Echoes of Loss: Parental Death and Extended Kin Relations in Younger Adulthood

Kateryna Sytkina , University of Cologne
Lisa Jessee, University of Cologne
Bettina Hünteler, German Institute for Economic Research
Thomas Leopold, University of Cologne

Parental death signifies a major turning point in young adults’ lives. It is a disruptive family event that may alter the bereaved child’s interaction with nuclear and extended kin. Family ties can remain stable, weaken, or intensify, depending on kin type and lineage, parents’ gender, young adult’s age at death, or re-partnering of the surviving parent. However, previous research has largely focused on nuclear kin, mostly due to a lack of adequate kin network data. We used data from the novel KINMATRIX survey, which captures full family network for young adults (25–35 years) in 10 Western countries, including parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (N=8,412 anchors, N=160,000 anchor-kin dyads). We employed OLS and logistic regression models to examine the frequency of contact with, emotional closeness to, importance of, and reliance on biological kin ties, comparing young adults having lost none with those having lost one parent. Our study revealed three main findings. First, extended kin relations were weaker in the line of the deceased parent – whether mother or father – compared with families where both parents are alive and together. Second, father-child contact was weaker when the mother had died before adulthood, but not vice versa. Also, closeness and contact were weaker with paternal, but not maternal, extended kin when the father had died before adulthood. Finally, when the mother re-partnered following the father’s death, contact with paternal relatives was weaker. Weakened kin relations after parental loss may extend beyond the nuclear family, shaping access to family-based resources.

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 Presented in Session 8. Kinship Networks over the Life Course