Cohabitation: Parents Following in their Children's Footsteps?

Lauren Rinelli, Bowling Green State University

It has been theorized that socialization can be reciprocal; from children to parents, however this theory has not been tested much in the literature. As cohabitation has risen dramatically in the past few decades among adults of all ages, it is possible that middle and older-aged parents are "learning" cohabitation from their young adult children. Prior work has shown that parents are likely to view cohabitation more positively after their young adult child cohabits but no one has taken this a step further to determine if parents will then be more likely to cohabit themselves following the start of a young adult child's cohabitation. Utilizing all three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to conduct an event history analysis, I plan to test whether there is support of this argument.