Parental Support of Millennials and the Post-Graduate

Home , Helicopter parent, Homeschooling

PARENTAL SUPPORT OF MILLENNIALS AND THE POST-GRADUATE

JOB SEARCH

VALERIE ADRIAN

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Sociology

MAY 2018

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of VALERIE

ADRIAN find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

Julie Kmec, Ph.D., Chair

Amy Wharton, Ph.D.

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, Ph.D.

Jennifer Sherman, Ph.D.

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the people who have supported me throughout graduate school and have helped make this dissertation possible. First, I would like to thank my chair, Julie Kmec, who has been able to artfully balance support and rigor from the first tiny spark of an idea throughout a long and arduous process to fruition. In addition, she has been a great mentor, whether giving me feedback during exam time or walking me through potential pitfalls of the job talk. Next, I would like to thank Jennifer Sherman, who has served as an advisor to me in various capacities during graduate school. Jennifer’s writing groups have kept me accountable and pushed me to write. Her feedback is always thorough and incredibly helpful, and her support has been unwavering. I am incredibly grateful for the relationship I have had with Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson throughout graduate school. From her, I learned fabulous lessons in teaching and administration as well as research. I am indebted to her for her willingness to offer a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen when graduate school got difficult. I offer heartfelt appreciation to Amy Wharton, for sitting with me as I tried to untangle data puzzles, and for teaching me that playing with data can be fun! Finally, I would like to thank

Alair MacLean for the opportunity to run the statistics laboratory, which made me a stronger quantitative researcher, and for her advice, humor, and happy hours over the years!

I wish to thank the Sociology Department at WSU for funding, scholarship, resources, and professional development. To all my friends, you are amazing, and I wouldn’t be here without you.

I would like to give a very special thank you to Stephanie Coontz, who took me under her wing and saw something in me that I didn’t.

iii Love and thanks to all my sisters and brothers and extended family, especially my sister

Deb, who gets a “Sister, PhD” for her birthday this year!

To my strong and amazing sons, you have grown up with a student mom, and I thank you for all the sacrifices you have made over the years in this process.

And finally, to Pete. We have been tested with fire and keep emerging strong. Thank you for your steadfastness and for always believing in me.

iv PARENTAL SUPPORT OF MILLENNIALS AND THE POST-GRADUATE

JOB SEARCH

Abstract

by Valerie Adrian, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2018

Chair: Julie Kmec

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. 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

v 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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... v

LIST OF TABLES...... ix

LIST OF FIGURES ...... x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 9

CHAPTER 3: METHODS- SURVEY AND INTERVIEW GUIDELINES ...... 26

CHAPTER 4: COLLEGE GRADS, THE JOB MARKET, AND THEIR PARENTS: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS ...... 55

CHAPTER 5: THE PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ...... 80

CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...... 128

REFERENCES ...... 140

APPENDIX A: ROTATED FACTOR LOACING (PATTERN MATRIX) AND UNIQUE VARIANCES ...... 156

APPENDIX B: LOGISTIC REGRESSION PREDICTING THE EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD SES ON UNDEREMPLOYMENT STATUS, USING MULTIPLE IMPUTATION ...... 157

APPENDIX C: REGRESSION ANALYSIS PREDICTING THE EFFECTS OF SES ON SEARCH METHODS (FORMAL SEARCHING) ...... 158

APPENDIX D: REGRESSION ANALYSIS PREDICTING THE EFFECTS OF SES ON SEARCH METHODS (INFORMAL SEARCH)...... 159

APPENDIX E: EXPECTATION MAXIMIZATION FOR FACTOR ANALYSIS ...... 160

APPENDIX F: LOGISTIC REGRESSION MODELS PREDICTING PARENT JOB SEARCH HELP, USING MULTIPLE IMPUTATION ...... 163

vii

APPENDIX G: RESULTS OF LOGISTIC REGRESSION FOR UNDEREMPLOYMENT ...... 164

APPENDIX H: SURVEY INVITATION ...... 165

APPENDIX I: SURVEY ...... 166

APPENDIX J: INTERVIEW REQUEST ...... 196

APPENDIX K: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE ...... 197

APPENDIX L: ETHICS ...... 202

viii LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 3.1 Income categories ...... 43

Table 3.2 Research question and variables ...... 48

Table 4.1 Descriptive statistics of recent college graduate survey respondents ...... 57

Table 4.2 Job search strategies used ...... 62

Table 4.3 Formal and informal search methods ...... 62

Table 4.4 Logistic regression predicting the effects of childhood SES on underemployment status ...... 64

Table 4.5 Regression analysis predicting the effects of SES on search methods ...... 65

Table 4.6 Parent job help ...... 66

Table 4.7 Descriptive statistics of parents’ search activities ...... 67

Table 4.8 Descriptive statistics of parenting behaviors and activities (Variables for factor analysis) ...... 70

Table 4.9 Logistic regression models predicting parent job search help ...... 75

Table 4.10 Results of logistic regression for underemployment ...... 76

Table 5.1: Parent demographics ...... 86

Table 5.2 Social class of interview sample compared to national average ...... 88

Table 5.3 Homework help ...... 99

Table 5.4 Parent intervention in school ...... 105

Table 5.5 Parent job help ...... 113

Table 6.1 Acceptance rate comparison ...... 136

ix LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 6.1: Acceptance rate comparison ...... 136

x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Many parents of millennials (born between 1981 and 19981) 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 et al. 2015; Nelson 2012;

Settersten and Ray 2010; Warner 2006).

Intensive parenting is an ideology in which parents believe that the best childrearing practices are “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (1996:8). This parenting is based on the notion that children are inherently precious and pure, and that it is the parents’ role to invest large amounts of resources during childhood to ensure the most optimal outcomes. The main thrust of intensive parenting has to do with the attitude behind the behaviors, specifically a belief that a child’s status is so priceless that a parent must be willing to sacrifice for the child (Hays 1996). Although I will discuss intensive parenting, this dissertation’s main focus is the two types of intensive parenting that have received the highest levels of scrutiny and study: concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting. Parents who practice concerted cultivation “deliberately try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills” (Lareau 2003:5). Helicopter parenting “is high on warmth/support, high on control, and low on granting autonomy” (Padilla-Walker and Nelson

2012:1178). Concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting are ways in which the ideology of intensive parenting is practiced. Helicopter parenting is a more extreme version of intensive parenting than concerted cultivation, so named for the parents’ tendency to hover over their

1 The Millennial generation is not precisely defined. According to Howe and Strauss, millennials were born between 1982-2004. Pew research estimates the generational markers as 1981-1998.

1 children the way a helicopter would (Cline and Fay 1990). Parents can practice helicopter parenting, concerted cultivation, some combination, or none of the above because there is overlap among these styles.2

As the oldest millennials head into their thirties, researchers have an opportunity to learn some of the outcomes of the parenting “experiments” that began in the 1980s and 1990s. Many in the millennial generation were raised by intensive parents and continue to have close relationships with those parents. There are reports that helicopter parenting is creeping into the workplace, as parents follow their children to work (Begley 2013; Cassling et al. n.d.; Peluchette,

Kovanic, and Partridge 2013). Scholars and journalists have raised concerns about the outcomes of the intensive parenting style (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Cassling et al. n.d.;

Gray 2015; Kahlenberg 2010; Peluchette et al. 2013; Reed et al. 2016; Stahl 2015; Vinson 2012).

However, millennials faced a much larger threat. As the first round of intensively parented millennials started to graduate from college, the U.S. economy cratered in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression (Burke 2015; McNichol, Oliff, and Johnson n.d.; McNichol et al. n.d.), leaving these newly minted college graduates scrambling to find work commensurate with their education.

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

2 Throughout this dissertation, I will use the term “intensive parenting” if I am writing specifically about intensive parenting or am writing about both concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting. I will use “helicopter parenting” and “concerted cultivation” when writing specifically about the concepts. Occasionally I will apply helicopter parenting or concerted cultivation studies to a more general discussion about an intensive parenting concept because they are types of intensive parenting.

2 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.

In 2014, only 1/3 of 25- to 32-year olds held bachelor’s degrees ("Education" Pew

Research Anon 2014). While this is a historic high, it still represents the minority of young adults. Parents who are able to navigate the college system are able to give their children an advantage and such advantages are essential tools for some students at more competitive colleges

(schools that have lower acceptance rates than the average school and thus are harder to get into)

(Hamilton 2016). Studies of intensive parenting tend to focus on the families with higher income than average (Hays 1996; Nelson 2012), or low income (Romagnoli 2012), and among the most competitive schools in the nation (Lythcott-Haims 2015). Although studies on parenting styles acknowledge that ideal types do not account for every parent or situation, no studies have looked at what lies outside the bounds of the clearly defined parenting styles to see what else is happening. This project adds breadth to existing knowledge of intensive parenting by looking at parenting styles in families where incomes more closely match the national median income.

3 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. Most of my respondents did not send their children to elite colleges.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

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. Specifically, this study will answer the following research questions. The first questions are grouped together as questions pertaining to the mechanics of the job search and the effects of socioeconomic status on the job search and employment status. The second question focuses on parental motivations.

1a. To what extent is a college graduate’s choice of job search methods and postgraduate

employment status associated with the graduate’s childhood socioeconomic status?

1b. To what extent is parenting style predictive of parental job search help?

1c. To what extent is the employment status of recent college graduates shaped by the

way their parents raised them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)?

2. What are parental motivations for being involved in their recent college graduates’

post-college job search?

To test these research questions, I conducted a web-based survey using a convenience sample of 398 recent (between 2007 and 2014) U.S. college graduates who were recruited

4 through the survey company Qualtrics. In addition, I conducted semi-structured interviews with

31 parents of other recent graduates to ask why the parents chose to help or not help their children find a job and to learn more about the parent-child relationship over time. Finally, I asked the parents I interviewed if they would share the survey link with their children who fit in my demographic. From this request, 18 survey responses were added to the survey sample.

When researching parenting outcomes, researchers often rely on the young adults or data from large datasets. While I was interested in learning how recent college graduates got their jobs, I also wanted to understand the parents’ perspectives. I wanted to learn how parents experienced their children’s transition to adulthood, and what the parents felt their role was in the process.

These questions required a more interactive format. Using two methods and two samples provided a more holistic picture of the parent-child relationship from the child’s elementary school years through adulthood.

STUDY JUSTIFICATION

Millennials were born 1982 and 2004 (Howe and Strauss 2007). The oldest are in their early 30s and were raised by parents who spent more time with their children than parents did any time since the 1960s (Sayer et al. 2004). Millennials and their parents have been studied throughout the younger generation’s childhood and adulthood (Edin 2010; Hays 1996; Hofer and

Moore 2010; Lareau 2011; Settersten and Ray 2010; Warner 2006; Waters 2011). As the first children to be raised by intensive parents have reached adulthood (Lareau 2011; Settersten and

Ray 2010), we can learn the outcomes of this parenting style.

Studies of different parenting styles have looked at the styles’ effects on the academic outcomes (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Hamilton 2013; Hofer and Moore 2010;

Lareau 2011) and psychological outcomes (Fingerman et al. 2012; Johnson 2013) of the children

5 who were raised by parents who practice these parenting methods. Gardner (2007) has done a study of employers to gauge the level of parental involvement in job searches.

Using data from interviews conducted with parents of recent college graduates, I will demonstrate that middle class parents adapt their parenting style to fit the needs of a child in any given situation. I will show how the flexible parenting carried from elementary school into college and young adulthood. When I began analysis of survey data of recent college graduates collected in 2014, I expected their socioeconomic background to have a strong influence on the job search strategies. However, I discovered that socioeconomic status was not a significant predictor of the job search strategies used by recent college graduates or the level and type of help they received from their parents. Instead, I found that parenting styles and gender play a role in the post-graduate job search, even when controlling for parental SES. This finding is distinctive from other studies that have linked parenting styles and parental SES (Hays 1996;

Lareau 2003).

Few studies have looked at adult children to see if parenting styles continue into adulthood (Lareau’s 2011 follow up of her earlier study on intensive parenting is a notable exception). Adulthood is generally regarded as 18 years old, although the age of adulthood has become more malleable recently (Arnett 2004; Settersten and Ray 2010). Studies about helicopter parenting can focus on young adults who are in college or who have completed college (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Fingerman et al. 2012).

My findings indicate that while some parents do help their children with the post-college job search, most parents do not. Furthermore, of those parents who did help, the most common help was providing resume-writing help. Parents who exhibited helicopter-parenting behaviors were more likely to have helped in the job search compared to parents who did not exhibit

6 helicopter-parenting behaviors, but helicopter parenting into post-graduate adulthood is rare.

There were no findings to suggest that parents who practiced concerted cultivation helped their children in the job search more than parents who did not.

DISSERTATION STRUCTURE

This dissertation is divided into seven chapters. In this first chapter, I laid out my arguments and some general background information. I introduced my research goals and questions. Furthermore, I have explained my justification for this study and the methodologies I employ.

In chapter 2, I review the existing literature in intensive parenting, job searching, and networking. First, I will give a detailed description of intensive parenting in general and helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation specifically. Following the discussion of intensive parenting, I will discuss the close relationships between millennials and their parents. Finally, I will discuss job searching and social networking.

In chapter 3, I will describe my research methods in depth. I will describe the survey I created, how I pretested the survey, recruited my sample, and validated its measurements. Next I will discuss my quantitative analysis methods; the variables I used, the measurement methods, and the analysis. Following the details of the quantitative analysis, I will shift focus to the qualitative methods. I will explain my justification for conducting interviews, the question protocol I designed, my recruitment and data collection strategy, and my analysis of the responses.

In Chapter 4, I examine the results of the surveys of recent college graduates. I focus on the effects of parenting style, socioeconomic class, and gender. Specifically, I analyze the association between childhood SES, job search methods, and underemployment. Turning to

7 parents, I examine the likelihood that the parent of a recent college graduate would help their child on the job search. I will show the results of factor analysis I performed to categorize parenting behaviors and the results of logistic regression I conducted to determine the probability that parents who displayed certain parenting behaviors would give their children job search help.

Finally, I look at whether there is a connection between how a respondent was parented and their likelihood of being underemployed.

In Chapter 5, I provide analysis of interviews of parents of recent college graduates.

Through this analysis, I will describe some of the respondents’ parenting activities from elementary school through college and the job search, making the argument that parenting is flexible and parents pull back from their children and give them age-appropriate opportunities for independence throughout childhood and adolescence. I will discuss motivations parents have for giving various levels of post-graduate job help. Finally, I will discuss the type of help parents gave during different stages of the life course, including the post-graduate job search.

In Chapter 6, I summarize my findings and discuss the limitation of my findings as well as suggestions for future research.

8 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The first wave of millennials began graduating from college in the 2000s, and social scientists are studying the effects of helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation on millennial development into adulthood (Fingerman et al. 2012; Lareau 2011; Padilla-Walker and Nelson

2012). In this chapter, I will review the literature on the history and social context of intensive parenting and its branches, young adults’ relationships with their parents, and the job market for recent college graduates. Following those reviews, I will connect the literatures to help define the research explored in this dissertation.

PARENTING

While researchers tend to talk about intensive parenting generally, or helicopter parenting, or concerted cultivation specifically, no researcher has compared helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation as distinct parenting styles. Comparing them helps clarify their roles as separate but sometimes overlapping forms of intensive parenting. In the next section, I will describe intensive parenting and discuss its historical context. Following that description, I will define helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation.

Intensive parenting is a gender-neutral term derived from Sharon Hays’ idea of intensive mothering, specifically the belief that highly individualized investments in a child’s psyche will result in great emotional and financial returns when the child is grown (Hays 1996; Wall 2010).

There is a belief within the ideology that mothers are the most appropriate caregiver, so mothers who follow the practice may sideline or reduce their outside employment and interests on behalf of their children’s needs (Hays 1996).

9 The Rise of Intensive Parenting

Parenting has become more intensive since the 1970s. Intensive parenting is the child- centered, hands-on, expert-directed parenting ideology that is dominant in American culture

(Hays 1996; Johnston 2006). The reasons for the popularity of intensive parenting include societal and parenting experts’ insistences that children must be intensely nurtured in order to be healthy and productive adults (Hays 1996, 2004; Wall 2010; Warner 2006). Middle-class parents have embraced this parenting style as a response to economic competition (Hays 1996; Warner

2006; Nelson 2012). Parents want to get their children the coveted spots in the best enrichment programs and sports teams, as preparation for the top colleges and lucrative careers (Lareau

2011; Warner 2006). Intensive parenting is just one example of the American habit of turning to individual remedies for structural economic issues (Stone 2007). With intensive parenting, parents try to give their children the tools needed to be successful as adults (Lareau 2011; Nelson

2012).

There are many historical reasons for intensive parenting (See Hays 1996; Warner 2006;

Nelson 2012 for examples of the anxieties facing parents that have led to the type of parenting popular today). Some of those reasons include an aggressive expert-led push towards more parental involvement, the perception of risk to children, parental education, and parental guilt. A shift to smaller families and later marriage and childbirth gave parents reasons to consider intensive parenting while also facilitating these new parenting styles.

One reason why parents began spending more time with their children is that childrearing experts have advised them to do so. According to Hays (1996), a 1981 survey found that 97 percent of American parents surveyed had read at least one parenting book for childrearing advice. Hays conducted a content analysis of the three most popular parenting books of the

10 1980s and 1990s; Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, T Berry Brazelton’s Toddlers and Parents and Infants and Mothers, and Penelope Leach’s Your Baby, Your Child. Each book prescribes an expensive, child-centric, labor-intensive, maternal approach to parenting. Children are seen as priceless and sacred, not a commodity. Parents are urged to nurture their children, decoding and responding to cues and setting up a stimulating environment for proper development. In addition to setting limits for their children, the authors recommend that parents keep their own emotions in check, and reason with the child when the parent sets and maintains the limits (Hays 1996).

This type of advice helped lay the groundwork for intensive parenting.

Safety concerns helped foster a parenting style that was more watchful. In the 1980s,

Tylenol bottles were tampered with, causing the deaths of seven people (Markel 2014), and created a panic among the public. Television brought shows like America’s Most Wanted into the living rooms of millions of Americans, and the 24-hour news cycle created more competition and sensationalism (Fass 1997; Fritz and Altheide 1987; Rivers 2008). While these shows helped reunite families and catch criminals, they also added to a sense of unease, the erroneous idea that danger lurked in every neighborhood.

School administration and faculty are considered to be child experts, and schools have become more bureaucratic, allowing parents more access to their children’s educational careers than ever before (Corcoran 2008; Farrell and Morris 2003). In the 21st century, school districts began to use Internet programs that allowed parents to see their children's grades, homework that is due, and missing assignments at the click of a link (Shellenbarger 2012). While these systems help students stay on top of their homework, it also gives parents an unprecedented view into their children's school life.

