12.3.5: Family Transitions

 12.3.5: Family Transitions 

The later stages of family life bring their own pleasures to be savored and problems to be solved. Let’s look at two transitions—children staying home longer and adults adjusting to widowhood. Transitional Adulthood Adolescents, especially young men, used to leave home after finishing high school. When the last child left home at about age 17 to 19, the parents were left with what was called an empty nest. Today’s nest is far from as empty as it used to be. With prolonged education and the higher cost of establishing a household, children in the Western world are leaving home later. Many stay home during college, while others who strike out on their own find the costs or responsibilities too great and return home. Much to their own disappointment, some even leave and return to the parents’ home several times. As a result, for the first time since 1880, the percentage of young adults (ages 18 to 34) who live with their parents is larger than those who live with a spouse or partner in a separate household (Fry 2016). Some even bring their boyfriend or girlfriend to live with them at their parent’s house. Sociologists use the term transitional adulthood to refer to this major change in how people become adults. A more playful term, but just as accurate, is waithood (Milkman 2017). Having so many young adults waiting for “full adulthood” is new on the historical scene, so its roadmap is still being worked out. Although adultolescents enjoy the protection of home, they have to grapple with issues of privacy, authority, and responsibilities—items that both the “waiters” and the parents thought were resolved long ago. Widowhood As you know, women are more likely than men to become widowed. There are two reasons for this: On average, women live longer than men, and they usually marry men older than they are. For either women or men, the death of a spouse tears at the self, clawing at identities that merged through the years. With the one who had become an essential part of the self gone, the survivor, as in adolescence, once again confronts the perplexing question “Who am I?” 398 The death of a spouse produces what is called the widowhood effect: The impact of the death is so strong that surviving spouses tend to die earlier than expected. The widowhood effect hits men harder than women, as there are almost twice as many “excess deaths,” as sociologists call them, among widowed men than among widowed women (Schnittker 2019). This indicates that marriage brings greater health benefits to elderly men