Moving out: Do parents and peers matter in young adult immigrant’s decision to leave home?

Siriruay Methakitwarun, Northern Kentucky University
Kristie Vise, Northern Kentucky University

Abstract

About 4 percent of Kentucky’s population are immigrants in 2015 and of that, as much as 18,000 were immigrant children. This number is expected to rise to the point that more than half of the children in the US will be children of immigrant parents. Following these children’s transition into adulthood allows us to understand their overall later life outcomes, and how they may contribute back to the society. Home leaving has been the focus of research in the last few decades due to it being normative behavior for young adults in the US as a marker of the transition to adulthood, and is relatively easy to measure. For children of immigrants, the timing of this transition is likely to be shaped by key social supports - their peers and their parents. With a public sample drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 4,882), this study investigated whether strengths of friendship and parent closeness during adolescence matters in home leaving across immigrant generational status. Findings suggest that there are generational differences in young adult home leaving, with first generation immigrants being less likely to leave home when compared to other generations. However, logistic regression models of strength of friendship and parent closeness revealed little difference between first-and second-generation in home leaving, thus these findings could not explain that either affects the generational differences in home leaving. This research sheds light on the discussion as the existing literature in this area is sparse and requires expanding in explaining what causes the difference in home leaving behavior.

 

Moving out: Do parents and peers matter in young adult immigrant’s decision to leave home?

About 4 percent of Kentucky’s population are immigrants in 2015 and of that, as much as 18,000 were immigrant children. This number is expected to rise to the point that more than half of the children in the US will be children of immigrant parents. Following these children’s transition into adulthood allows us to understand their overall later life outcomes, and how they may contribute back to the society. Home leaving has been the focus of research in the last few decades due to it being normative behavior for young adults in the US as a marker of the transition to adulthood, and is relatively easy to measure. For children of immigrants, the timing of this transition is likely to be shaped by key social supports - their peers and their parents. With a public sample drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 4,882), this study investigated whether strengths of friendship and parent closeness during adolescence matters in home leaving across immigrant generational status. Findings suggest that there are generational differences in young adult home leaving, with first generation immigrants being less likely to leave home when compared to other generations. However, logistic regression models of strength of friendship and parent closeness revealed little difference between first-and second-generation in home leaving, thus these findings could not explain that either affects the generational differences in home leaving. This research sheds light on the discussion as the existing literature in this area is sparse and requires expanding in explaining what causes the difference in home leaving behavior.