11 Parental education and employment patterns have influenced parenting styles. While intensive parenting has permeated all socioeconomic realms (Hays 2004; Romagnoli and Wall

2012), parents who have higher education levels are more likely to practice it than parents without higher education (Lareau 2011; Warner 2006), and education levels have risen. In 1970,

38 percent of 25- to 29-year old women had at least 1 year of college and 18 percent had four years of college(Smith 1995). By 1990 54 percent have one year of college, and 27 percent had four years of college (Smith 1995). Most American mothers work outside the home, and few corporate or political changes have been made to support the childcare needs of working families

(Sandberg 2013; Schulte 2015; Spar 2013; Stone 2007). While many European nations have policies to provide working families with extended family leave and quality childcare at a reasonable price, American families have to patch together time off and child care options in order to provide the best, most nurturing environment for their children (Gornick and Meyers

2005; Jacobs and Gerson 2006; Macdonald 2010; Schieman, Milkie, and Glavin 2009; Schulte

2015). One remedy for the anxiety and concern that mothers have felt about long work hours has been to spend highly enriched quality time with their children (Nelson 2012; Villalobos 2014;

Warner 2006). Many professional-class American mothers have internalized the message that mothers should spend quality time with their children when work cuts into the quantity of family hours available (Hays 1996).

While experts have argued for more intensive parenting, changing family structure has facilitated it. Smaller families mean that parents have been able to invest more time and money into each child. If the payoff of parent investment is a healthy, financially solvent adult, the investment risk and need for success is greater with a small family, since fewer children mean fewer chances of success. Not only are the families smaller, but the parents are older (Bianchi

12 2011). The first wave of millennials was born in the early 1980s-early 1990s, and their parents were likely to be older and more educated than parents of earlier generations (Howe and Strauss

2007). The mean age of first pregnancy was 21.4 in 1970, and 24.2 in 1990 (Matthews and

Hamilton 2009), and the percentage of women who were over 30 during their first pregnancy rose from 4.1% in 1969 to 21.2% in 1994 (Heck et al. 1997). Powell et al, found that older parents tend to bestow more material and cultural resources on their adolescent offspring (2006).

Mothers have tried to use quality time to counteract time away from home, but the plan has left mothers exhausted. Mothers work more than 30 hours per week on average (Appelbaum,

Boushey, and Schmitt 2014), and many feel anxious about the time away from their children

(Hays 1996; Warner 2006). The increase in mother’s work hours fostered guilt, which led to the perceived need for quality time, and these forces have contributed to the rise in intensive parenting (Hays 1996).

Although intensive parenting began as a middle-class parenting endeavor, it has permeated working-class and poor families as parents have gained exposure to concerted cultivation through media, parenting classes, and social workers (Hays 1996; Romagnoli and

Wall 2012). Many parents practice intensive parenting because they see it as the best way to make sure the child has every advantage to successfully transition to an emotionally balanced adulthood (Bianchi 2010; Lareau 2011). However, working class and poor parents have not been as effective in their implementation of concerted cultivation, or in the outcomes it has produced compared to middle class families (Hays 1996; Romagnoli and Wall 2012). This is because the lower income parents lack the knowledge and resources that wealthier families have (Hays 1996;

Romagnoli and Wall 2012).

13 The shifts in parenting are one way that the early 1980s and 1990s were a period of

“unsettled lives” (Swidler 1986:278). When people are in periods of transformation, they will pull from new and existing practices to form habits that can eventually become doctrine (Swidler

1986). In this way, parenting has been transforming from the parent-centric strategies of the mid- century into a more collaborative, child-centric style (Hays 1996). In other words, the focus has shifted from a paradigm where parents establish house rules and expect the children to abide them to a standard that prioritizes children’s wants and needs over those of the parents’(Hays

1996). Parents have had to sift through their own role models, the advice of experts, and what fits into their family life (Hays 1996; Nelson 2012).

Description of Each Parenting Style

Concerted cultivation is a type of intensive parenting. Concerted cultivation is a term coined in the early 2000s by Annette Lareau, referring to middle and upper-middle class parents who manage their children’s lives in a way that reproduces middle and upper-middle class social norms and values (Lareau 2011). Parents who practice concerted cultivation enroll their children in many sports and activities, stay involved in the child’s school, and encourage the child to negotiate with elders and people in authority (Lareau 2011). In this way, middle-class children become primed for a life working in collaborative settings with some level of autonomy (Lareau

2011). In contrast, the working class and poor families Lareau studied practiced a more hands-off parenting approach that gave children more freedom and autonomy, but also gave the children fewer opportunities to engage in supervised activities and learn how to interact with adults outside their family circle (Lareau 2011).

Lareau lists the key components of concerted cultivation as parental involvement in the development of a child’s skills and talents, from inception through mastery, adult oversight in

14 children’s activities, fostering the art of negotiation, active advocacy on the child’s behalf, all in a culturally rich environment with the expectation of a transmission of middle class advantages onto the child (2003). Concerted cultivation stands in contrast to the accomplishment of natural growth, which is associated with working-class and poor families. Parents who practice this parenting style are largely hands-off, are more likely to give their children directives than engage in negotiations, and rely on the expertise of their children’s teachers, even though the parents may have trust issues with authority figures (Lareau 2003).

Helicopter parenting is another form of intensive parenting, as it fits the definition stated on page 1 of this dissertation: “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor- intensive, and financially expensive” (1996:8). The term “helicopter parent” was used in the

1990 book, “Parenting with Love and Logic” (Cline and Fay 1990), a parenting book that encourages parents to use a balanced, consequence-based discipline structure. “Parenting with

Love and Logic” does not necessarily fall into any intensive parenting style, instead the focus is on helping children be accountable for their own actions. While love and logic is compatible with general intensive parenting or concerted cultivation, those parenting behaviors are not necessary for practicing this discipline method. However, love and logic is not compatible with helicopter parenting (Cline and Fay 1990).

Cline and Fay (1990) refer to “helicopter parents” as those who hover around their children like a helicopter hovers over surveillance sites, and “drill sergeant” parents who bark orders at their kids. Helicopter parents micromanage their children's lives, starting in infancy and continuing, perhaps, into adulthood. Helicopter parents try to manipulate their children's environment.

15 Padilla-Walker and Nelson (2012) describe helicopter parenting as an extension of over- protective parenting. While class distinctions have not always been studied in helicopter parenting literature, this parenting style has been associated with upper middle-class and upper- class families (Hamilton 2016). The difference between the two is that over-protective parenting describes parents of young children, while helicopter parenting tends to be reserved for teens and young adults (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 2012). Helicopter parents exhibit warmth and support to their children, but they also are very involved in decision-making in ways that hinder their children’s autonomy (LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Padilla-Walker and Nelson 2012; Schiffrin et al. 2014). Although Cline and Fay were coined the phrase in a book that focused on parenting help during childhood, helicopter parenting studies have focused on parenting behaviors as children grow into adulthood (Fingerman et al. 2012; LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Padilla-

Walker and Nelson 2012; Vinson 2012). This is a research difference between helicopter parenting studies and concerted cultivation studies, as concerted cultivation is usually identified in the elementary years and has not been well-researched in the older years.

Many studies have found that helicopter parenting can have a negative impact on children and young adults. For instance, college students who have helicopter parents are more likely to have anxiety or depression (Schiffrin et al. 2014) and lower overall psychological wellbeing

(LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Schiffrin et al. 2014) than college students whose parents are less involved in their day-to-day activities. Students with helicopter parents have a high sense of entitlement and lower levels of autonomy than students whose parents did not practice helicopter parenting (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 2012). While there has not been much academic research on the helicopter parent’s role in their children’s workplaces, business publications have covered stories expressing concern that parents are too involved with their children’s jobs, and offering

16 advice for backing off (Begley 2013; Ludden 2012; Peluchette et al. 2013; Stahl 2015).

While helicopter parenting, and concerted cultivation appear separately in the literature, they are complementary, and sometimes overlapping. However, there are differences. Concerted cultivation is associated with parents who encourage their children to learn how to negotiate with adults and navigate the world of white-collar offices (Lareau 2011). Scholars tend to focus on the elementary school years when studying concerted cultivation (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011).

Helicopter parents take over the decision-making and negotiating, intervening when they think it is necessary. Scholars study helicopter parenting in the context of college and adulthood

(Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Cassling et al. n.d.; Hunt 2008; LeMoyne and

Buchanan 2011; Padilla-Walker and Nelson 2012; Schiffrin et al. 2014). Scant research has studied the different parenting behaviors to learn if they are present together or mutually exclusive, or if any certain type is more likely to have to translate into parent job search help when the children have grown into adulthood.

Parent-Child Relationships in Adulthood

One outcome of more intensive parenting practices has been close parent-child relationships as children grow into adulthood. College students find their parents can transition to the role of supportive friends during the college years (Cullaty 2011). Of college students surveyed in 2009, 41 percent spoke or wrote to their parents at least daily, and 19 percent had contact with their parents three times or more per day (Levine, Dean, and Levine 2012). Even when students are busy, they can still be accessed through their Facebook pages and Tumblr accounts. Due to this change in communications, parents are often much more aware of the daily goings-on of their young adult children (Levine et al. 2012).

17 The definition of a successful adult relationship with one’s parents is shifting (Aran 2015;

Fingerman et al. 2016). More than 50 percent of millennials surveyed said they consider their parents to be their best friends (Aran 2015). This percentage hovers near 50 percent (47-61 percent) for respondents aged 18-34, regardless of gender. According to a study by Howe and

Strauss (2007), adult children were 14 percent more likely to live at home in 2007 than they were in 1985. Furthermore, nearly half of college students who were surveyed in 2006 expected they would live with their parents after graduation (Howe and Strauss 2007), and in 2012, 29 percent of 25- to 34-year olds had moved back home with their parents for some length of time, with 78 percent of returners reporting satisfaction with the arrangements (Parker 2012). While there have been economic reasons for “boomerang children” moving home after college or during unemployment, young adults may be comfortable doing so because they are also closer and more trusting of their parents than any generation in recent history (Howe and Strauss 2007; Newman

2012).

Intensive Parenting in Adulthood

From the parents’ perspective, their children’s college education can be a culmination of investments in money, time, emotions, and other resources. Intensive parents spend more time with their children and may unconsciously view an economically stable adult as the outcome of their investment. Although the bulk of parenting falls to the mother, men have also increased time spent with children and both parents sacrifice for the sake of their children (Gauthier,

Smeeding, and Furstenberg 2004; Hook 2006; Sayer 2005). If a mother slows down her career track to accommodate intensive parenting, this will affect the couple’s lifetime earning potential, even if a husband’s career trajectory is not affected. If parents are making personal and career sacrifices to invest in their children, there may be a utilitarian principle at work when they help

18 with their child’s job search. Parents may have a higher stake in their children’s outcomes than parents of earlier generations. Perhaps the parents see their children’s successful career and satisfying life as the ultimate end goal of those parenting sacrifices. Therefore, parents, and especially mothers may help with the job search to ensure that their children become successful adults and the parents’ sizable investment was worth it. In other words, job help may be yet another example of the investment made by parents on their children’s path to adulthood.

Intensive parenting has represented a shift in parent-child relations compared to parent- child relations before the 1980s (Lareau 2003; Nelson 2012), and that shift continues into adulthood. Parents are helping students with college applications and intervening with teachers, to discuss grades (Cullaty 2011). Some colleges are trying to get parents to become more hands off in order to allow the students to have some independence and gain maturity (Lareau 2003;

Lareau and Cox 2011). During the college process, students are expected to pull back from the cocoon of their natal family and create their own lifestyle in an effort to stake their own claim as young adults (Cullaty 2011). Instead, millennials continue to foster close relationships with their parents, even viewing their parents more as friends and trusted advisers than as authoritarian roles (Aran 2015). While many children of the previous generations were eager for the freedom that came with moving out on their own, today's young adults can navigate shared housing with their parents based on mutual respect for all parties involved (Newman 2012).

Parental Job Help

Parents can help young job seekers, especially if the parents have good pay and a long employment track (Kramarz and Skans 2007). Intensive parenting has become a standard parenting practice, and intensive parents, especially helicopter parents, are very involved with their children’s lives (Bell 2004; Chua 2011; Fingerman et al. 2012; Nelson 2012; Romagnoli

19 and Wall 2012; Wall 2010). Networking is the most effective job search strategy, and young job seekers have the weakest networks (Granovetter 1995). If these two phenomena intersect, perhaps a parent’s robust network and strong parent-child bond can work together to overcome the recent graduate’s weak network. After spending years grooming their children for success in the professional world (Lareau 2011), many parents have had to watch their children struggle to find work in a highly competitive job market. While parents often emotionally support and guide their children as they make their way into the working world, some parents become more involved with the process. For example, in a study of working young adults in Minnesota, between 8 and 16 percent of respondents reported that their parents helped them find their job, although they did not specify whether this was a temporary job or a career entry job (Sage and

Johnson 2012). Parents help their children find jobs as a way to set up a successful transition to adulthood, and the expected outcome is often financial independence.

Parental help matters because job searchers who use family and friends to find jobs are more productive in their job searches, and they are more likely to find a job at a company that is a good match (Blau and Robins 1990). For example, Kramarz and Skans conducted a 2007 study of Swedish young adults. They found that parental networks played a role in the job search if the job seekers were looking for work at their parents’ company. The parents who gave the most effective help had higher wages and longer employment tenure than the less effective helpers, and men were more likely to get job placement help from their parents than women were

(Kramarz and Skans 2007).

Scholars have found that different types of intensive parenting and parent networking help are most likely among middle-class parents (Lareau 2011; Lareau and Cox 2011; Swartz 2009).

Middle-class parents know how to network and are comfortable extending themselves to ask for

20 help in ways the poor are not (Lareau 2003; Smith 2005). Middle-class parents have been in the college classroom and the professional workplace, and they feel a sense of comfort and understanding of the milieu that can lead to more ease in asking for assistance compared to parents for whom college and the professional workplace are not common destinations.

Gardner (2007) conducted a survey of 725 employers in 2006-2007. Twenty-three percent of them reported that they had seen parents involved in the recruiting and early career stages of young college graduates. This phenomenon was more common in large organizations with over 3,700 employees, but it was happening in companies of all sizes. Business-oriented positions such as marketing, finance, and human resources had the highest level of parental involvement in recruiting; while science, engineering, computer science, and other types of research and consulting jobs were among the lowest. The most common forms of parental assistance in recruitment were information gathering and resume submission. Parents could also be found at job fairs, setting up interviews, filing complaints, and even negotiating salaries, all on their children’s behalf. Although it is rare, it is should be noted that four percent of respondents reported that parents had attended job interviews at their company (Gardner 2007).

Parental career assistance outcomes often have a class divide (Lareau 2011; Lareau and

Cox 2011; Swartz 2009). Middle-class parents can use their social and cultural capital to infuse their children with attitudes and resources that will allow them to remain middle class; to succeed in school and successfully navigate a middle-class career path. Furthermore, middle- and upper-class parents are able to assist children in costs of education, while lower income parents lack the resources to help in the same way that parents in higher income brackets do (Lareau

2011; Swartz 2009). Practical support, for example helping with grandchildren or rides to the store, is most commonly found in lower income families that do not have a lot of financial

21 resources to spare (Swartz 2009). As the transition to adulthood lengthens, more research is needed to determine how parental investment in the young-adult stage influences the adult child’s financial outcomes.

JOB SEARCH NETWORKING

Parental networks have the potential to be a source of lifetime earnings advantage. In a difficult job market, a person’s weak informal network ties can mean the difference between employment and unemployment. Granovetter coined the term weak ties, which are a person's casual contacts that can be activated in order to obtain a job (1995). Informal networks are made through friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and they privilege certain groups of people over others (Granovetter 1995). One is more likely to find gainful employment through a referral from a more distant acquaintance than through a close friend or family member, because resources and connections tend to overlap among closer relationships (Granovetter 1995). Weaker ties present more new job information than stronger ties (Granovetter 1995). When people are looking for jobs, they use their vertical weak ties; that is, they reach out to people who are of a higher social status (Kmec and Trimble 2009; Lin 1999; Lin, Dayton, and Greenwald 1978). Informal networks can help in the job search, and the payoffs can be great for all involved.

For a new college graduate, an informal social network may consist of relatives, college professors, former classmates, friends, and acquaintances. Young people know fewer executives, and contacts are less likely to stick their necks out for them (Granovetter 1995). A lack of highly ranked contacts can leave the new job seekers at a disadvantage, since informal networks tend to be a more effective strategy in job seeking (Burt 1995; Granovetter 1995; Royster 2003; Smith

2005). Smith (2005) found that informal networking can be especially difficult for low income urban black job seekers. If their friends feel their own positions in the labor market is precarious,

22 they are less likely to serve as a reference for friends from the neighborhood due to a fear that any negative or questionable behaviors by the job applicant would reflect poorly on the referrer, and perhaps lead to job loss (Smith 2005). This can have negative consequences for the job seeker, because informal contacts can imbue the applicant with inside knowledge about the position that can strengthen an application (Burt 1995; Royster 2003; Smith 2005) and may even help provide material resources needed for the job (Royster 2003).

According to the literature, there is a class divide in networking capabilities. Working- class students might not have access to a professional network, and are more likely to turn to the less effective, more formal job seeking strategies such as their school's career center and career fairs (Rivera 2012; Royster 2003; Smith 2005), whereas middle-class children are encouraged to cultivate strong professional networks, see professionals as equals, and call on people in their network when they need help (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011). Furthermore, working-class college graduates are more likely the middle-class graduates to have been raised to be deferential to authority figures and not reach out for help (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011), which may lead to a more formal job search and lower status attainment.

Middle class parents will have more managers and executives in their networks than recent college graduates will, because of social and occupational location, and this may have an impact of the graduate’s success. For instance, if the hiring manager is in the job seeker’s network, the job seeker may receive a higher salary offer than a person who does not have a network contact (Kmec and Trimble 2009). A person’s starting salary affects their overall lifetime earnings (Gerhart 1990; Gerhart and Rynes 1991). Therefore, if a parent helps his or her child get a job through the parent’s network, the recent college graduate may have a higher starting salary, which would lead to higher lifetime earnings.

23 In addition to social class, gender plays a role in the effectiveness of job networking.

Evidence suggests that men are more likely to find a job through informal networks than women are. Women’s networks are made up from fewer occupations than men (Campbell 1988).

Because of their lower status compared to men, women’s overall networks are lower status compared to men’s networks (Belliveau 2005; McGuire 2000). Men tend to get referred to higher paying jobs from people in their networks, compared to women (Huffman and Torres

2002). Women who attend women’s colleges are less likely to get income information in order to successfully negotiate than women who attend coeducational colleges (Belliveau 2005).

Mothers are less equipped to help than fathers since mothers are less likely to hold management positions (Budig 2001), and tend to work fewer hours and have shorter tenure at their jobs (Glass and Camarigg 1992). All this can lead to mothers who are less enmeshed in the professional world than fathers are. There is some evidence that fathers prefer spending time with sons, and mothers slightly prefer spending time with their daughters (Dahl and Moretti

2008; Mammen 2011), which may lead to more job help between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters when compared to fathers and daughters and mothers and sons. While gender can play a role in parent-child time, since the 1980s, the amount of time parents spent with their children has increased across the board. However, when fathers do help with the job search, they may be more successful because of the strength of their networks (Huffman and Torres 2002). In addition, men’s networks include more people in positions of power than women do (Drentea

1998), and those connections can lead to employment (Drentea 1998; Huffman and Torres 2002;

Smith 2007).

