Who/What Helps Me to Become An Adult? The Role of Family Factors, Romantic Relationship and Job Involvement

During the transition to adulthood the emerging adults face a variety of challenges in different life domains (Roisman, Masten, Coatsworth, Tellegen, 2004; Schulenberg, Schoon, 2012). On one side, family relationships constitutes the safety net which allows emerging adults to explore the others life domains such as romantic relationship and job context. On the other side, both romantic relationship and job are crucial domains to assume adult role (Seiffge-Krenke, Luyckx , Salmela-Aro, 2013). Indeed, being involved in a significant romantic relationship helps emerging adults to think about their own future family, whereas being employed give the possibility to become economically independent, one of the criteria used to define adult status (Arnett, 2000). The aim of the study is to analyze how the different domains affect the: future plans regarding adulthood and the financial strain. Previous studies have underlined how the romantic relationship allows emerging adults to think about his/her future as an independent person with an own family (Lanz, Tagliabue, 2007). Moreover the financial well being resulted positively affected by family relationships only in some phase of the transition to adulthood (Lanz, Tagliabue, 2014). In the previous studies the different domains are in general considered independently without considering the interactions between them. Moreover, the studies involved only emerging adults without considering the perception of father and mother. In this study we used a multiple informants strategies to obtain dyadic data concerning parent-child relationship. The sample is composed by 177 family triads (composed by emerging adult, mother, and father). All the emerging adults live with their parents; 48.6% were males; 37.9% are workers; 54.2% were involved in a romantic relationship. Findings showed that emerging adults that have a job and a romantic relationships perceived a less financial stress and thought that will be more likelihood to have a family and children in the next five years. Moreover they reported less likelihood to be unemployed. The quality of parent-child relationships reported by emerging adults was not related to financial strain, but it was related to future plans. Structure equation model will be performed to test the influence of different domains on future concern and financial strain.