Moving Out and Marriage: What Do Young Adults Expect?

Calvin Goldscheider · Frances Kobrin Goldscheider

58 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Sociological Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Family Dynamics and Relationships Marriage and Family Dynamics Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

Abstract

This paper examines expectations about premarital residential independence among young US adults and is based on data from 1980 high school seniors. About 70% of these young adults expect to move out of the parental home before marriage pointing to ways in which new norms are emerging which fit into patterns of independence in the transition to adulthood. The analysis of the expectations young adults express about when they plan to move out of the parental home and how they relate this to the timing of marriage suggests that there are substantial variations in the factors affecting premarital residential independence and that these relationships raise important issues that relate to theories of gender ethnic and family change. Overall men expect to live away from the parental household before they marry more than do young women those with more parental resources to purchase an independent residence those who expect to marry at an older age and those who do not have ethnic and religious ties that link them as young adults to their parental home until marriage. The higher levels of black expectations for premarital residential independence appear to be primarily linked to the very unusual patterns of marriage increasingly characterizing the black community rather than to socioeconomic background. Hispanics particularly Mexicans and Cubans are less likely to expect to move out of the parental home before marriage. Increasing affluence is leading to greater expectations for residential separation between generations even among ethnic and religious groups with a strong emphasis on family solidarity. Overall most young people whatever their socioeconomic and ethnic background expect to live independently of the parental household before they marry.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.

References

1982Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System 1975Time of Transition, A: The Growth of Families Headed by Women 1980Changes in the Propensity to Live Alone: 1950–1976 1982Headship and Household Composition Among Blacks, Hispanics, and Other Whites 1986Nonfamily Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations Among Young Adults 1983Changes in the propensity to live alone: Evidence from consecutive cross-sectional surveys, 1960–1976 1972The evolution of the family 1976The Primary Individual and the Family: Changes in Living Arrangements in the United States since 1940

Cited by

1996Geographical distance from parents and adjustment during adolescence and young adulthood 2012The Effect of Parents’ Attitudes on Sons’ Marriage Timing 1999Family Structure Differences in the Timing of Leaving Home: Exploring Mediating Factors 1994Adolescents' Attitudes toward Marriage and Marital Prospects after Parental Divorce: A Review 1987Nest-Leaving Patterns and the Transition to Marriage for Young Men and Women

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.