Young adult/parent relationships : an exploratory study

The present study was concerned with the relationship between young adults and their parents. Subjects were 95 male and female volunteers aged between sixteen and twenty-five years, who were doing an undergraduate or postgraduate psychology course at the University of Canterbury. A questionnaire was completed which requested basic demographic,information and assessed such factors as happiness, financial support from parent(s), contact with parent(s), quality of relationship with parent(s), stress with parent(s) and communication with parents(s). Twenty-four of the subjects were selected for an extensive interview about their relationship. Frequency counts, and multiple regression, discriminant function and content analyses were used to examine the wide range of information which was gathered. Two fairly salient results emerged. Firstly that a young adults global level of happiness was a significant predictor of a subject's relationship with his/her parents. Secondly, that from eighteen variables measuring various possible environmental influences it was possible to predict with eighty to ninety percent accuracy those subjects with particularly good or poor parent/adult child relationships. These environmental influences which were examined in more depth. The results were discussed in view of their relevance to present assumptions about young adult development