes in life circumstances on changes in the propinquity between generations as children age from 23 to 31 years. This study contributes to our understanding of intergenerational geographic proximity in several ways. A multi-generational perspective is applied to the study of a social issue which has predominantly been studied as an aging issue, and thus examined from the perspective of the elderly. The longitudinal design, which enables me to study changes in intergenerational proximity, is rarely employed in other studies. Finally, measures of prior family cohesiveness--affection, contact, and exchanges--are incorporated as predictors of proximity in order to better understand how the connections and interactions of individuals affect their behavior. This perspective is rarely adopted m studies of either family cohesiveness or intergenerational geographic proximity. Logistic regression analyses indicate that the social and demographic characteristics of the mothers and children and their relationships with each other exert an influence on the likelihood they will live close together. Conditional on whether children lived close to or far from their mothers at age 23, changes in their educational attainment, marital status, and home owner status during adulthood influence whether they change their proximity to their mothers. Finally, the strength of the bonds between mothers and their children may play a role in determining whether they live close to each other. Levels of cohesiveness affect the likelihood that mothers and children will live near each other throughout the children's adult years.