Job Market

Job connections are important for young graduates because the job market has been

24 difficult for millennials. The Great Recession of 2008 obliterated nearly 8 million jobs (Isidore

2010). In 2014, millennials made up nearly 40 percent of the unemployed population (Goodman

2015). While non-college graduates have had the highest unemployment rates (Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl 2010; U.S. Department of Labor 2017), Americans who graduated college between

2008 and 2013 were also faced with a weak job market (Gellman 2016). For college graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 who are in the labor market, the unemployment rate was 8.5 percent in spring 2014, and the underemployment rate was even higher (Shierloz, Davis, and

Kimball 2014). Eighty percent of college seniors surveyed did not have a job secured by April in

2013, and that percentage rose to 83 in 2014 (Rutt 2014). When underemployment is defined as recent college graduates who wish to work full time but can only find part time work, the rate was 16.8 percent in 2013 (Shierloz et al. 2014). Abel, Deitz, and Su (2014) defined underemployment for college graduates as having a full time job that does not require a college degree, and found underemployment for recent college graduates was 44 percent in 2012. I use the Abel, Deitz, and Su definition of underemployment because I do not have adequate data to determine what the underemployment rate for my sample would be if I used the Shierloz et al. definition.

To summarize, in this chapter I defined and contextualized intensive parenting, helicopter parenting, and concerted cultivation and described their similarities and differences. I discussed the socioeconomic factors of parenting styles and the closeness of parents and children into adulthood. I described current literature on parental job help and the role networking plays in the job search. In the next chapter, I will describe the quantitative and qualitative methods I used to gather and analyze data to answer my research questions.

25 CHAPTER 3: METHODS: ONLINE SURVEYS AND INTENSIVE INTERVIEWS

In this dissertation, my goal is to explore the association between parenting styles, socioeconomic status, and parental help in the job search process of their millennials’ adult children. In order to understand these phenomena, I used methods from sociology’s quantitative and qualitative traditions. I conducted a survey to gather information about the job search for recent college graduates. In using a survey, I could reach a large number of people from a diverse geographic area to allow for results that are generalizable to a larger population of recent undergraduates. Anonymous computer surveys can also reduce social desirability bias compared to in-person interviews (Booth-Kewley, Edwards, and Rosenfeld 1992; Paulhus 1984).

I created a survey to learn about parenting styles and added questions about the job search to explore the intersections of parenting styles and job search strategies. The survey allowed me to tailor questions to ensure I could learn about the respondent’s formative years as well as the job search. By surveying only recent college graduates, I could be assured that any respondent who grew up in a low SES household had a college degree.

In order to learn more about parents’ role in the job search, I conducted qualitative interviews with parents of recent college graduates. (As I discuss below, they are not the parents of the recent college graduates that I surveyed.) Interviews allowed me to ask open-ended questions and probe for contextual information that is not possible in a quantitative survey.

Qualitative research can be useful when describing processes in new or misunderstood phenomena (Becker 1998; Weiss 1995). The new, more involved relationships between older millennials and their parents are an example of a new site of study, and the interviews allowed me to ask parents how (Becker 1998) that parental involvement manifests itself in the job search.

26 SURVEY DESIGN

The Post Graduate Job Search Survey (PGJSS) consisted of seven sections (see survey instrument in Appendix I). The first section was the consent form. When a respondent consented to participate in the study, he or she moved on to the rest of the survey. If the respondent opted out of the survey, he or she exited to the “Thank You” screen at the end of the survey.

The second section of the survey contains questions about the respondent. This section was given to determine some basic characteristics and some information about the respondent’s background. Respondents were asked about their demographics and their current employment status, as well as current income and benefits. A subsection of this survey section asked questions about the respondent’s childhood in order to ascertain whether the respondent was a product of helicopter parenting or concerted cultivation, and also how the respondent’s college education was funded. For the purposes of this survey, concerted cultivation was generally defined as parental involvement in sports and activities including family dinners and story times during their children’s elementary years (Hamilton 2007; Lareau 2011; Trussell and Shaw 2012), and helicopter parenting was defined as parental help with homework and job-related activities when their children were in high school and college (LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Bradley-Geist and

Olson-Buchanan 2014; Schiffrin et al. 2014). This does not capture every iteration of concerted cultivation or helicopter parenting. For instance, I did not tap into parents teaching their children negotiating skills because this is a rather abstract concept that would be difficult to capture consistently when asking people to remember events of their childhood. Therefore, I may have missed parents who practiced certain concerted cultivation behaviors.

In section three of the survey, I asked questions to discover how the respondent learned about their first full-time job after college graduation. I selected their first full-time post-graduate

27 job search as the point of study to help isolate the variables of interest. The longer a person is in the workforce, the greater the network (Granovetter 1995). Respondents would have larger networks to pull from in subsequent job searches. Therefore, while there is still variability of work experience during the first post-graduate job search, it is the point of the least variability.

The next section of the survey directed respondents to answer questions about their parent’s demographics, parenting behaviors, and role in the job search process. I asked about the parent’s educational attainment and current job. Then I asked questions about the type of help that the parent provided the respondent during the respondent’s primary, secondary, and postsecondary years. Finally, I asked whether the parent gave the respondent various types of job search help.

The next survey section focused on the respondent’s family income. In order to determine the respondent’s socioeconomic background, I inquired about the household income when the respondent was in high school, whether they had received free or reduced-price lunch, and whether their parents owned their home.

When formulating the survey questions, I consulted the 2007-2008 National

Postsecondary Aid Study (NPSAS:08) and the 2008/12 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal

Study to create general questions about the college experience and post-graduate employment. I modified a helicopter parenting scale developed by Schiffrin et al (2014) and used some of the questions in LeMoyne and Buchanan’s (2011) Helicopter Parenting Scale, which had questions about the subject’s childhood relationship to parents. Furthermore, I modified questions from the

Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanon (2014) scale on parental involvement, creating questions about parental involvement in high school and college. I added questions about the college choice and application process.

28 The survey respondents had to perform two quality assurance checks within the survey3.

At one point, they had to write the word “survey.” When they were answering a matrix question, they were instructed to click “Rarely.” If the respondent had seen the section for those two checks and did not perform the checks correctly, they were screened out and their results were not used in my analysis. The Qualtrics team also filtered out respondents who had answered multiple questions by selecting the same answer in a straight row, which indicates a respondent is merely using a pattern to answer quickly and is not reading the questions and thinking about the answers.

Pretesting of Survey

I administered pilot tests of the survey to both in an upper division sociological methods course and with several people in my social network who were either currently in college or had recently graduated, which helped ensure survey questions that were clear and unbiased. They fit or were close to my target demographic, so their interpretation of my questions helped me determine how a recent college graduate might understand or misunderstand my phrasing. The students in the upper division sociological methods course had been learning about survey design and methodology and were familiar with the discipline’s standards. The class was comprised of college juniors and seniors. Although the survey was to be administered on a website, I printed out copies and had them answer the questions on a paper copy, which gave them the ability to write notes and requests for clarification as they took the survey. After they finished, I had a

3 The Qualtrics team began with a soft launch of 40 responses and then paused the survey so that I could confirm the responses were valid and the survey mechanics were functioning properly. At that time, the median survey response time was calculated. Any survey that was finished in less than 1/3 the median response time of the first 40 surveys was screened out. The median of the first 40 surveys was seven minutes and forty-four seconds. Once the team and I ensured the surveys were running properly, the team resumed the survey.

29 feedback session with the students. They noted which parts were confusing and which questions they found difficult to answer. One of the pressing issues stems from the complexity of family structure. My original survey asked for information about parents, and some students noted that they did not have biological parents but were raised by a grandmother, or had a very involved aunt, etc. In order to accommodate such complexities, I changed the descriptive text to affirm that the respondent is allowed to define “parent” as “whoever raised you, regardless of your relationship or their title.”

After I made improvements based on undergraduate feedback, I pilot tested the next version with people in my social network who were recent college graduates. The participants had recently graduated from colleges and universities around the United States, although the majority had graduated in the Pacific Northwest. This group of people took the survey in the online format and emailed me commentary about questions that confused them or that they were unable to answer. This round of pilot testing was useful because the respondent replied to the survey in the format in which it would be administered, and they were college graduates, and thus they had experience with the post-college job search and could answer the questions that related to that experience. I used the responses to further hone the questions.

After those refinements, I conducted three cognitive interviews in July and August of

2013 to learn whether the respondents were interpreting the questions and answers in the way I intended. I had three recent college graduates take the survey and talk out each question as they answered it. These cognitive interviews were done in three steps. First, I emailed the interview participant the link to the survey and ensured that they were able to open the survey, and asked questions about the look and feel of the survey, to make sure it looked professional and legitimate. They were satisfied with the layout and appearance of the survey. Second, I sat next

30 to them as they took the survey. I took notes while they read the questions aloud and talked out their thought process as they answered the questions. Occasionally I would ask them to define certain terms. This helped me to ensure the respondent could understand the intent of the question. The respondents were also able to make note of any typos, and I could ensure that my skip patterns were correctly placed. I paid attention to whether they were able to navigate the website, whether the length of the survey was too taxing, and how much time they spent on each question. Third, I asked them questions about their experience and understanding of the survey questions, and whether they wished any part were different. Based on the feedback I received, I trimmed the number of potential parents from a total of four down to two. I added a few job seeking websites to the list of options as well.

Sampling Frame and Sample Selection

My survey respondents came from two pools. First, I conducted an anonymous recruitment through Qualtrics. Next, I gave survey access to the children of my interview subjects. In July 2014, I recruited the survey sample through Qualtrics, which contracts with a third-party vendor for survey respondents. Qualtrics is an online survey creation and distribution platform that conducts survey research for marketing, healthcare, business, and educational purposes. I created a survey through their website.

Qualtrics has a pool of potential survey respondents,4 who are contacted to take surveys in exchange for cash or retail reward points. The parameters for inclusion in the sample were that the respondents must have graduated from an American college or university with a bachelor’s degree between 2008 and 2013. I chose 2008-2013 because these graduates share an economic climate of high unemployment. As the graduating class of 2008 received their diplomas, the

4 The information on Qualtrics’ survey methods comes from a series of emails with Harrison Taylor, a Qualtrics representative, in March 2015.

31 national unemployment rate was still under six percent, but by the end of 2008, the rate was over seven percent, and would remain there until December 2013 (U.S. Department of Labor 2015).

In a tighter job market, recent graduates may use more resources than they would in a more robust market, so this may be a good time to get a comprehensive look at the ways in which a recent college graduate looks for work. The respondents had to be living in the United States at the time of the survey and had to have graduated from an American high school.

All respondents had first registered with a third-party survey company and then volunteered to participate in the survey. Qualtrics sent out an email link to the survey panel participants. The potential respondents received a generic email with an invitation to respond to a survey. The survey topic was not included in the initial email in order to reduce non-response bias. In return for answering the surveys, respondents received between $0.75 and $1.00 (See

Appendix H for survey invitation).

I calculated my sample size based on the assumption that are approximately 1.3 million people who graduated college in the United States in a given year (Spreen 2013). For the six years I targeted, the United States had approximately 6.4 million college students graduate with their bachelor’s degrees. I used the following formula determine the necessary sample size

(Dillman et al 2009):

(Np)(p)(1-p) Ns= 2 (Np-1)(B/C) + (p)(1-p)

Ns=Sample size p=The proportion of the population that will choose one of the response categories (Since my survey has many types of questions, I planned for maximum variance .5) B=Margin of error (.05) C=Z-Score for the desired confidence level (95% confidence level, Z-score of 1.96)

32 The minimum sample size needed to provide statistical significance at a 95 percent confidence interval was 385 respondents.

The survey was completed in two phases. Survey panelists responded between July 15,

2014 and July 17, 2014 and children of interview respondents responded between July 21, 2014 and August 20, 2015. The median time for survey completion was 11.83 minutes. The mean time for survey completion was 18.72 minutes. However, there was one outlier of 23.72 hours. When the outlier was omitted, the mean time for survey completion was 15.30 minutes.

In order to be included in the final sample of the survey, the respondent’s answers had to match certain quality assurance criteria. When the survey closed, 1,199 respondents had begun the survey. Some of the 1,199 opted to exit the survey when they realized they were not the target demographic, while others began answering the survey questions and simply did not finish. Of the 1,199 respondents who opened the survey, 393 did not finish and were automatically discarded, while 806 completed the survey5 (Marsden 2015). Qualtrics discarded an additional 402 responses because they did not meet my criteria, or they did not pass the quality assurance checkpoints mentioned in footnote 1. After I received the 404 responses that had passed all the quality assurance checkpoints, I removed six more because they had incoherent responses, and my final Qualtrics survey panel sample was 398.

In addition to the Qualtrics panel, I asked interview subjects to share the survey link with their children who were in my target demographic, as well as one respondent who graduated in

2007, and one who graduated in 2014. From this pool, I added 18 responses from children of my interview subjects, and my final analytic sample includes 416 observations.

5 Information about the survey completion rate comes from a series of emails with Cameron Marsden, a Qualtrics representative, in July 2015.

33 I did not place an age restriction in the original survey, only a graduation year restriction.

Recent college graduates who answered my survey ranged from 19 years old to 67 years old.

However, I only included millennials in my final sample. The literature on intensive parenting tends to focus on millennials, and I do not have a large enough sample of other generations to use as a comparison. I used Pew Research’s definition that millennials were born in 1981-1997

(Fry 2013, 2015, 2016). In order to isolate millennials, I only included responses from people between the ages of 18 and 34. I dropped observations of 72 respondents who were born before

1981. My remaining respondents were 18-34 years old. My final sample is 344 responses.

Due to financial constraints, I was not able to obtain a sample size large enough to account for all the missing data. The final sample count does fall under the required size needed for a 95 percent confidence level but was within the rounding error at a 94.9 percent confidence level. However, responses to all questions were voluntary, and I used listwise deletion to address missing data.

I used listwise because it is a straightforward method that yields conservative results

(Acock 2005). This method led to small sample sizes for regression analyses, which limits the significance of my findings. To address issues of potential bias introduced by listwise deletion, I conducted multiple imputation. Multiple imputation is a technique that fills in missing data with a specified number of values, analyzes the data sets with each imputation a certain number of times, and pools the results for a final estimate (Acock 2005; Allison 2002). The imputation is an iterative process that simulates complete data sets to correct for potential bias and allows for valid analysis (Acock 2005; Allison 2002). Stata’s multiple imputation commands do not work for factor analysis estimation (Institute for Digital Research and Education n.d.). Therefore, I used maximum likelihood with the expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate a covariance

34 matrix (Institute for Digital Research and Education n.d.). Full results are available upon request.

I compared theses estimates with the analysis found in this dissertation. There were modest differences between the two analyses, primarily in the significance levels. I have noted each difference with a footnote in each table where differences occurred.

In addition to the sample size, there are additional limitations with my survey data, and concerns specific to opt-in survey data. In an effort to shorten the lengthy survey, I did not ask respondents to identify their race as this was not a focus of my research. As mentioned earlier, I asked them about their post-college job search, but I did not specifically ask questions about their first job. This is because of space concerns and because I was interested in whether the techniques worked in general. I was not drilling down into specific outcomes. Therefore, I cannot make any arguments regarding race, nor can I state definitively that the job search strategies employed led to a specific job with its associated income and benefits.

In this study, I used a purposive convenience sample, which is not as generalizable as a simple random sample. However, studies have compared random sample survey experiment results with results gained through the online convenience sample found at Mechanical Turk, which is similar to Qualtrics. Their findings indicate that the results were similar to one another

(Mullinix et al. 2015). Other scholars compared online push recruiting efforts, such as placing an ad with a link on Craigslist and trying to get anyone who sees it to click on it, with online pull recruiting, which is sending the link out to people who opted in to be survey takers. Qualtrics panelists are part of the “pull” group. The findings were that those who had opted in to do surveys gave more complete and thoughtful answers compared to those who simply found and clicked upon a link (Antoun et al. 2016). However, my research should be read with the

35 understanding that is an exploratory study, and future research is needed to determine if these effects are generalizable to a wider population of recent college graduates.

The data has not been weighted to reflect the demographic composition of recent U.S. college graduates. I have compared characteristics of the PGJSS respondents to the respondents of the 2008 graduates who participated in the Baccalaureate and Beyond Survey administered by the National Center for Education Statistics. In the next section, I will share those comparisons.

Validity Assessment

In order to determine whether my sample is similar to the larger population of recent college graduates, I compared the percentages of demographic findings of the Post Graduate Job

Search Survey (PGJSS) with the demographic findings of the Baccalaureate and Beyond

2008/2012 Longitudinal Study (Socha 2015). The Baccalaureate and Beyond Study is a nationally representative sample study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.

The sample was American college degree recipients who earned their degrees in the year 2008.

Respondents were given a survey in 2008 and a follow up study about their employment status in

2012.

There were some differences between the respondent demographics across studies. The

PGJSS Sample has a higher percentage of women than the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 respondents does. In the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 survey, 57 percent of respondents were female (Socha 2015), compared with 65 percent of the PGJSS sample. Sixty-nine percent of PGJSS respondents had paid employment at the time of the survey, compared with 80 percent of respondents surveyed for the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 survey (Socha 2015). One important distinction to note is that the Baccalaureate &Beyond respondents graduated in 2008 and they were surveyed in 2012, four years later (Socha 2015). PGJSS respondents graduated

36 between 2008 and 2013, which means some of them had been on the job market for a year when they took the survey. Out of the 2008 college graduates who participated in PGJSS, 78 percent had paid employment.

The parents of the PGJSS Sample had different educational backgrounds than the

Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 sample. Nineteen percent of the PGJSS respondents were first generation college students, compared with 20 percent of the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 sample (Socha 2015). Twenty-four percent of parents of PGJSS respondents had attended community college, and 10 percent had gone to vocational-technical school. In comparison, 15 percent of the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 (Socha 2015) parents had attended community college, and five percent had attended vocational-technical school. Sixty-three percent of PGJSS parents had attended a 4-year college or higher, and 59 percent of Baccalaureate &Beyond

2008/12 (Socha 2015) parents had done so. In the PGJSS survey, respondents were able to check all the boxes that applied, while the results of the Baccalaureate &Beyond 2008/12 were limited to the highest schooling attained (Socha 2015).

In addition to limitations that are unique to this survey, it should be noted that all surveys have the potential for multiple sources of error, most commonly sampling error, coverage error, and measurement error (Dillman et al. 2009). Sampling error is inherent within a survey. It is the margin of error that we must accept in our statistical analyses. Because this sample is based on a panel of volunteers rather than a probability sample, I have not estimated sampling error.

The second common error is coverage error (Dillman et al. 2009). This is an issue when the sample surveyed does not match the population in question. This can be an issue with internet surveys, since not everyone has access to computers or the internet. However, this coverage issue is mitigated within my population. My research is focused on recent college

37 graduates, and 94 percent of college graduates surveyed in 2011 used the Internet, 94 percent of

18-29 year-olds surveyed and 87 percent of 30-49 year-olds surveyed used the Internet (Zickuhr and Smith 2012). Therefore, my population of college educated 22-49 year olds, have a high

Internet access level.

Another possible coverage error may happen because my sample is self-selected. There may be something specific about my population that leads them to sign up for online surveys, and that characteristic may have implications for my survey results (Dillman et al. 2009). For instance, they may have a need to supplement their income because they are unemployed or underemployed. However, I asked questions about employment and income levels, and I do have a broad range of work and incomes represented in my sample. Measurement error can occur due to poorly written or misunderstood questions (Dillman et al. 2009). In order to mitigate this error,

I performed pilot tests and cognitive interviews.

