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CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

CAS in the media: November 30, 2012

Conflict in Mali
Loneliness
  • Lonely in KC
    Kansas City Public Media / featuring Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, associate professor in the Department of Sociology

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Financial support for young adults can strengthen family ties

By Hope Belli Tinney, WSU News

When parents support their children financially well past the point that they themselves became financially independent, the resulting parent-child relationship is:

A. Fraught with tension and resentment.
B. Detrimental to the child’s leap into adulthood.
C. Closer and more loving than before.

While individual results may vary, Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, a sociologist at Washington State University, has looked hard at the data from more than 11,000 surveys of young people ages 18 to 34 and says the answer is a qualified C.

“What parents are doing today is different than what parents were doing 20 or 30 years ago,” she said. Baby boomers might remember putting themselves through college, or supporting themselves with their first full-time job, but that isn’t the world their children have inherited. Continue story →