Marriage for the Sake of Parents? Adult Children's Marriage Formation and Parental Psychological Distress in China

Objective: Drawing on the stress process from a life course perspective, this study examines the association between children's overage singlehood and parental psychological distress. Background: Children's unfulfilled roles may have a consequence on parental well-being. Parents may suffer from stress due to children's overage singlehood indicated by unmarried status beyond socially expected ages in some areas of the world. Parents may see it as their own failure to fulfill their parental role and children's failure to establish a family life. Method: Drawing on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study firstly uses Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting to handle the pretreatment bias, and it is then further advanced by testing the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between children's marriage formation and parental well-being. Results: The results reveal that sons' overage singlehood is associated with a higher level of parental depression. Moreover, parental satisfaction with intergenerational relationships serves as a mediation factor between a son's overage singlehood and parents' depression. Although economic support for parents shows no significant effect on parental depression, it shows a similar pattern in reducing the effect of son's overage singlehood on parental depression. Conclusion: These findings not only demonstrate the reluctance for cultural change in marriage formation timing and gender-specific role expectations on children by parents, but also reveal the interplay effects of cultural continuity and the modernization process from an intergenerational perspective.