In sum, I conducted a survey of recent college graduates, using an opt-in panel contracted through Qualtrics, to determine how recent college graduates are getting their jobs. I asked questions that will help distinguish concerted cultivation parenting practices from helicopter parenting practices. My survey also targeted the types of job searches that were done, and the role of parents in the job search. The questions allowed me to see if there were socioeconomic differences in job search strategies. While the survey gave useful data on the job search, I was also interested in learning about parent motivations and perspectives. For this line of inquiry, I interviewed parents of recent college graduates.

QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENTS

In my quantitative analysis, I address how recent college graduates find jobs, the role their parents played in the job search, and the association between parenting style and young

38 adult employment status. In this section, I will identify, define, and quantify the variables I will use to answer the research questions presented in the introduction.

I will now discuss the variables used to answer each part of RQ 1, which is:

1a. To what extent is a college graduate’s choice of job search methods and postgraduate

employment status associated with the graduate’s childhood socioeconomic status?

1b. To what extent is parenting style predictive of parental job search help?

1c. To what extent is the employment status of recent college graduates shaped by the

way their parents raised them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)?

DEPENDENT VARIABLES

Employment Measures

In order to answer Research Questions 1a and 1c, I created descriptive measures to determine if the respondents were underemployed and what type of job searching they conducted on their own. If the respondent checked the box asserting he/she had employment at the time of the survey, and the job they had did not require a college degree, the Underemployment variable was marked as a “1”. If the respondent was employed but the job did require a college degree, the respondent’s underemployment status was marked “0”.

The next dependent variables indicate the way a respondent found his or her job. I created two dichotomous variables: formal job search and informal job search. These variables were created from Question 26 of the survey, which asked respondents how they found their first full time job after college. The respondents could choose all that applied from a list of options. The job searcher used formal methods if he or she searched for a job in the newspaper, online, via cold calling, or through a career fair. The job search was labeled informal if the searcher found work through a professor, friend, acquaintance, parent, or other relative. In the job search section

39 of the survey, respondents checked all the methods they used. I coded “Formal Job Search” “1” if the respondent responded affirmatively to using any of the formal search methods, and “0” if the respondent did not respond affirmatively to using any of the formal search methods listed. I coded “Informal Job Search” “1” if the respondent responded affirmatively to using any of the informal search methods, and “0” if the respondent did not respond affirmatively to using any of the informal search methods listed.

Since some respondents had not yet found their first fulltime job after college, a variable

“No Full Time Job Yet” was coded “1” if the respondent chose “No Full Time Job Yet” when asked about respondent’s job search strategies for their first full time post-college job and “0” if the respondent had found a fulltime job.

In addition to the dichotomous variable, I created two count variables to determine how many different types of formal and informal search methods respondents used. The number of unique formal contact types used ranged from 0-2 and the number of unique informal contact types used ranged for 0-3. Because the number of people who used more than one search type was so small (formal n=15; informal n=20) I did not use the count variable for multivariate analysis. Two respondents overlapped. In other words, they used more the one formal method and more than one informal method.

In order to answer Research Question 1b, I created dichotomous variables describing the clerical and networking help given to them by one of their parents when the respondent was searching for a fulltime job after college. Survey respondents checked the types of help their parent gave during the job search, which was then coded as “1” for the help category. If the help type was left blank, the category was coded “0.” The responses were used to create clerical and networking help variables, which will be described next.

40 Clerical help

Parents were considered to have given clerical help if the respondent said their parent searched for jobs on their behalf, helped with the respondent’s resume, wrote their resume, submitted their resume to the job site, practiced interviewing with the respondent, researched job benefits at a hiring company, or researched the company in any other way. Additionally, a parent gave clerical help if he or she created an online profile on a job search site, either in the respondent’s name or in the parent’s name. If the respondent did not choose any of these helping categories, the parent was considered to have not given clerical help and this variable was coded

“as “1” if the respondent had chosen any of the clerical choices and “0” if no clerical option was chosen.

Networking help

The second parent help variable was for networking help. A parent was marked affirmatively for network help if he/she reached out for job help on his/her LinkedIn account or an unspecified online network, if the parent emailed or called friends about the child’s job search or posted about the child’s job needs on Facebook. While Facebook is not conventionally regarded as a venue for job search networking, it has been gaining interest, and may be even more popular than LinkedIn for job search (Adams 2014; Epstein 2009). If the respondent did not choose any of these helping categories, the parent was considered to have not given networking help and this variable was coded “as “1” if the respondent had chosen any of the networking choices and “0” if no networking option was chosen.

Analysis showed significant overlap in help, parents who gave networking help also gave clerical help. Therefore I combined parental job help into a single variable. If a parent gave any

41 networking help or clerical help, the variable entitled “Parental Gave Job Help” was coded as

“1.” If the parent did not give any networking and clerical help, the variable was coded as “0.”

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

Socioeconomic Status

Research question 1a looks at the effects of childhood SES on job search methods and employment status. Researchers have determined that income and education are strong indicators of SES (Blau and Duncan 1967; Calarco 2011; Hamilton 2013; Hamilton, Cheng, and Powell

2007). Other researchers have only measured income instead choosing a broader SES measure.

(Fingerman et al. 2012; LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011). I opted to use highest parental education and income to measure SES. However, since income reporting can be inaccurate, especially when reporting on someone else’s income (Moyer et al. 1996), coupled household income with eligibility for Free or Reduced-Price Lunch (FRPL) during K-12 . The following survey questions were used: whether any parent attended a 4-year college or university (I coded “Parent attended a four-year college or university” as “1” if any parent had attended a four-year college and if none had attended, I coded it as “0”), whether the respondent received free or reduced- price lunch (FRPL) at any time during K-12 (I coded FRPL as “0” for yes and “1” for no) and the household income of the respondent’s primary household in high school. Respondents were asked to estimate their household income when they were in high school. Income was broken into categories: Under 20,000; $20,001-$40,000; $40,001-$60,000; $60,001-$80,000; $80,001-

$100,000; and over $100,000. Each income bracket was coded as a dummy variable, “1” if the respondent had chosen the bracket and “0” if not.

In order to reduce missing data, I combined income and FRPL qualifications into a single variable, entitled “Low Income.” If a respondent listed their household income as $40,000 or

42 under or had qualified for FRPL during K-12, this variable was coded as “1,” and the variable was coded as “0” if neither qualifier was true. Table 3.1 illustrates the designations. This is not a perfect measure, but it allowed me to cast a wider net than a single measure. The measure is crude because the respondents were choosing income categories, not writing a continuous dollar amount. Given the limitation of the responses, $40,000 was the best cut-off. In 2014, $40,000 was within 200% of the federal poverty line for a family of four (Klinger 2014). The 185 percent level (which is the cutoff for FRPL qualification) was approximately $44,000 in 2014 (Klinger

2014). The respondent may not have answered the question about income, or the family may have made more than $40,000 a year during the respondent’s high school years. However, if the respondent qualified for FRPL, at some point during their K-12 years, they were low income, which is why I included that measure.

Table 3.1 Income categories

IF Income is And FRPL is Variable is $0-40,000 Yes Low Income

$0-40,000 No Low Income

$40,001+ Yes Low Income

$40,001+ No Middle Income +

Intensive Parenting

Research questions 1b and 1c examine the impact of parenting styles on the employment search and status. I have combined survey responses into five parenting behavior factor scores using helicopter parenting, concerted cultivation, and some general intensive parenting measures.

As mentioned on page 28-29, I used Schiffrin et al.’s (2014) helicopter parenting scale and

LeMoyne and Buchanon’s (2011) helicopter parenting scale. The Schiffrin et al. scale focuses on

43 parent involvement and expectations surrounding college academics, while the LeMoyne and

Buchanon scale focuses on childhood with questions about parental behaviors when the respondent was growing up. Furthermore, I modified some questions based on Bradley-Geist and

Shaw’s 2014 parental involvement scale, which focused on advice and homework help in college. I modified some of the Bradley-Geist and Shaw questions to explore the high school parent-child relationship as well. These questions were used and tailored to capture the parent- child relationship patterns from elementary school through the present. In addition, I created questions pertaining to the respondent’s K-8 experiences. These questions focused on reading, dinner, and coaching and volunteering for the respondent’s sports teams (Hamilton et al. 2007;

Lareau 2011; Trussell and Shaw 2012) and were less about helicopter parenting and instead tried to capture concerted cultivation or a more generic intensive parenting. The other questions are about the job and homework help that parents gave respondents in high school and college. The variables used for parenting styles can be found in Appendix A and also below in the section describing the creation of factors.

When choosing variables for the factor analysis, I conducted a pairwise correlation of 38 questions that were asked to determine the parenting styles of the survey respondent’s parent(s).

I omitted one item that did not correlate with any other item, and four items that were discussing parent behavior at the time of the survey. I omitted these four because the factor scores will be used to predict the likelihood that the parent helped the respondent find their first post-college job and whether the respondent was underemployed at the time of the survey, and questions about current behavior cannot be predictive of past behavior.

Using the remaining 33 questions, I conducted factor analysis using orthogonal (varimax) rotation on intensive parenting behaviors to determine if there were certain parenting habits that

44 were distinguishable from one another. There were five distinct factors with Eigenvalues above

1.0 “Parent gave homework help in high school” cross loaded above 0.4 on each of two factors. I omitted the item and conducted the analysis again (Acock 2010). There were 5 distinct factors with Eigenvalues over 1.0 and no cross loadings over 0.4, and they predict 81.70 percent of the total variance. Rotated loadings on Factor 1 ranged from 0.48 to 0.66 (see table in Appendix A).

Rotated loadings on Factor 2 ranged from 0.46 to 0.75, Factor 3’s rotated loadings ranged from

0.44 to 0.63, Factor 4’s rotated loadings ranged from 0.44 to 0.80, and Factor 5’s ranged from

0.46 to 0.64. Cronbach’s alpha for the five factors is 0.83. Each individual item has alpha scores between 0.81 and 0.83. I used the “predict” command in Stata to create independent variables out of the five factors.

Factor 1 has seven items and is defined as helping with homework and job applications into college and includes parental writing and submitting of resumes for the respondent’s part time or summer jobs in college, filling out job applications, helping with and even completing the respondent’s homework and contacting respondent’s teachers during college. Factor 2 has six items and is defined as parent involvement during K-8. Example items include questions about frequency of family reading and dinners together. The respondent was also asked if the parent volunteered and coached the respondent’s teams, if the respondent felt that they were very closely supervised while growing up, and whether their parents were very involved with the respondent’s activities. While some of these items come from a helicopter parenting scale, these all tend to be activities before high school or college. Therefore, this factor primarily measures parent involvement in K-8. Factor 3 has seven items that have many of the same characteristics as Factor 1: a parent writing and submitting resumes and applications and helping with homework and contacting faculty. However, Factor 3 displays these activities during the

45 respondent’s high school years. Factor 4 has four items and is defined as strict parental expectations and is also associated with helicopter parenting. The respondent reacted to statements such as “Growing up, I felt like my parent’s project,” and “My parent expected me to have a certain major.”

Factor 5 has five items and centered on parent advice and intervention in college and high school. Respondents reacted to the statements “My parent advised me in high school,” “My parent advised me in college,” “My parent gave me career advice in high school,” “My parent intervened when academic issues arose in high school,” and “My parent intervened when academic issues arose in college.”

CONTROL VARIABLES

Control variables include the respondent’s age, whether the respondent graduated during the recession (2008-2009), and college major. The respondent’s age and parent’s age were calculated by subtracting their birth year from the year in which they completed the survey. Age was analyzed as a continuous variable. I created a Parent Gender dummy variable coded “1” for mother and “0” for father. I dropped one respondent who refused to answer. In RQ 1b and 1c,

SES was a control variable, and has already been operationalized.

Graduation and College Major

I controlled for whether the respondent graduated during the recession. Graduating during the recession may have had a continued impact on paid employment by the time respondents answered the survey in 2014 and may have affected job search methods. College graduation year was a multiple-choice question, with the options 2008-2013 as well as “Other.” If a respondent chose “Other,” the survey skipped to the end. Some interview respondents who had children that graduated in 2007 or 2014, so I added those options to the survey that was specifically created

46 for children of interview respondents. The total for 2007 graduates was two, and the total for

2014 graduates was six. I coded “Recession Graduate” as “1” if the respondent graduated in the recession years of 2008 or 2009, and “0” if the respondent graduated in any other year

(McLaughlin 2015).

To measure respondent’s college major, I placed responses into categories. I chose category placement by visiting college websites to determine which academic college housed each major. I began by visiting my own university website. I navigated to the section that listed the academic areas and determined the academic area location of each survey respondent’s major. For example, Accounting is housed in the College of Business, and accounting majors were coded “1” for “Business.” For those majors not found at my university, I searched other major universities. I combined Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math because it is a common grouping in academia and policy. I placed all medical majors together into a broad medical category and combine medical with STEM since the fields are closely aligned. I created a dummy measure for each category. Although there are many potential categories, I narrowed the variables to three: (1) Business, (2) Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics (STEM) or Medical, and (3) Social Sciences or Humanities. I narrowed the categories to three in order to increase statistical power.

Survey respondents were given the option to specify a double major. I did not include the double major in my analysis. There were only 21 total double majors in the final sample. Of those, 15 of the graduates double majored in the same broad field. For example, a respondent may have double majored in 2 social sciences, or in social science and humanities.

In Table 3.2, I provide a list of the research questions answered in Chapter 4 along with the dependent, independent, and control variables used in the analysis of each research question.

47 Table 3.2 Research Question and Variables

Research Question DV IV Controls 1a. To what extent is Job search methods Childhood SES Gender, age, a college graduate’s (formal and graduated during choice of job search informal), recession, college methods and underemployment major postgraduate status employment status associated with the graduate’s childhood socioeconomic status? 1b. To what extent is Parent job search Parenting style Childhood SES, parenting style help gender, age, predictive of parental graduated during job search help? recession, college major, parent age, parent gender 1c. To what extent is Underemployment Parenting style Childhood SES, the employment status gender, age, status of recent graduated during college graduates recession, college shaped by the way major, parent age, their parents raised parent gender them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)?

I first calculated descriptive statistics of job search and employment status variables and then conducted logistic regression to determine the likelihood that a respondent’s childhood socioeconomic status would affect their job search strategies and employment status. To answer

RQ 1a-1c, I performed logistic regression using listwise deletion for missing variables, with results reported in odds ratios. The dependent variable is respondent underemployment status, respondent job search type, and parent job search help. The independent variables are SES and the factor scores of the parenting styles analysis. I chose this method because the dependent variables are binary with 0,1 outcomes. Odds ratios express the odds that an outcome will occur

48 when certain characteristics are present or have been introduced, compared to the odds that the outcome will not occur if the characteristics are not there. In this case, I am predicting the likelihood that a recent college graduate received job search help from a parent.

In sum, I performed logistic regression to answer my research questions about the job search of recent college graduates. In the next section, I will discuss the qualitative methodology

I used to learn more about parents of recent college and their motivations for the level of help they give their young adult children.

QUALITATIVE MEASURES- PARENT INTERVIEWS

If the scope of my research were only the perspective of recent college graduates, a survey would have been adequate. However, I am also interested in parents’ perspectives on their roles in their children’s lives. Qualtrics would not allow me access to the parents of my survey respondents due to privacy issues. Respondents are contracted through a third-party organization and surveyors are not allowed to ask respondents any identifiable questions or to request further contact. Instead, I interviewed parents of recent college graduates from my own social network.

Using qualitative interviews with parents allowed me to answer RQ 2: “What are parental motivations for being involved in their recent college graduate’s post-college job search?” by tapping into the process and meaning involved with parents’ decisions to assist their children with the job search (Creswell 1994). I chose to interview parents of recent college graduates to see how common the phenomenon is and see whether such parent involvement bleeds into the job search.

While I could have given the parents a survey, interviewing allowed me to learn about my subjects’ “interior experiences” (Weiss 1995). Interviewing helped me better learn of a person’s perceptions and interpretations of personal experiences and events (Weiss 1995). I was able to

49 learn the level of involvement parents had at each stage of schooling, how involved they were with the job-seeking process, and why the parents chose to help or not help their kids find job. I could ask follow-up questions and allow respondents to diverge from the script if they had an experience that didn’t fit into the predetermined questions. Although I could not interview parents from the Qualtrics sample due to the company’s privacy policy, I did send the survey to the children of my interview respondents and added those 18 responses to my main sample.

Interview Procedures

Between July 2014 and March 2015, I interviewed 31 parents who have children that recently graduated from college. In order to find parents, I posted an interview request on my

Facebook page, my LinkedIn account, the Grad Cafe forum, and the College Confidential forum.

I asked people to share the request among their own social network. I emailed people I knew who were parents or graduates in the target demographic. People responded to my request via email or private message. I set up in-person interviews with respondents that lived within 100 miles of me, and phone interviews for the others. I continued to interview until I reached saturation, when little new information was gained from each subsequent interview.

The data was collected during semi-structured interviews that took place by phone or face-to-face. Four interviews took place in person, and 27 interviews were done over the telephone. I recorded the interviews on an Olympus-6000 digital recorder and recorded through the note taking application on Microsoft Word as a backup. For phone interviews, I used the speakerphone option to capture the voice of my respondent. Interviews lasted about an hour. The range was 20 minutes for a mother of an older, non-traditional student to two hours for a mother with several children.

50 My sample was a convenience sample, obtained by direct contact and advertising through my own social network (See Appendix J for interview request). I wrote the interview schedule

(included in Appendix K) by expanding on the survey questions and adding questions about the parent’s experience. The questions in each section were meant to learn about the parent-child relationship. The first section was questions about the respondent’s children. I learned the age, gender, college, graduation, and current employment situation of any children that fit in my target demographic. The second section contained questions about the parent’s perception of their children’s childhood and college experience. I asked questions about the subjects’ parenting style during K-12 and their level of involvement in their children’s college search and high school procedures. Parents answered questions about their perspective of their children’s academic and social life in college. These questions help determine if they have a history of practicing intensive parenting or not.

The third section had questions pertaining to the young adult’s current job and post- college job search, and the parent’s role in the job search. I asked questions about what type of help, if any, they offered their child during the job search. I asked if they had contacted friends or associates to help their child get a job, which has helped me determine whether they activated their own social networks to help their children find jobs. The fourth section focused on the parent’s motivation for helping or not helping with the job search. I asked questions about the interviewee’s own job and education status, to determine their socioeconomic status. I asked questions about all the children the respondent has, to see if there is a pattern and if the behaviors remain constant. If the parent gave assistance, there was a section of questions about the effectiveness of the help. The fifth sections had questions about the parent’s demographics. The

51 final section was a wrap up section asking about the parent’s perceptions of success for their children and their primary role in their children’s lives at different life stages.

I received feedback from colleagues and my committee members on the quality and clarity of the questions. I conducted two practice interviews. The first interview was with an in- person interview with a father of high school students. Although his children were not part of my target demographic, he was able to give me feedback about questions that were unclear, and I was able to ascertain which questions might be misunderstood. The second interview was a telephone interview with a mother of a son who fit my target demographic. I was able to ensure that she was hearing the correct intent in my questions. After her interview, I modified my interview schedule to reflect the feedback I received from the two interview subjects. This involved clarifying some of the wording and changing some of the order of the questions so that the interview had a better pace and flow.

