Don’t Worry, (s)He’s an Adult! Adult Children’s Unemployment and Parental Depressive Symptoms

Jordi Guma-Lao , Centre for Demographic Studies
Anna Baranowska-Rataj, Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research, Umeå University

This research provides the first comprehensive evidence on the effects of adult children’s unemployment on parental mental health in Europe, exploring the potential moderators related to parents’ and children’s gender as well as the number and birth order of children’s siblings. The spillover–crossover model contextualizes the impact of experiences related to working life on the health and wellbeing of family members. Parents’ and children’s gender is considered as potential moderator based on theories on gendered differences in how adverse life course events of significant others affect mental health. Additionally, demographic theories point to the number and order of children determining parental investments in offspring as well as parental expectations toward children’s achievements. For this purpose, we apply general structural equation modeling to data from the sixth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Our results confirm the negative association between adult children’s unemployment and their parents’ mental health. These crossover effects are found to be similar according to gender and also child birth order. The intergenerational influence of adult children’s employment on their older parents is confirmed. However, our findings also challenge theoretical ideas suggesting that negative labor market experiences of daughters or firstborn children might be more detrimental for parents than those of other children.

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 Presented in Session 34. Determinants of Depression