PARENTAL SUPPORT OF MILLENNIALS AND THE POST-GRADUATE JOB SEARCH

Abstract

Many parents of millennials (born between 1981 and 1998) who have fostered a close and supportive parent-child relationship through intensive parenting practices have watched their children graduate from college and enter an economically tumultuous world. Millennials have remained in close contact with their parents throughout college and even beyond (Arnett 2004; Fingerman et al. 2012; Hofer and Moore 2010; Lareau 2011; Lowe, Dotterer, and Francisco 2015; Nelson 2012; Settersten and Ray 2010; Warner 2006). Despite the copious amount of research on social class, social networking, and the ever-expanding scholarship on intensive parenting of children (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2003; Nelson 2012; Warner 2006) and college students (Hamilton 2013; Lareau 2011), few scholars have sought to understand whether an intensive parenting style impacts parents’ likelihood to help their children after their children reach adulthood. Researchers have looked at perceptions and actions of employers regarding college graduates (Granovetter 1995; Rivera 2012), including those employers who have faced involved or over-involved parents (Peluchette et al. 2013), but scant scholarship has focused on the parent’s role in a young adult’s general job search. While Kramarz and Skans’ 2007 study shows positive effects of parent help, the jobs were located at the parents’ workplace. The changing dynamics between privileged students, their parents, and colleges is important to study, but it does not encompass the totality of the millennial story. The majority of college students do not attend the highly competitive colleges (Casselman 2016), and graduates from non-elite schools are likely to be shut out of the most selective firms, leaving them with a smaller job market to navigate compared to those who graduate from the top colleges and have the full spectrum of job opportunities available (Rivera 2012, 2011). To understand the current generation of recent college graduates, we need to learn about a greater diversity of the population. The central goal of this dissertation is to look at two types of intensive parenting: concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting and determine whether those parenting behaviors are associated with parental help in the job search. The dissertation will also explore different parenting styles used while raising recent college graduates, and the reasons that parents provide for helping or not helping their college graduates. These findings will help to address the gaps in scholarly knowledge about intensive parenting, relationships between young adults and their parents, and parental assistance in the job search.