After I completed my interviews, the data was transcribed using professional transcriptionists and then reviewed by me. Interviews were then coded using MaxQDA qualitative software to organize and categorize data. Interviews were initially coded with themes that were similar to the themes found in the survey questions, such as parental job search help methods and rates of parent-child communication when the children have reached adulthood.

However, the interviews were also reviewed and coded for emerging themes such as childhood experiences and parenting styles, using a modified grounded-theory style (Bulawa 2014) . I used descriptive coding and then categorized the codes into themes, looking for similarities and differences in the descriptions. I began coding while I was still interviewing, and I added questions to flesh out themes that I was finding in the analysis. I used an online random name

52 generator to give each respondent a pseudonym, and omitted specific identifying information such as cities, colleges, and company names.

In order to determine household social class, I asked about parental educational levels and occupations (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011). I labeled families where at least one parent had a college degree and a white-collar job as middle class. Lack of those qualifications led to a working class designation. Social class is a malleable term, and can shift over the course of a childhood, given changes in marital status or occupation. I did not ask about family income due to the potential of discomfort that could lead to less candid answers.

During the interviews, parents described their behaviors when their children were in elementary school, high school, college, and beyond, and these behaviors were consistent with the quantitative measures I used for concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting. Specifically, concerted cultivation was determined through descriptions of dinnertime, summer activity enrollment, and homework help. In each case, parents who were involved in this process, drawing out conversations, giving hands-on help with homework were considered to have practiced concerted cultivation. Parents who filled in college applications or gave hands-on help with homework during college were exhibiting helicopter parenting traits for the purposes of this study. Heavy involvement in the job search would include anything beyond perfunctory job searches, editing or proofreading resumes, and interview skills practice.

There are limitations to conducting interviews. The study has limited generalizability due to the size and specificity of the subjects. The interview answers may be embellished or falsehoods, due to issues of social desirability that can emerge in face-to-face interviews. There may be something unique about those who choose to participate in interviews with me. I asked subjects to remember daily events that happened as long as 20 years earlier. People may have

53 had trouble remembering what they did to help their children, or what their motivations were. I tried to word my questions in a neutral way to reduce the effects of social desirability and probed in order to help people remember details in order and memory lapses. Finally, I asked parents about recurring events such as dinnertime. This allowed me to learn general patterns of family life. While reports of helicopter parenting were uncommon among my sample, this may have been the result of social desirability. Even though I did not discuss this type parenting specifically, the parents interviewed may have avoided discussing helicopter behaviors due to the media stigmatization (Gillespie 2014; Quigley 2015).

To summarize, in this chapter I explained my survey design and administration and my interview preparation, recruitment, and process. I described my coding schemas for survey and interview data and my analysis methods. Additionally, I examined the differences between the survey sample and recent college graduates across the nation. Then I illustrated the descriptive characteristics of the survey sample. In the next chapter, I will explore the role of parenting styles and SES on the job search and employment status of my sample through quantitative analysis.

54 CHAPTER 4: COLLEGE GRADS, THE JOB MARKET, AND THEIR PARENTS: A

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

In this chapter, I will share the results of the Post Graduate Job Search Survey (PGJSS), a survey of recent college graduates that I conducted in July 2014. I will demonstrate that my respondents received a minimal amount of help from their parents and that there is an association between helicopter parenting, but not concerted cultivation, and parental job help. Although research has shown that there is an intergenerational transfer of wealth and status between parents and their children (Warren and Hauser 1997), much of that transfer is dependent on cultural and educational resources (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011) and actual transfer of wealth through mortgage down payment assistance, inheritance, etc. Very little research has been devoted to parents’ help into the job market through networking and clerical help.

The sample of PGJSS respondents that I analyze was born in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Most of their parents were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In other words, my respondents were millennials who were born to baby boomers. Both generations have been the subject of much research and media interest. A recent theme among higher education research has centered around a concern that millennials are entitled, narcissistic, and ill-equipped to handle the pressures of adulthood, and their parents enable that attitude and behavior (Bradley-

Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014, 2014; Byrne 2014; Gray 2015; Hofer and Moore 2010; Howe and Strauss 2007; Hunt 2008). In this chapter, I will provide a different perspective on the relationship between millennials, adulthood, and their parents.

In this chapter, I will answer the following research questions:

1a. To what extent is a college graduate’s choice of job search methods and postgraduate

employment status associated with the graduate’s childhood socioeconomic status?

55 1b. To what extent is parenting style predictive of parental job search help?

1c. To what extent is the employment status of recent college graduates shaped by the

way their parents raised them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)?

In the next section, I will describe the methods and variables I used in analysis. I then present descriptive statistics from the PGJSS survey, highlighting respondent demographics, job searching techniques and effectiveness and parenting styles. I then show the results of factor analyses and logistic regression to examine parenting styles and job search strategies as well as the effect parenting styles has on the job search process.

ANALYSIS

The analysis is broken into three main sections. The first set of analyses looks at the respondent’s job search strategies and occupational status at the time of the survey. It also shows the effect childhood socioeconomic status and gender has on the odds of a respondent using different job search methods as well as the likelihood of underemployment. The second set of analyses examines the parental role in the job search, specifically with parent job help that is associated with different intensive parenting styles. The third analysis determines whether childhood parenting styles predict the likelihood that the respondent’s job at the time of the survey requires a college degree.

56 Descriptive Results

Table 4.1 Descriptive Statistics of Recent College Graduate Survey Respondents Variables Mean Min Max Current employment status of respondent (n=344) Paid employment 0.69 0 1 No paid employment 0.12 0 1 Paid internship 0.04 0 1 Unpaid internship 0.02 0 1 Graduate school 0.1 0 1 Homemaker 0.1 0 1 Underemployed (n=261) 0.47 0 1 Income of the primary household when respondent was in high school (n=287) Under $20,000 0.08 ------$20-40,000 0.22 ------$40-60,000 0.20 ------$60-$80,000 0.14 ------$80-$100,000 0.16 ------Over $100,000 0.20 ------Did NOT qualify for FRPL in K-12 (n=332) 0.69 0 1 Low-income (n=341) 0.41 0 1 Parent attended a 4-year college (n=344) 0.67 0 1 Graduation Year of Respondents (n=344) 2007 0.01 ------2008 0.17 ------2009 0.12 ------2010 0.17 ------2011 0.15 ------2012 0.19 ------2013 0.19 ------2014 0.01 ------Gender of respondents (n=343) Female 0.66 0 1 College major of respondents (n=322)

Business 0.2 0 1 STEM and medical 0.34 0 1 Social Science/Humanities 0.46 0 1 Age of Respondents (n=344) Mean SD Min Max Age 26.68 2.98 19 33 Note: Respondents could choose more than one option. The total mean values for current employment status is <1

57 I asked PGJSS respondents to describe their employment status, childhood socioeconomic status, graduation year, gender, and age. Table 4.1 provides these descriptive statistics. The number listed for each variable reflects the number of respondents who answered the survey question.

Employment status at the time of the survey

I am sharing the descriptive analysis of employment status to help contextualize the underemployment findings. Respondents were allowed to check all responses that applied to their current employment situation. There is overlap in categories and the total for employment status does not equal 1. For instance, a respondent might be both a paid intern and in graduate school or have paid employment and be underemployed.

Most respondents were employed. At the time of the survey, 69 percent of respondents had paid employment. Four percent of respondents had a paid internship, and two percent had an unpaid internship. Ten percent were homemakers and ten percent were in graduate school when they answered the survey. Respondents were instructed to check “Paid Employment” if they were working as a paid intern or were in graduate school and were receiving a stipend. Twelve percent (n=42) said they did not have paid employment.

Although most respondents did have paid employment when they answered the survey, there was a high rate of underemployment among the employed when underemployment is defined as the phenomenon of college graduates working in jobs that do not require a college degree (See (Abel et al. 2014; Fogg and Harrington 2011). At the time of the survey, 47 percent of employed respondents were working at jobs that did not require a college degree. Respondents were asked to answer the unemployment question based on the job they considered their primary job at the time of the survey. Although most considered this question only if they had paid

58 employment, some answered based on their graduate student or internship status, which is why the total number of responses for underemployment (n=261) is higher than the 237 respondents who stated they have paid employment, although 83 respondents did not consider non-paid employment as a primary job, and they skipped this question.

Childhood SES

In order to determine respondents’ SES, I used highest parental education, income and whether the respondent qualified for Free or Reduced-Price Lunch (FRPL) during elementary or secondary school (K-12). To learn how I coded the variables for SES, please see pages 42-43 in

Chapter 3.

Approximately one-third of my sample qualified for Free or Reduced-Price lunch at some time during their primary or secondary school years. Thirty-one percent indicated they qualified for the program, which means that their family made 185 percent of the federal poverty line at some point in the respondent’s school years (Sebelius 2011). Sixty-nine percent did not qualify for the program, meaning their family either remained above one hundred and eighty-five percent of the federal poverty line, or qualified but did not indicate eligibility to the respondent.

For the respondents who reported their family’s income (n=287), the range was evenly distributed. The income reports were for the respondent’s primary residence when the respondent was in high school. Approximately 1/3 reported incomes up to $40,000 (30 percent), about 1/3 reported incomes between $40,001 and $80,000 (34 percent) and just over 1/3 (36 percent) reported incomes over $80,001. Sixty-seven percent of respondents had at least one parent attend a four-year college.

59 College statistics and respondent demographics

Although I only controlled for recession-era graduates, I will give descriptive statistics of graduation dates to give a more complete picture of when respondents were graduating and job hunting. Each graduation year between 2008 and 2013 has approximately the same percentages of respondents. Of my sample, 17 percent graduated from college in 2008, 12 percent graduated in 2009, 17 percent graduated in 2010, 15 percent in 2011, 19 percent graduated college in 2012, and 18 percent did so in 2013. In addition, I had a small number of interview respondents with children who graduated in 2007 or 2014. They were given the opportunity to complete the survey, and approximately two percent of my sample came from each of these graduating classes.

Certain college majors are more heavily represented than others. Business and

Science/Technology/Engineering/Math (STEM) majors were most common among respondents.

Twenty percent had business degrees and 24 percent majored in a STEM field. Social sciences and humanities were the majors of choice for 30 percent and 16 percent of respondents, respectively. Ten percent of respondents had a degree in some type of medical field.

Sixty-six percent of respondents were female, with one respondent declining to list gender. Seventy percent of the sample was between the ages of 25 and 29 years old, 18 percent were 19-24 years old, and 12 percent were 30-34 years old, and the median age was 26.68 years.

Job search

I will present descriptive statistics of the dependent variables in Table 4.2. Respondents used a variety of job search methods, both formal and informal, when searching for their first fulltime postgraduate job. The most common methods were through online ads (24 percent) and

60 through a friend (15 percent). Before I conducted regression analysis, I collapsed these methods into two variables, “Formal Search” and “Informal Search,” which is described on page 39-40.

I asked about some job search characteristics that did not fit into either formal or informal searching methods. Twenty-two percent of respondents worked at their company before graduating, which suggests the importance of the college job in determining a person’s career trajectory. Thirteen percent of respondents were recruited for their jobs, and nearly one-fifth (19 percent) did not yet have a fulltime job at the time of the survey. Although I asked how respondents found their first full-time post-graduate job, I did not employ skip logic. Therefore, respondents who did not yet have a full-time job were able to choose search methods they had used for the job they were seeking but had not yet found.

Table 4.3 describes how many search techniques the respondents used. Sixty-four percent of respondents did not use any formal methods, thirty-one percent used one formal method, five percent used two methods, and less than one percent used three or more. Seventy-two percent of respondents did not conduct informal job searches, twenty-two percent used one informal contact method, four percent used two types of informal contacts, and two percent used three or more.

The survey question directed the respondents to answer the job search questions about their first fulltime job after college graduation, and 65 percent of respondents had not yet held a fulltime job at the time of the survey, which may explain why the job search type percentages are so low.

Only 35 percent of the survey respondents had search methods that had led to a fulltime, postgraduate job.

61 Table 4.2 Job search strategies used Respondent learned about job from: Mean Min Max Formal Searching: Newspaper Ad 0.08 0 1 Online Ad 0.24 0 1 Cold Call 0.03 0 1 Career fair 0.05 0 1 Informal Searching: 0 1 Professor 0.07 0 1 Friend 0.15 0 1 Parent 0.07 0 1 Other relative 0.02 0 1 Acquaintance 0.04 0 1 Respondent: Already worked at job 0.20 0 1 Was recruited 0.13 0 1 Did not have a full-time job yet 0.19 0 1 n 336

Table 4.3 Formal and Informal Search Methods

Number of Search Strategies n Percent Cumulative Formal Searching 0 216 64.29 64.29 1 105 31.25 95.54 2 15 4.46 100 Total 336 100 Informal Searching 0 243 72.32 72.32 1 73 21.73 94.05 2 13 3.87 97.92 3 7 2.08 100 Total 336 100

62 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Respondent Underemployment Status and Job Search

Tables 4.4 and 4.5 show the results of logistic regression that help answer Research

Question 1a: To what extent is a college graduate’s choice of job search methods and postgraduate employment status associated with the graduate’s childhood socioeconomic status?

In order to answer this question, I conducted logistic regression using listwise deletion to handle the missing survey data, and results are reported in odds ratios. Listwise deletion removes the entire line to handle missing variables, which results in sample size shrinkage. For those who were employed at the time of the surveyed, I calculated likelihood that they were underemployed. The dependent variable for table 4.4 is underemployment (Job does not require a college degree=1, Job requires a college degree=0) at the time of the survey. I used parental education, FRPL, and parental income as indicators of childhood socioeconomic status. Control variables included the respondent’s gender, age, college major, and whether the respondent graduated during the recession.

The only significant finding was that respondents who had at least one parent who attended a 4-year college were less likely to be underemployed (OR=0.54; P<0.05). In Table

4.10, I will look at the role that parenting styles have on underemployment and will show that when I control for parenting style, the parental education effect disappears.

63 Table 4.4 Logistic regression predicting the effects of childhood SES on underemployment status

Respondent is Underemployed Independent Variables Odds ratios (SE) Respondent’s family was low-income 1.54 (0.44) 6 Parent attended a 4-year college 0.54* (0.16) Female 0.58 (0.17) Age 1.08 (0.06) Respondent graduated college during the recession (2008-2009) 0.77 (0.26) Respondent’s college major (Social Sciences/Humanities omitted): ------Respondent majored in business 0.77 (0.28) Respondent majored STEM/medical 0.61 (0.19) constant 0.29 (0.42) N 242 (0.44) Pseudo R2 0.04 AIC 335.30 BIC 363.21 Exponentiated coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

In Table 4.5, I tested whether a person’s childhood socioeconomic status is associated with using formal or informal job searches. There were no significant findings. More study is needed because such a small percentage of my sample used any kind of job search tools that I listed.

6 Multiple imputation results. 0.47**, SE: (0.12)

64 Table 4.5 Regression Analysis predicting the effects of SES on Search Methods Formal Search Informal Search Independent Variables Odds ratios (SE) Odds ratios (SE) Respondent’s family was low-income 0.95 (0.24) 0.94 (0.26) Parent attended a 4-year college 1.27 (0.34) 1.41 (0.42) Female 0.84 (0.23) 0.78 (0.22)

Age 1.01 (0.05) 0.99 (0.05) Respondent graduated college during the recession (2008-2009) 1.73 (0.50) 0.88 (0.29) Respondent’s college major (Social Sciences/Humanities omitted): ------Respondent majored in business 0.70 (0.24) 0.68 (0.27) Respondent majored STEM/medical 1.04 (0.29) 1.41 (0.41) constant 0.37 (0.49) 0.44 (0.62) N 319 319 Pseudo R2 0.02 0.02 AIC 418.55 372.54 BIC 448.67 402.66 Exponentiated coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Parent Job Search Help

In this section, I will discuss my findings on the likelihood that parents helped their young adult children’s job search. I will start with descriptive statistics and then move into logistic regression. This section will answer the final two parts of the first research question:

1b. To what extent is parenting style predictive of parental job search help?

1c. To what extent is the employment status of recent college graduates shaped by the

way their parents raised them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)?

First, I will show descriptive statistics of the dependent variables. Next, I will describe the parenting styles of the PGJSS sample. Finally, I will share the results of the logistic regression in Table 4.6.

65 As shown in Table 4.6, out of the 283 respondents who answered the question about whether their parent gave them clerical help, 224 people said they did not receive help and 59 said they did receive help. Those who said they did not receive help skipped to the next section.

For networking, 43 respondents said they received help and 240 said they did not. For those who said they did get help, 60 respondents chose examples of help, in either clerical or networking categories. Most parents who gave any help gave between 1 and 3 types of clerical tasks, and between zero and two types of networking activities, as shown in Table 4.6.

Table 4.6 Parent job help Dependent Variables n Percent Parent gave clerical help Yes 59 20.85 No 224 79.15 Total 283 100 Parent gave networking help Yes 43 15.19 No 240 84.81 Total 283 100 To reiterate, most parents of respondents did not participate in any of the job helping activities listed on the survey. Almost 80 percent (79.15 percent) of respondents did not receive clerical help from their parents and almost 85 percent did not receive networking help. When aid was given, scanning the newspaper or websites for available jobs was the most common activity.

Fifty-three percent of the 60 parents who gave help performed this task. Helping with the respondent’s resume and submitting the resume to the company were tasks performed by 38 percent and 30 percent of parents who help, respectively. Forty percent of helping parents had mock interviews with their children, and 27 percent researched the benefits of prospective companies.

66 Table 4.7 Descriptive Statistics of Parents’ Search Activities (n=60)7

Search activities Freq. Percent Number of clerical activities (n=60) 0 1 1.67 1 16 26.67 2 19 31.67 3 13 21.67 4 6 10.00 5 1 1.67 6 2 3.33 7 2 3.33 Number of networking activities (n=60) 0 17 28.33 1 21 35.00 2 14 23.33 3 6 10.00 4 2 3.33

Percent of parents who gave clerical help per type (n=60) Online job search 32 53.33 Help with resume 23 38.33 Write resume 12 20 Submit resume 18 30 Help with interview skills 24 40 Research company benefits 16 26.67 Research company online (general) 10 16.67 Created profile on job site to search for jobs 9 15 Created profile for child on job site 4 6.67

Percent of parents who gave networking help per type (n=60) Told Facebook friends about R's job search 16 26.67 Told LinkedIn friends about R's job search 7 11.67 Told Online friends about R's job search 15 25 Emailed friends about R's job search 18 30 Called friends about R's job search 19 31.67

7 Clerical and networking help has a response rate of 60 due to a narrowing of the response. Of those who were answering questions about one of their parents (n=280), if the respondent did not receive job help from a parent when searching for a full-time job, the respondent skipped the section on types of help received.

67 In the realm of networking, 32 percent of parents who gave help called friends to ask about job prospects, and 30 percent emailed the questions to friends. Approximately ¼ of the helping parents networked with friends on Facebook, or online more generally, on behalf of their children’s job search.

The total number of parents who gave any networking help is small (n=43). Nearly every parent who gave networking help also gave clerical help. Of the 43 respondents who received networking help, there is only one respondent who received networking help and did not receive clerical help. Therefore, I created a single variable for parental clerical and networking job search help. If the parent gave any type of clerical or networking help listed in Table 4.6, they were coded as “1” for job search help, and zero for no help.

Parenting Style Factors

As I mentioned in chapter 3, I have a total of 5 parenting style scales that were determined through factor analysis. The first and third variables focus on parenting academic and part-time or summer job search help when the respondent was in high school and college. The second variable is a scale of parental involvement in K-8. The fourth variable is a scale of parental expectations when the respondent was in primary and secondary school, and the fifth variable was a scale of parental advice and intervention when the respondent was in high school and college.

As Table 4.8 illustrates, many respondents remember that their parents were involved with their lives, always or often reading to (n=221; 64.43 percent) and having dinner (n=245;

71.22 percent) with the respondents. Enrolling children in sports or other activities and participating as fans and volunteers were common practices for parents. However, serving as a coach was much less common.

68 Reading to children, family dinners, and enrollment in sports were all recommended by pediatricians and policymakers as important activities for healthy child development

(Fensterwald 2013; Fulkerson et al. 2006; Lareau 2011; Musick and Meier 2012; Petrilli 2016;

Sen 2010; Snow and Beals 2006; Vincent and Ball 2007; Warner 2006). Therefore, these cannot be categorized as helicopter behaviors. I will categorize them as behaviors of an involved parent.

When asked about high school or college specific parenting help, most respondents did report helpful parents. Parents could be counted on to give either homework help or career advice in high school and college. In Table 4.8, I show the frequency of parental activities.

Table 4.8 Descriptive statistics of parenting behaviors and activities (Variables for Factor Analysis)

Factor 1 Variables Mean Min Max n Parent wrote R’s resume 0.14 0 1 2638 in College Parent submitted R’s 0.17 0 1 266 resumes in College Parent filled out job 0.11 0 1 263 applications in College Parent completed R’s 0.11 0 1 262 homework in college Parent proofread R’s 0.22 0 1 269 homework in college Parent edited R’s 0.17 0 1 266 homework in college 70

Parent spoke to R’s 0.10 0 1 263 teacher on R’s behalf in College Parent helped with R’s 0.15 0 1 265 homework in college

8 The N of responses varies because some of the responses were in the general survey area, where all 344 respondents had an opportunity to answers. The questions in Factor 1 were found in a section where respondents had the option to answer questions about their parent or skip the entire section. There were 280 respondents who opted into that section.

Factor 2 Parent read to Family had Parent Parent coached Parent Parent was Variables respondent dinner together volunteered at respondent's supervised very involved (n=343) (n=344) respondent's sports teams Respondent respondent's activities (n=294) closely activities (n=333) (n=343) (n=341) Always 0.34 0.42 0.20 0.08 ------Often 0.30 0.29 0.24 0.17 ------Sometimes 0.19 0.19 0.25 0.13 ------Rarely 0.09 0.08 0.10 0.07 ------Never 0.08 0.02 0.20 0.55 ------Neither agree ------0.22 0.29 nor disagree Agree ------0.65 0.56 Disagree ------0.13 0.15

Factor 3 Variables Mean Min Max n Parent submitted R’s 0.12 0 1 265 resumes in HS Parent filled out job 0.14 0 1 263 applications in HS Parent completed R’s 0.14 0 1 homework in high 262 school Parent proofread R’s 0.47 0 1 275 homework in HS Parent edited R’s 0.37 0 1 homework in HS 268

Factor 4 Variables Respondent felt Parent expected Parent expected Parent helped like parent's respondent to respondent to write respondent's project (n=342) attend a certain major in a certain college admission college (n=338) subject (n=339) essay (n=321) Agree 0.26 0.22 0.25 0.17 Neither agree nor disagree 0.25 0.19 0.22 0.17 Disagree 0.49 0.59 0.53 0.66

Factor 5 Variables Mean Min Max n

72 Advised R in HS 0.58 0 1 277 Parent advised R in college 0.46 0 1 278 Gave R career advice in college 0.56 0 1 273 Parent intervened when academic issues arose (HS) 0.59 0 1 277

As mentioned in Chapter 3, Factors 1 and 3 are associated with parental help with homework and applying for part-time and summer jobs when the respondent was in high school and college. Given that these are hands-on, intensive parenting practices that occur in high school and college, factors 1 and 3 can be categorized as helicopter behaviors. Factor 2 is associated with parent involvement in the respondent’s elementary years. The parent actively participated in the respondent’s activities and supervised the respondent closely. Factor 2 is the factor that most closely aligns with concerted cultivation behaviors. Factor 4 focused on the expectations of the respondent in high school and college. Some of the items on this factor were borrowed from helicopter parenting scales (LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Schiffrin et al. 2014), and Factor 4 is associated with helicopter parenting behavior. Factor 5 is associated with parent advice and intervention during the respondent’s high school and college years. Giving advice in high school and college may simply be parenting or intensive parenting. Academic intervention in college is more in line with helicopter parenting. Factor 5 can be aligned to Hamilton’s description of “paramedic” parenting in the book Parenting to a Degree (2016). These parents give their children the ability to be self-sufficient in low-risk situations but will help when an emergency arises (Hamilton 2016).

Table 4.9 shows the results of logistic regression that aims to answer Research Question

1b: To what extent is parenting style predictive of parental job search help? The more involved a parent was with a respondent's academic and part-time and summer job application process during college (Factor 1), the more likely the parent was to help with the respondents' post- graduate career search (OR=2.81; P<0.001). The more involved a parent was with a respondent's academic and part-time and summer job application process during high school (Factor 3), the

more likely the parent was to help with the respondents' post-graduate career search (OR=2.30;

P<0.001). The more expectations a parent had while the respondent was growing up (Factor 4), the more likely a parent was to help with the respondents' post-graduate career search (OR=2.04;

P<0.05). More parent involvement during the K-8 years or a pattern of giving a respondent advice (Factor 2) and intervention during high school and college (Factor 5) were not strong predictors of the parent giving any type of job help.

Table 4.9 Logistic regression models predicting parent job search help

Parent Gave Job Search Help Independent and Control Odds Ratios SE Variables Factor1: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer 2.81*** (0.75) job searching (COLLEGE YEARS) Factor2: Parent was involved in R’s activities (K-8) 1.38 (0.44) Factor3: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer 2.30*** (0.57) job searching (HIGH SCHOOL)9 Factor4: Parents had strict expectations of respondent (K- 2.04* (0.56) 12)10 Factor5: Parent advised and intervened with academic issues 1.47 (0.49) (HS AND COLLEGE)11 Respondent’s family was low-income 1.48 (0.89) Parent attended 4-year college 2.12 (1.38) Female (Respondent) 0.48 (0.30) Female (Parent) 0.52 (0.29) Age (Respondent) 1.07 (0.11) Age (Parent) 0.95 (0.05) Respondent graduated college during the recession 1.37 (0.92) (2008-2009) Respondent’s college major ------(Social sciences/Humanities omitted): Respondent majored in business 0.68 (0.57) Respondent majored STEM/medical 1.84 (1.01) constant 0.37 (1.25) N 180 Pseudo R2 0.358 AIC 141.99 BIC 189.89 Exponentiated coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Gender of both parent and child is not related to the provision of parental help in the job search. I was interested in breaking the analysis down to the gender dyad level, comparing

9 MI results “Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching (HIGH SCHOOL)” OR: 1.74**, SE: (0.57) 10 MI results were not significant 11 MI results, factor 5 Parental advice and academic intervention was in college only

mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son, and father-daughter dyads to see if there is a difference in help by dyad, but my sample size was too small for any inferences to be made.

Not all parents help their child find post-college careers. According to the factor analysis findings, intensive parenting in K-8 does not necessarily lead to job search help after college.

The fact that homework help predicted more career assistance but academic intervention did not predict more career assistance was surprising. However, this behavior is similar to the flexible parenting behaviors I learned about during parent interviews, which I will explore in more detail in the next chapter.

Table 4.10 Results of logistic regression for underemployment

Underemployment Independent and Control Variables Odds Ratios SE Factor1: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching 1.45 (0.34) (COLLEGE YEARS)12 Factor2: Parent was involved in R’s activities (K-8) 1.06 (0.23) Factor3: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching 1.54* (0.32) during (HIGH SCHOOL)13 Factor4: Parents had strict expectations of respondent (K-12_ 1.26 (0.26) Factor5: Parent advised and intervened with academic issues (HS and (0.16) 0.71 COLLEGE) Respondent’s family was low-income 1.64 (0.72) Parent attended 4-year college14 0.58 (0.25) Female (Respondent) 0.97 (0.42) Female (Parent) 0.79 (0.31) Age (Respondent) 1.03 (0.08) Age (Parent) 1.04 (0.03) Respondent graduated college during the recession 0.54 1.11 (2008-2009) Respondent’s college major ------(Social sciences/Humanities omitted): Respondent majored in business 0.98 (0.55) Respondent majored STEM/medical 0.81 (0.33) constant 0.09 (0.22) N 144 Pseudo R2 0.088 AIC 211.64 BIC 256.19 Exponentiated coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Table 4.10 shows the results of logistic regression that aims to answer Research Question

1c. To what extent is the employment status of recent college graduates shaped by the way their parents raised them (i.e., their parent’s parenting style)? For the most part, parenting style has no effect on the likelihood that a respondent was underemployed at the time of the survey. The only

12 MI results Factor 1: OR: 1.43*, SE (0.23) 13 MI Factor 3 is not significant 14 MI Parent attended 4-year college OR: 0.43**, SE (0,12)

significant finding is that if a respondent had a parent who was involved in the respondent’s academic life and job search when the respondent was in high school, the respondent was more likely to be underemployed (OR=1.54; P<0.05). As I noted earlier, controlling for parenting styles has caused the parental college effect to disappear. Further research is needed to determine why this matters, but the larger pattern is that the parenting style has not had a lasting impact into a person’s employment status.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, I examined the job search process of recent college graduates and their parents’ roles in the job search process. Additionally, I questioned whether parenting styles lead to different levels of help. In this section, I will summarize my findings.

When seeking job help, respondents were not turning to their parents in droves. Less than

20 percent of respondents received any job search help from their parents. Only 17 percent of respondents had their parents’ help with clerical matters. Most of this help came in the form of want ads searching, resume or interview help, or researching potential companies. Most networking help involved calling, emailing, or reaching out online to let the parents’ friends know the respondent was looking for a job. Parents were not practicing the behaviors that have become horror stories for college administrators, professors, and hiring professionals. A sizable majority of parents are in frequent contact with their children but leave the work of job searching to their children. Future research should look at whether parents are more likely to help with the job search if their children live nearby, live with them, or are in a field that is similar to their own.

Middle-class parents were not rushing to the aid of their recent college graduates. I will explore parent help in more depth in the next chapter. Most respondents did not have parents

who were practicing helicopter parenting behaviors when the respondents were adults.

Helicopter parenting is a trait associated with hands-on job help from parents, but it was a relatively rare parenting phenomenon among the parents of the respondents. Parents who practiced helicopter parenting through high levels of involvement and supervision when their children were in high school and college were the parents who were most likely to help their children with their job searches. Parents who practiced concerted cultivation and were highly involved only during childhood were not more likely to help with the job search.

Lareau (2003) predicted that concerted cultivation would help create competent adults who know how to advocate for themselves and that one residual effect of the practice is that parents interact with their children often, which one might assume would result in continued closeness throughout the life course. My results suggest that recent college graduates are able to navigate the job search without help from their parents. While there has been concern and discussion about the effect on young adults who are attached to their parents (Bradley-Geist and Olson-

Buchanan 2014; Cassling et al. n.d.; Fingerman et al. 2012; Newman 2012), parents in my study did not display excessive behaviors during the job search. In a further exploration of parenting behaviors, I will describe the changing norms of parent-child relationships further in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5: THE PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Rebecca is part of this baby boomer boom. We were going to re-invent parenting, which

we certainly did. Not to any great advantage, I don’t think. I grew up in a time when kids

were seen and not heard and I was very interested in having Rebecca understand

emotions […] So, in 2008 when she got out of college… The year before she could have

made $40,000 a year in marketing, and the next year there’s no marketing jobs and so

came here lived with me. […] In that year, she really struggled. I think she felt, she

would say this now, that she felt cheated. She grew up in the Clinton years: peace,

prosperity. Oh my God there’s no peace, there’s no prosperity, there’s no options for her.

It was quite a transition. But in that year, we started working on this concept of, “Did you

think ahead, did you plan, have you got a plan for this, don’t let it become a crisis.” And I

could see her starting to work on that. –Elise, 2014

This quote by Elise, a middle-class single mother who lives in a western state, illustrates some of the realities of parenting and young adulthood that I will highlight in this chapter. Elise, one of 31 parents that I interviewed for this chapter, was part of the movement of parents who embraced a parenting style that put a premium on spending time with children. These children were raised to believe they were special and could do anything they put their mind to (Alsop

2008). Then they graduated into one of the biggest economic crises in American history, and the path to success was no long so clear-cut (Oreopoulos, Von Wachter, and Heisz 2006; Settersten and Ray 2010).

Although media and some researchers point to the close personal ties parents have with their young adult children as the reason millennials have taken meandering paths to adulthood, I

present a more nuanced view: parents and children tend to have close relationships but that is not the reason for the career choices the millennials have made (Begley 2013; Byrne 2014; Gray

2015; Ludden 2012). Instead, they are turning to their parents for support as they have had to redefine what post-graduate success looks like in an era of unsteady work, rising home prices, and burgeoning student loan debt (Abel et al. 2014; Friedman 2017; Martin 2017). In addition, I will demonstrate that parenting styles are an example parents’ cultural toolkits (Swidler 1986) that were shaped in a time of unsettled lives.

Parents choose parenting strategies based on individual children and individual circumstances. While these intensive parenting models are a new phenomenon that began in the

1980s, parents have agency that has not been explicitly accounted for in seminal books on the subject. Social class has shaped parenting styles, but these behaviors are not absolute. Given the variability of parenting styles that parents practice from child to child and depending on the individual events, it is important for researchers to take a holistic view of family dynamics when studying parenting relations and behaviors with their children.

A primary research concern regarding children of intensive parents is how the children will fare in their adult years (Cullaty 2011; Gray 2015; Reed et al. 2016; Schiffrin et al. 2014).

As the oldest millennials hit their late 20s and early 30s, researchers can begin to track their outcomes. Studies have shown that millennials remain emotionally close to their parents

(Newman 2012; Settersten and Ray 2010), and that employers have reported parent involvement in the job search process (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Gardner 2007; Peluchette et al. 2013). As I described in the previous chapter, most respondents did not receive any job search help from their parents, regardless of social class. Of the 20 percent who did receive help, most of that help was checking classified ads or job boards for positions of interest, resume help, or

interview practice. My interview subjects told a similar story. Most of the parents in my study were only peripherally involved in the job search. Instead of “hovering,” many parents had already shifted their perceptions and boundaries by the time their children graduated from college.

I began the interviews as a way to understand parental motivations for giving job help.

However, very few parents helped their children during the job search. A different theme emerged, one that highlighted the fluidity of parenting behaviors, and I added questions to explore that theme. Instead of only practicing helicopter parenting or only practicing concerted cultivation, the parents focused on the needs of the individual child in any given moment.

Sometimes this manifested as concerted cultivation, sometimes as helicopter parenting, and sometimes the parents were hands-off.

Using data from interviews with parents of recent college graduates, I will give a snapshot of parenting practices. Although their children are grown, I used a series of interview questions to walk parents through their children’s elementary years and learn about the parenting styles used in childhood. I will provide evidence to argue that a close parent-child relationship does not lead to helicopter parenting by default, and that parents can foster independence in adulthood while also maintaining close emotional connections with their children. I will give some insight into the children’s transition to adulthood from the parent’s point of view and will show that even parents who give very strong emotional support to their millennial children tend to allow their children more freedom throughout high school and college to facilitate the transition to adulthood.

Close parent-child relationships have tangible outcomes for college students, as parents are more likely to help their children if the children are in college, compared with children who

are not in college (Swartz 2009). Thirty-seven percent of college students state that one of their parents is their mentor (Schawbel 2012). Researchers have found that parents are helping students with college applications and intervening with students, in order to discuss grades or tend to other issues the students have in college (Cullaty 2011; Sage and Johnson 2012).

However, my findings suggest that closeness in parent-child relationships does not automatically lead to helicopter parenting into adulthood. I will show that the parents I interviewed have remained close to their children, but they did not find a need to intervene heavily in their children’s lives.

While analyzing the data from parental interviews, I found that parents were not adhering to the rigid structures of helicopter parenting or concerted cultivation. Their parenting was child- centric, but not in the same way as specific intensive parenting styles. A respondent would determine that her child needed a great deal of independence, so the respondent allowed her child maximum freedom, switching to hands-on help with problem-solving when needed. The mothers made decisions based on the perceived needs of her child at any given moment. While a mother practicing concerted cultivation would consistently strive to have her child in enrichment classes and be on watch for chances to interact, mothers in my sample might keep one child in enrichment classes at all times while she let her other child roam free in the woods behind the house. The decisions are made at the personal level, not the ideological level.

Intensive parenting was present sometimes. When parents in the study practiced intensive parenting, it tended to be when their children were in elementary school. The parent would begin to pull back to allow their children more independence in high school. I will use my findings to argue that parenting styles are often more nuanced and agentic than they are rigid ideal types.

SAMPLE DESCRIPTION

I interviewed parents in an attempt to answer the following research question:

Research Question 2: What are parental motivations for being involved in their recent

college graduate’s post-college job search on the job market?

I interviewed 31 parents from diverse geographic, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds. After the first 10 respondents, I noticed that none were practicing heavy interventions in their child’s job market activities, thus I shifted my questions to understand the bigger picture of why these parents were not acting the way I expected them to. In order to dive into this, I began to probe into the childhood years to understand the parent child relationship from a younger age. Therefore, some of my questions and analysis are based on the final 21 interviews.

The parents had a total 46 children who had graduated college between the years 2007 and 2014. Although my survey sample had specified 2008-2013, I included 2007 and 2014 graduates in my interview group. The interviews took place in the last half of 2014 and into

2015, giving 2014 graduates time on the job market. I included a few 2007 graduates, as there were some siblings who graduated in that year and their experiences were similar to those in my sample. I also included one interview subject whose child graduated in 2007. Many parents also had additional children who graduated before 2008, have not graduated yet, or have not attended college. I did not include them, with one exception. A parent who had two children eligible for my study also had an older daughter about whom I write. The mother was very hands-on in her daughter’s medical school application process, and I include it to demonstrate that helicopter parenting is not necessarily new. The median age of the children who were included in the study was 27 at the time of the interviews. The youngest was 20 and the oldest was 46. I listed parents’

marital status during their children’s K-8 years. If they were divorced or got divorced during that time, they are listed as “divorced”; if they were remarried or got remarried during that time, they are listed as remarried.

Table 5.1 Parent demographics

Name # of grads in Approximate SES Parent job Other Parent job Marital Region study status Lydia 1 Middle class Professor Community college teacher Divorced Midwest Eleanor 2 Middle class K-12 teacher Mental Health Counselor Married West Paige 2 Middle class Federal employee-Scientist Federal employee-Scientist Married West Maya 1 Working class Carpenter Human services Married South Doris 1 Middle class Insurance executive Homemaker Divorced NE Lindsey 3 Working class Construction management Homemaker Married NE Mark/Sienna 2 Working class Laborer Pink collar service work Married West Simone 1 middle class Tutor/test prep coach Fundraiser Married NE Georgia 1 Middle class Retired military/federal govt Retired military/fed govt Married Moved often Jayda 1 Middle class IT-federal government Officer administrator Married West Erica 3 Middle class Military officer Local government executive Remarried Moved often Natasha 1 Working class Customer service rep (stepdad) Officer administrator Remarried South Nichole 2 Working class Line worker Police dispatch Remarried West Melissa 1 Middle class -- State Govt Single mom West

86 Sydney 2 Middle class University professor RN/College Prof Married Midwest

Katherine 1 Middle class Aerospace engineer College dance instructor Divorced Midwest Anastasia 2 Middle class Line worker Office administrator Married Midwest Natalie 1 Middle class Pastor Administrative support Married Midwest Stella 1 Working class -- Occupational therapist Single mom West Linda 1 Middle class Manager of large repair facility Homemaker Married West Maggie 2 Middle class University professor K-12 administration Married West Jillian 2 Middle class MD/Health center director/prof PT Nonprofit work Married West Quinn 1 Working class Military-Reserve officer Retail Married West Peyton 1 Middle class Teacher- Administrative support Married West Ruth 1 Middle class Comp Programmer French Professor Married West Elise 1 Middle class Farmer Grant writer Divorced West Caitlyn 1 Middle class Stockbroker Medical screener Divorced Midwest Lauryn 1 Middle class College professor Child care in home Married West Kristen 1 Working class Conductor-railroad Officer administrator Divorced West Elaine 3 Middle class Lawyer Professor Remarried West Cristina 2 Middle Class Theater director Homemaker Married West * Daughter who graduated outside of target graduation years is included here as one of the few examples of helicopter parenting

I defined social class by parent education and profession. Exact social class definitions were difficult to determine in some cases because people would shift over the course of their children’s lifetime. For instance, Stella was a teenage mother who had a low social status when her child was small, and Stella was still in high school and college. Although she went through college at the traditional age and was able to move into a middle-class lifestyle with a medical career that pays middle-class wages, she is listed as working class for the purpose of the study because she was a first-generation college student and a single mother and raised her daughter on a single income. Divorce and remarriage would also affect a person’s social class standing over a lifetime. If at least one parent had a college degree and a professional, white-collar job, the family was listed as middle-class15. Again, divorce can affect this metric. Although Lydia’s ex- husband is a professor, they divorced when her children were small, and she moved away and worked as a community college instructor. The children continued to visit their father, but his presence was much smaller, and Lydia raised them largely as a single mother. I categorized her as middle class because she did have the education and financial resources that middle-class families do. Parents who did not have a college degree and were working manual blue- or pink- collar jobs were considered working class. Twenty-six percent (n=8) of my sample was working class and 74 percent (n=23) were middle class. One important distinction between my sample and those of others who studying parenting practices (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Hays 1996, 2004;

Annette. Lareau 2003; Nelson 2012; Warner 2006) is that my sample is neither wealthy nor poor, instead they were all either working or middle class.

15 Although I asked for markers of social class such as education and occupation, I did not directly ask for income out of concern that the respondent may feel uncomfortable and less likely to answer potentially sensitive questions about their parenting behaviors.

Table 5.2 Social class of interview sample compared to national average

N Percent Working class 8 26 Middle class 23 74

Most interview respondents lived in the western United States, followed by the Midwest, the Northeast, and the South. Two of the respondents lived in one of the top ten largest metropolitan area. Two respondents lived in one of the ten largest metropolitan areas. The rest lived in smaller cities, suburbs, or small towns.

Researchers have found that early family context makes a difference in a person’s long term academic and occupational success (Henderson 2013; Lareau and Cox 2011; Powell et al.

2006; Walker-Barnes and Mason 2004). Learning about a parent’s memories of their family’s daily rituals such as dinnertime and homework routines helped me explore whether intensive parenting practices were present from an early age, and if so, what type. As I stated earlier, I did not find instances of helicopter parenting in these activities, but I did learn about parental behaviors that are similar to those displayed in studies of concerted cultivation.

PARENTING STYLES OPERATIONALIZED

Intensive parenting is an ideology that encompasses concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting. Therefore, I do not use it as a separate concept in this chapter, but rather an umbrella term for any parenting that falls into Hays’ definition of intensive mothering. I cannot say it was exclusively used by mothers as opposed to fathers, so I will continue to use the term “intensive parenting” instead of “intensive mothering,” and will apply it to parenting in general instead of just mothers. All but one of my respondents were women and my examples of intensive parenting are almost exclusively intensive mothering, but I did not have a father comparison

group to determine it is solely the domain of mothers. Hays defines intensive mothering as:

“child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (1996:8).

Helicopter parenting is the most involved version of intensive parenting, and it is commonly derided as a sign of weak parenting. In this iteration, parents actively insert themselves into their children’s lives and affairs, even into adulthood. (Cline and Fay 1990;

Fingerman et al. 2012). I operationalize helicopter parenting by looking at the level of intervention parents gave during high school, college, and beyond, with higher levels of involvement associated with helicopter parenting. Specifically, helping a child or young adult with homework beyond an occasional question answered or inquiry into whether the child has homework. Although helicopter parenting can occur at younger ages, there is a sociological interest in these behaviors continuing into late adolescence and adulthood (Fingerman et al.

2012; Padilla-Walker and Nelson 2012; Schiffrin et al. 2014). Examples of interventions were modified from the helicopter scales I used in the quantitative analysis based on existing studies, and include hands-on homework help, intervening in academic issues in college, or filling out job or college applications for high school or college students (LeMoyne and Buchanon 2011;

Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Schiffrin et al. 2014).

There has been backlash against helicopter parenting, with concerns that this parenting style negatively affects the young adults’ ability to function in academics, business, and life in general (Begley 2013; Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan 2014; Cassling et al. n.d.; Gray 2015;

Ludden 2012). This backlash may lead to parents distancing themselves from the helicopter moniker.

Concerted cultivation is studied in the context of elementary school and has been operationalized in a variety of ways, including parental involvement in their children’s school

(Bodovski and Farkas 2008; Carolan and Wasserman 2015; Dumais, Kessinger, and Ghosh

2012; Annette Lareau 2003; Olson 2007; Redford, Johnson, and Honnold 2009), enrolling children in activities (Bodovski and Farkas 2008; Carolan and Wasserman 2015; Dumais et al.

2012; Annette Lareau 2003; Olson 2007; Perrier 2013; Redford et al. 2009), talking to their children (Carolan and Wasserman 2015; Dumais et al. 2012; Annette Lareau 2003; Redford et al.

2009), access to books in family’s house (Bodovski and Farkas 2008; Redford et al. 2009), parental expectation of child’s current and future education (Carolan and Wasserman 2015;

Dumais et al. 2012; Lareau 2011; Redford et al. 2009). While there are no perfect measures, I focused interview questions on parent-child interactions at mealtime and homework, as well as extracurricular activities and parent interventions with the child’s school.

Although I wanted to be consistent with the established methodological timeframe for concerted cultivation and learn about parenting habits during the elementary school years, I was not studying parents and children in real time as other researchers have done (Calarco 2011;

Lareau 2011). Instead, I asked parents to recall behaviors from 10-20 years prior. To aide in recall, I focused on memorable or recurring events (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce 2000).

Specifically, I asked parents about family dinners, homework time, and summertime extracurricular activities. In addition, I asked about times when parents intervened at school on their children’s behalf. Although that is not a recurring event, I thought it might be notable enough that parents would remember.

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Dinner Time as Family Bonding Time

Between the ages of 5 and 18, a child will eat more than 4,700 dinners. Given that it is one of the few family events that occurs daily and has an interactive component, I used it as a touchstone because it was likely to be an occasion that parents remembered while also allowing a glimpse into family relations to learn whether parents practiced concerted cultivation with their children. Lareau notes that some middle-class families use this time as an opportunity to build their children’s language and negotiation skills. While it is not a perfect metric, it is suggestive of parenting styles during elementary and high school.

In addition, I asked about parental help with homework and the children’s enrollment in summer activities. These questions were asked to get a sense of parental involvement with their children’s home and extracurricular activities. Parents who practice concerted cultivation are more likely to give their children academic boosters outside the classroom (Lareau 2011).

Scholars have also found that children experience a loss of academic skills over the summer, that those losses are greatest for low-income children, and that summer enrichment programs can mitigate the decline (Brenchley 2011; Cooper et al. 1996; Singmaster 2015).

To understand this part of family life, I asked the following questions:

What was dinnertime like when your child was in elementary school? In high school?

What activities did your child participate in in elementary school? What was your level of

involvement?

What was homework time like in your house? (Probe for scheduled times, parental help,

child mood during homework).

Frequent family dinners have benefits for children, including emotional well-being, reduced incidence of risky behaviors in adolescents, and better academic outcomes(Eisenberg et al. 2004; Fulkerson et al. 2006; Musick and Meier 2012; Offer 2013; Sen 2010; Snow and Beals

2006). Due to the length and complexity of conversation, family dinnertime is frequently a site of concerted cultivation (Lareau 2011; Snow and Beals 2006). Parents pass on language, manners, cultural customs, and even literacy strategies during meal time (Snow and Beals 2006).

Parents in my study tended to prioritize family dinners, especially when their children were in elementary school. Twenty-one parents commented on dinner. Most said they ate dinner together as a family while their children were growing up. Through these dinner examples, the parents demonstrate the discussion-heavy style of concerted cultivation as well as practices that encouraged independence.

Caitlyn, a middle-class working mother of three boys describes dinner when her children were young:

Caitlyn: Dinnertime, we all ate together. There were periods where [sighs] the boys

would want me to read books to them at dinner. We certainly would sit and discuss what

was going on. I didn’t get back from work till shortly before dinner, so dinner was my

time to at least figure out what was going on with the kids and what else we had to do

with homework or whatever. And then I always had one-on-one time. Each of them had

their own song that I sung to them at night, so I tried to stand when I was home with

them. If there were problems, they often got dragged to a room with me, and then we

would just sit, talk about what they were feeling, and that it was okay, and how to handle

it, and how to just deal with the things that were going on in their life.

Caitlyn practiced concerted cultivation during and after dinner. She would use dinner to check in with her children, and then after dinner, she would give each child individual attention, complete with problem solving. Concerted cultivation was demonstrated by her conversations with her children, which were used to tune into her child’s needs and validate their feelings while

also helping them to figure out how to navigate their lives and relationships. These techniques served her family well. She and her husband divorced when her children were in elementary school, and she continued to use her dinnertime rituals and one-on-one meetings to help the boys work through their feelings and give them a sense of normalcy.

Although most parents had a regular dinner commitment, some parents did not. Kristen, a working-class mother of two daughters, said that her spouse often traveled for work and she and her daughters ate meals in front of the television. On holidays and when Kristen’s parents visited from out of town, they would set the table and sit down, but the rest of the time was very casual.

She expressed sadness but acceptance of this set up. After describing their dinner arrangements, she added, “…unfortunately, but that’s kind of what it was like.”

Kristen’s mealtimes around the television seem to be a survival strategy of a mother whose husband is gone often, leaving her alone with all the domestic responsibilities. She did not think it was ideal, but she did not dwell on regret. As a mother raising her children essentially alone, she was doing what she could to survive, and outsourcing table manners to her parents when they were in town.

Surprisingly, Kristen was the only parent who remembered eating in front of the television on a regular basis. A 2004 survey of parents with children under 12 found that 30 percent of the parents admitted that their children had eaten at least one meal in front of the television in the past week (Christakis et al. 2004). Given that statistic, it is likely that Kristen was not the only parent who allowed this dinnertime habit. It is possible that other parents participated in occasional dinners in front of the television but did not remember that when thinking back on all those years of childrearing, or that dinners away from the table were not the norm and only spoke of typical dinners when questioned.

Linda’s description of a laid-back dinnertime routine is quite different from Kristen’s.

She is a middle-class mother who homeschooled her children and practiced a child-led philosophy. This parenting and educational philosophy means homeschool lessons were determined by a child’s interest. Linda viewed food the same way she viewed education: the child was given as much freedom of choice as possible. Although she prepared a meal every night, her children could eat what she made or prepare their own food. She did not insist that the children sit and eat together as a family.

Linda’s quotation will illustrate two phenomena. First, she put the child first and prioritizes the child’s desires while also fostering independence and personal responsibility.

Second, she is a good example of the role conflict parents sometimes feel due to the mixed messages they receive about what is best for children.

Linda seemed to feel tension between the norm that espouses the superiority of family meals and the guidelines of child-led learning, which honor child autonomy above almost all else. For instance, when asked about dinnertime, at first, she frames her family’s rituals as “bad,” but quickly provides justification for why she chose to structure their household this way:

This is probably something I did bad.

Just like with education where I let people choose, I let them choose the eating. All of it. I

mean I wouldn’t let them choose— “we’re going to have tootsie rolls for dinner and call

it good!” But I did let them choose.

My husband and I might be having salmon and salad, and the kids might—I mean--they

would not be eating the same way that we were eating. I would tell them they couldn’t eat

garbage, and I’m not going to cook four different meals, so you either need to learn to

cook what you like, eat what I cook, or you know, I was very flexible.

Linda was practicing a style of intensive parenting which looks quite different from concerted cultivation or helicopter parenting. Linda’s parenting beliefs place a premium on a child’s autonomy and promote independence. To the casual observer, her method may look like a natural growth model, but Linda devoted a significant portion of her life to childrearing.

Homeschooling required a significant commitment, since Linda did not work outside the home in favor of staying home and facilitating their education. Each year was a negotiation between

Linda and each child. She would ask if the child wanted to go to public school, homeschool, or do a hybrid of both. Linda had a broad idea of subjects to study for the year, but she would leave the specifics up to the child. In the same way, Linda was deliberate about how mealtimes would work. She treated meal choices like she treated educational choices, which means that the child was given a range of safe choices and then had self-guidance within those choices. Linda may not have made her children’s dinner, but she put a lot of time and thought into the preparation that allowed them to make their own. She had to keep food on hand that her children liked, that was healthy, and that was easy enough for a child to prepare.

By not insisting on the family meal, Linda went against the experts’ advice on best parenting practiced. She projected some guilt, noting that her decisions were “probably…bad.”

At the same time, Linda deliberately practiced parenting that gave her children freedom of choice even when it went against expert recommendations. For instance, she allowed her children to choose their academic paths because she believes people learn best if they are in control:

I think that kids, I think everybody, whatever age, learns more thoroughly, retains more

information if they have a measure of control in how they do that. With all three of my

kids […] I let them choose their method of education, whether that’s public school,

private school, homeschool, online school. We’ve also tried the Challenge Program. We

tried all of those and we re-assessed every year.

Some parents demonstrated a balance of competing parenting norms when they tried to balance sports and activities with dinnertime. Parents saw each as important, but often competing for time and found ways reconcile the conflict. A common theme was that parents worked around their children’s schedules to find a time to eat together, even if it was very late. For instance, Maggie noted, “We might eat later because of sports activities, but we always made a big effort to have a meal and to dine together.”

In sum, dinner was a time for parents to transmit their family’s cultural values in ways that made sense to their parenting styles and family needs. While some parents could do this in a way that complied with expert advice, others found their own paths. By varying their responses to the often-stressful dinner hour, parents showed flexibility in their parenting that wasn’t strictly concerted cultivation but still focused on the needs of their children.

Extracurricular Activities

Dinner is a time for parents to connect with their children and transmit language and communication skills to them (Snow and Beals 2006). In a similar vein, extracurricular activities are a site of middle class socialization, where children learn teamwork and other skills needed for professional-class jobs, and have an opportunity to establish relationships with adults who are neither family nor teachers (Lareau 2011). Lareau found that families of different social classes had different activity expectations for their children. Middle-class children were consistently enrolled in extracurricular activities, often more than one at a time, and these activities were regarded as part of the child’s education and socialization. On the other hand, working-class children were rarely signed up for activities outside of school (Lareau 2011).

To see if Lareau’s patterns matched respondents’ habits, I asked 20 participants about their children’s summer activities when the children were in elementary school. I used summer activities as an indicator of concerted cultivation because Lareau found a correlation between concerted cultivation and activities in general, and education researchers have connected the academic achievement gap with summer enrichment programs (Fensterwald 2013; Petrilli 2016;

Putnam 2016). In other words, summer enrichment programs are seen as a building block for college and career. I separated the answers by the social class of the families, to see if social class played a role in the choice of activities.

There was a class distinction among summer activities in that none of the working-class families were sent their children enrichment camps or went on extended vacations. However, not all of the middle-class families did either. Two of the working-class and three of middle-class parents had sent their children to day care or had in home child care of some kind. The rest of the parents did not mention day care. Four of the middle-class parents did not mention enrichment camps. Instead they only remembered travel and free time. Over half of the parents remembered enrichment camps, such as music camp, scouting camp, or horse camp. Most of the families who participated in enrichment camps are either middle-class. In other words, the class distinction was unidirectional: middle-class parents sometimes opted out of enrichment activities for their children, but lower income parents did not or could not opt into them.

Working-class mothers’ options for summer were mostly daycare centers, in home child care, or free play. In lieu of enrichment camps, working-class children were spending time with their grandparents or playing with friends. These arrangements were more in line with the more hands-off parenting style known as the accomplishment of natural growth. Two of the three working-class mothers had parents living nearby who could help with childcare. The third

working-class mother connected to one childcare provider who was there throughout her daughters’ childhoods. In other words, each working-class child had a strong, bonded relationship with an adult caregiver besides their parent. These relationships were built not out of a deliberate desire to enrich the child’s extracurricular time, but simply too ensure the child was cared for while the mother worked.

Middle-class children had more summer activity choices than working-class children.

Middle-class parents placed their children in day care, enrichment camps, and sleep away camps.

Sometimes children spent time at home, playing alone or with friends. Families also travelled on trips to visit other family members or attractions. Working-class parents did not mention travel or sleep away camps, reflecting their tighter budgets. While one of the working-class mothers noted her daughter did attend some camps, she said they were through their local parks and recreation and she did not indicate any specific activity. In contrast, middle-class parents were more likely to enroll their children in private camps tailored to specific interests.

Consistent with Lareau’s (2011) findings, middle-class children had more access to enrichment activities and spaces with which to learn group dynamics under the seasoned eye of professionals, which is typically provided by parents who practice concerted cultivation. The middle-class children in my study grew up with a belief that traveling extensively, attending a camp to ride horses, or honing soccer skills under a coach’s supervision are typical summer diversions. These activities can make a student more appealing to a college admissions committee, and they foster a sense of entitlement, which is a belief that a person inherently deserves the benefits of their chosen activities. In this way, summer options can be a site of social class reproduction.

Homework Help

Homework can be a big part of a child’s after school routine. Teachers encourage parents to stay involved with the homework process (Walker et al. 2004). About half the parents I interviewed gave little or no help with homework help when their children were in school. Six parents said they did not give help and ten gave little help. One common theme among parents who said they did not help was that the children were self-directed and did not require help. The parents who gave very little help would ask if the children had homework and would have a set homework time or would provide reminders. Parents were also available for occasional answers or to review the homework. Eight parents gave their children some help. In this group, parents would have a certain subject or two in which they helped their children. Four parents gave their children more extensive help. Three parents did not answer questions about homework help.

While there is not a clear class distinction in types of help, no working-class parents gave extensive home help.

Table 5.3 Homework Help (n=31)

Homework help Working Class Middle Class No homework help 3 3 Little homework help 1 2 Had a scheduled time for homework-no explicit help 2 1 Check-in to ask about homework for the night 0 4 Some homework help 2 6 Extensive help 0 4 Did not discuss homework 0 3

Maggie is a middle-class parent; both she and her husband have advanced degrees and work in the education field. She described being more involved with her children’s homework.

Although she said that her children were self-directed, she and her spouse helped their children

come up with topics, and helped with papers, and edited papers. While she notes that the children were self-directed, she also does have clear memories of ample homework help.

Maggie: Both of them, we would help them edit papers, help them to focus on when they

had to come up with topics like foreseeing your projects and maybe papers in English or

social studies. Both of them consulted with us about their academic work. It got really

much less so as they went through school.

Interviewer: Did you have a schedule when it’s time to do your homework or were they

self-directed?

Maggie: They were very self-directed, and I think sports helped that. Sometimes while

they were at practice or other kids were doing their homework, and so they would be

doing theirs. But they always came home. They always got everything done.

Nelson (2012) noted that this “tightrope” is common in modern parents who struggle to find the balance between being permissive and protective, or firm but fair, or engaged but not overbearing. This balancing act is a demonstration of the diversity of parenting methods practiced throughout children’s lifetimes.

As I suggested earlier in this chapter, the parents I interviewed delegated responsibilities when they deem it the right path. Some parents performed this method by delegating homework for various reasons. Mark and Sienna explained that they did not understand their children’s homework as it became more advanced.

Sienna: [That] was the rule in my house. You had to ask the older one, so they all had to

kind of pass down that knowledge and everything what they did to kind of help each

other with their homework as it got too hard for mom and dad to do it, which happened

pretty young.

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Mark and Sienna would send the younger children to the older children for help. Jillian’s children received homework help from their grandmother, which surprised Jillian, because her mother was not a help to her when she was in school. These parents were able to outsource homework help to trusted relatives.

Some parents asserted they had a hands-off approach to homework help. Lauryn noted that she did not give her children very much help and describes the help she gave.

Lauryn: I had more of a hands-off kind of parenting style. You know, I know that the

helicopter parent that is kind of really up in the kids, fussing about what their homework

and everything is. But we’re not that type, we’re kind of just want them, you know, fly on

their own. Of course, if you had a paper early, we would read it over and give them some

tips, advice, you know, especially for writing, you know, if they wanted us to read

something that, you know, math they’re on their own. Many of the core subjects, social

studies or science, they’re on their own.

While Lauryn seemed to retreat from science and math subjects, she and her spouse were willing to give hands-on help in writing. Given her use of the term, “helicopter parent,” it seems that she viewed that form of parenting as undesirable and felt the need to distinguish herself from it.

Lauryn’s act of distancing of her parenting practices from those of helicopter parents lends evidence to the earlier speculation that the stigma surrounding helicopter parenting is leading to parents who either eschew the practice or will not admit to using it. Earlier, I spoke of

Linda’s parenting conflict at dinner time. On one hand, Linda wanted to allow her children the freedom of choice that she admired in the child-centric homeschooling ideology. However, she expressed deviant feelings because parenting in accordance with those beliefs meant she violated

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the good parenting norms that call for cohesive family dinners. Lauryn also seems to suffer from some role conflict. She wanted her children to succeed and wanted to give them help if she could. However, she also thought that helicopter parenting is not a good parenting strategy, so she wanted to thread the needle between being involved but not too involved.

Lauryn and Linda are describing how the navigated parenting during the transformative period of parenting that Swidler refers to as “unsettled lives.” Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, parents became more involved with the minutiae of their children’s lives (Warner 2006; Lareau

2011; Nelson 2012). This was a shift from the way that parents had been raised (Hays 1996), and parents used their own contemporary understanding of best practices as well as pulling from memories and socialization from their own childhood experiences. The messages parents were receiving were sometimes difficult to navigate or even contradictory. For instance, Lauryn was trying to be helpful to her children at homework time but balanced that help in order to avoid falling into helicopter parenting behaviors. Linda was trying to balance competing best practices:

(1) that children learn best when they are given a great deal of autonomy and control and (2) that children should have a healthy, balanced dinner that is eaten together as a family. As the new patterns of parenting have emerged, parents were trying to navigate all the new information and synthesize it with what they already knew.

Parent Interventions at School

Another way parents can help their children succeed is by intervening at school when their child has an issue (Lareau 2003). Successful classroom interventions can lead children to have higher sense of worth and entitlement (Calarco 2011; Lareau 2011) and a parent who can help facilitate favorable outcomes for their children may give their children a better chance of college completion, regardless of social class. Parents who practice concerted cultivation have

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been found to speak to the school early and often (Lareau 2003), and they are able to guide their children’s education as much as possible. Although many parents I interviewed had memories of intervening on behalf of their child when the child was in K-12, that intervention was not frequent. Some of the parents said they did not intervene, and it was because their children did not have any issues that needed addressing.

The most common reasons for parent intervention were if the child was having behavioral issues or academic issues. Working-class and middle-class parents remember intervention, and there was generally not a class-based difference in interventions or outcomes.

One set of working-class parents did specify that they would ask their children to try to work it out on their own, and then if that failed, the parents would step in. In other words, in contrast to earlier studies where working-class parents were more deferential and compliant than middle- class parents when interacting with the professionals who were in their children’s lives (Hays

2004; Lareau 2003; Reich 2005), the working-class parents I spoke to were as likely to fight for a favorable resolution to the issue.

The manner of intervention among parents across the social class spectrum suggests a nuanced approach to parenting. Parents were not interfering unnecessarily and were not calling the teachers often. Instead, if their child needed them at school, they would go. It seems the parents allowed their children the freedom to build relationships with classmates and faculty without excessive parental intervention. These findings stray from the typical narrative surrounding parent interventions at school, which asserts that middle-class parents are more likely to intervene than working-class families, and that parents are hovering around their children’s academic progress, ready to leap in at a moment’s notice (Albright 2013; Bodovski and Farkas 2008; Hunt 2008; Lareau 2011). This finding may demonstrate a typical response for

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average families. I was not interviewing low-SES families that can be more hesitant to advocate with authority figures (Hays 2004; Lareau 2011; Reich 2005), but neither was I interviewing upper-middle class families who feel entitled to positive outcomes from within the schools

(Lareau 2011; Nelson 2012). However, my sample was similar to Calarco’s (2011) sample in which she observed middle class and working-class children in the classroom and determined that middle class children were far more likely to ask for help when needed. Perhaps the major difference between my sample and hers lies in the outcome. All of the working-class students in my sample graduated college. Receiving positive interactions and mentoring from teachers is a predictor of a low-income child successfully graduating high school and attending college (Reid and Moore 2008; Croninger and Lee 2001). Having a parent advocate for a child may have a similar effect . Further research should be done, using current interventions with families from across the class spectrum to see if social class makes a difference in intervention on a wide scale and if parental intervention has a predictive quality for long term educational success because these issues have policy implications. A future comparative study of parental intervention, looking at type of intervention, effectiveness of the intervention, and overall educational outcome in low-income students could help to isolate the effect of these interventions.

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Table 5.4 Parent Intervention in School Name Social Class Issue Parent Response Resolution Nicole Working Teacher in wrong Went to principal Resolved in child's favor class Lindsey Working Teacher in wrong Went to principal Resolved in child's favor class eventually Maya* Working Child in wrong- Went to school-mom Resolved in child's favor class teacher in wrong offered alternate eventually discipline Maya* Working Teacher in wrong Asked teacher to Switched schools class challenge sons Natasha Working Teacher in wrong Got child moved Switched classes class Kristen Working Teacher in wrong Mom met with teacher Resolved in child's favor class several times eventually Eleanor Middle class Teacher in wrong Went to principal Child didn't want mom to step in/not resolved Jayda Middle class Child in wrong Just to talk-not to ask Mom worked with school for special treatment Lauryn Middle class ADHD testing Met with teacher Teacher did not push for testing that parent did not want Linda Middle class Values mismatch Removed child from Switched schools school Doris Middle class Child acting Asked teacher to test Child was tested bored in class for giftedness Natalie Middle class Teacher in wrong Talked to teacher Resolved in child's favor

Simone Middle class Teacher in wrong Asked for help so Principal agreed with child would know how parent that teacher was in to work with teacher the wrong and gave student coping strategies Erica Middle class- Teacher in wrong Mom coached child in Resolved in child's favor confrontation-then mom wrote a letter threatening action Jillian* Middle class Academic issues Coursework was very Homeschooled son, difficult for child in worked with the school, high school reenrolled Jillian* Middle class Academic issues Child had a heavy load Worked with teacher to of homework clarify expectations Maggie Middle class Child wrongfully Met with school Resolved in child's favor accused *Same parent for 2 separate interventions

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Parental Help and Letting Go in the Teen Years

A significant portion of a child’s senior year is spent choosing a school and filling out application, and this can be a stressful time for families (Ganga 2015; Puri 2016). The college application process is confusing and competitive, and parents often help their children through it.

Twenty parents remembered being involved with their children’s college application process.

Parents gave a range of help, reviewing essays, advising on college choice, giving step-by-step advice. Some parents mentioned giving emotional support and helping with the financial aid applications. Jayda, a middle-class mother of two noted that her husband probably helped with the applications, and she seemed to think she might be judged for not participating.

Jayda: It probably sounds awful, but I don’t think I did. I think they kind of did it on

their own and [my husband] probably helped them. I know with like financial aid packets

and stuff, I'm sure he helped them with that.

Even though her husband was able to help with the applications, and the children were able to successfully enter college, but Jayda still had to point out that it would be problematic if the mother did not help with the applications. Caitlyn just made sure her son signed papers and finished everything that needed to be done in the application packet. Unlike Jayda, Caitlyn had no guilt or regret about this decision. She noted, “I felt like I’ve put a lot of effort in high school

- the teaching him how to write papers and how to approach studying - and in a certain point, I just felt it’s time to turn them loose."

At the most involved level, Anastasia filled out the entire application and had her daughter Stacy sign it.

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Interviewer: What was the actual application process for each of them? After Stacy

decided on Capital, was she pretty gung ho about filling out the application? Or was there

still more prodding to do?

Anastasia: Yes. I’m sure there was ... Everything had to be… I’m sure I filled everything

out and she had to sign it and I would say this and this and that and. Yes, she wasn’t

interested. It was just like pulling teeth and there again I can’t remember a long ago. She

may have filled some of it out, but it was only at the zero hour that this is due in.

It was very important to Anastasia that Stacy attend college, and Anastasia was willing to do the work to get her enrolled, even if Stacy was not motivated on her own. Anastasia seemed to think that getting her there was just a step, and once she was there, she would thrive. However, once Stacey started school, she routinely asked her mother to call and make her doctor’s appointments and hair appointments for her.

Parents spoke of occasional helicopter parenting when needed. Anastasia was helicopter parenting during the college application, as she was practicing heavy intervention with her teenaged daughter. If she were practicing concerted cultivation, Anastasia might have looked for college application workshops or hired a college admissions coach to encourage Stacey to complete the applications instead doing the application for her. However, Anastasia only intervened with Stacy’s application, not with her older daughter. Anastasia thought that Stacy would regret not going to college. Anastasia’s strategy was to invest the time and energy to get

Stacy’s college career started and begin to step back after that. Anastasia eventually told her that she had to make the appointments herself, and she did. Stacey did graduate college and moved out of state. Anastasia demonstrates that parents can occasionally use helicopter behaviors with their children and not be relegated to the helicopter role permanently. That Stacey finished

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school without heavy parental intervention and then moved out of state shows that helicopter parenting behaviors do not necessarily lead to decreased independence in adulthood. Future research into the frequency and intensity of helicopter parenting can help reveal the role of helicopter dosage in child outcomes.

One of the main concerns about the millennial generation is that they have been coddled by helicopter parents, and will not be able to function well as adults (Ferdman 2016; Gray 2015;

Ludden 2012; Reed et al. 2016; Schiffrin et al. 2014; Stahl 2015; Vinson 2012). Contrary to these claims, many of the interview subjects used helicopter parenting sparingly, and seemed to actively guard against adult helplessness. Parents gave their children more autonomy as their children get older. Seventeen parents talked about ways in which they taught their children to be self-sufficient adults. Although chores were prevalent throughout those discussions, parents had a variety of ways to encourage independence.

Parents tended to give their children more freedom in high school to prepare them for adulthood. For two households, parents let their children have a chance to live on their own.

Peyton and her spouse practiced an 18th birthday rite of passage. The parents would take a two or three-week vacation and leave the 18-year old at home alone.

Each of them when they turned eighteen, they spent a couple of weeks home alone while

we were someplace else. This was kind of like their little rite of passage. We would go on

some kind of trip and take everybody else and we would leave them alone for two or

three weeks […] They all survived; the house survived; so it was successful.

The new adults practiced independent living in a very safe setting. This type of freedom is quite different from the hand-holding helicopter parents showcased in anxious media stories.

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Elaine is a married attorney with two children in my target demographic. She adapted her parenting strategies for different times in her children’s lives. Elaine could be described as a very hands-on parent, at least in academics. She gave feedback on papers throughout high school and college for her three older children. When her son was in college, she drove over four hours each way to tutor her him because he was at risk of failing a course.

Elaine: Well for Mark [pause]-- We once drove to [his] university and spent the weekend

with him trying to tutor him through algebra or something, some math class that he had to

pass, and he was really bad at math. I remember we went up at night and worked with

him the weekend and felt like it was like spitting in the wind. He gave me this work and

we just do- but we did do that, and then there was also long distance talking about math

with Mark. He just needed to get through the very basic math class in college. Because

that was a gen-ed requirement. We did give that extra support. And I say we because not

only me but Rose, my wife also was involved. There was the math support for Mark.

To give up a weekend and travel a significant distance to help a young adult pass a general education class is consistent with helicopter parenting definitions. However, Elaine also allowed each of her daughters to live away from home when the girls were in high school. Here she speaks of her oldest daughter’s early college credits.

Alexandra was a good student in high school but was a little bit restless and bored and

she was very difficult to get along with at that time in her life. She completed her junior

year of high school and we encouraged her to test the waters of college by her and one of

her good friends, we rented them a little house and the two of them went over to a small

town in [their western state]. And those two girls took classes at [the community college],

for the summer after their junior year of high school. And they did very well, both of

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them. And they had a great time because they were 17 and yet they were living in a house

and taking college classes in this little town. They did well.

Elaine continued to encourage Alexandra on this advanced academic track. Alexandra stayed at the community college and lived in the dorms for the fall of her senior year. In the spring, she transferred to the large state university in her hometown. Elaine helped her navigate the application process. Due to summer and fall coursework and some equivalent testing,

Alexandra entered the university in her senior year of high school as a college sophomore.

Elaine’s younger daughter Elizabeth lived with Alexandra during Elizabeth’s ninth and tenth grade years. Elaine took a job out of state, and Elizabeth had academic reasons for wanting to complete those 2 years in their old city. Elaine rented an apartment for the girls and moved

1,000 miles away to her new city. She spoke with Elizabeth weekly and visited often. But for the day-to-day living, Elizabeth was on her own. Elaine felt that Alexandra, who was a junior and senior in college during this time, was mature enough to take care of herself, but not a teenager.

However, she thought of Elizabeth as a very responsible teenager who would do well on her own with some small amount of support from Alexandra.

Elaine’s parenting demonstrates flexibility. Her style of homework help points to concerted cultivation as she provided heavy guidance to ensure her children’s success. Her approach to her son’s need for homework help in college is indicative of helicopter parenting, as she sacrificed a significant amount of time and mileage to help him pass a course instead of simply allowing him to navigate the situation himself and fail if need be. However, a typical helicopter parenting would not be able to send their high school children off to live by themselves. In fact, this practice would be difficult for even non-intensive modern parents.

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Elaine was able to make very different decisions for individual children at individual times, depending on perceived needs or strengths.

Other parents also encouraged self-sufficiency through childhood independence. Linda homeschooled Tiffany, and Tiffany was largely in charge of her own education. When Tiffany was a junior in high school, she began attending a state-sponsored college program. Linda would leave the interactions with college staff to Tiffany to encourage maturity in her approach to bureaucracy. Lauren’s son Jacob spent many hours at the skate park. Older teens and young adults would mentor him and teach him new tricks. Skateboarding turned into his passion and after college he found ways to combine this passion with travel and career. Lauren thought the support he received at the skate park was instrumental in Jacob’s maturity.

Four of the parents noted that their children were very responsible without any extra reinforcements. Instead of being coddled, these children picked up the need for self-sufficiency at such a young age that their parents seemed to think the quality was inherent. Natasha had a son like this. Robert would do his homework and go to bed without any reminders. In high school, he secured a professional job working in the field of his choice. According to Natasha:

He was very focused, and he’d always say, “I don’t know why my friends are so worried

about having girlfriends, I got a job and I got school and I’ve got to do this and I’ve got

to do that.” So, he’s always very focused and I didn’t have to give him more

responsibility, he was kind of responsible for himself early on.

Stella’s daughter had a similar level of maturity. Stella got pregnant with Rachel while she was still in high school and seemed to foster a close friendship between mother and daughter.

Stella and Rachel did meal planning and grocery shopping together when Rachel was young.

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Stella does not remember doing much to prepare Rachel for college because Rachel was

“literally just the most responsible person you’ll ever meet.”

In my sample, parents did not demonstrate an absolute over-involved helicopter style of parenting. Instead, parents tried to gauge the level of input or pressure their children needed in any given situation, and then tried to provide it. For instance, Anastasia gave Stacy an enormous amount of help in her college application process, and even into college when Anastasia set

Stacy’s appointments at Stacy’s request. However, Anastasia’s older daughter, Amanda was a more motivated and independent student, and Anastasia did not give her much help. In other words, Anastasia was involved with Stacy’s affairs because Anastasia thought Stacy needed help, not because Anastasia thought hovering is needed in parenting.

In sum, parents remember active involvement in their children’s lives when their children were young, and pulling back as the children got older, depending on the children’s needs and abilities. The interview respondents did not give examples of helicopter parenting in K-12. While some parents did practice concerted cultivation with their elementary school-aged children, as their children got older and went to college, the parents adapted to a new relationship. I have demonstrated that flexibility in parenting styles can be found in parents in working and middle- class families. The behaviors continue through the child’s job search and into adulthood. In the next section, I will describe the parents’ understanding of their roles in their adult children’s lives.

Parenting Help in the Job Search

I asked the parents of recent college graduates about their roles in their adult children’s job search process. Specifically, I asked whether the parents offered clerical or networking help, and if so, whether the child accepted. I asked whether the child sought parental help, and how the

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child found a job after college. At this stage of development, the parents interviewed continued to step back, giving more help only when they perceived a need for it. I interviewed parents with the intention of learning about what kind of job help parents gave, and why they gave help.

Instead I found that parents are not giving their children much help beyond some financial support, resume review, and emotional encouragement. In the next sections, I will examine parents’ roles and perspectives on their children’s post-graduate job search.

Table 5.5 Parent Job Help (n=31)

Yes No Clerical help 17 (55%) 14 (45%) Networking help 6 (19%) 25 (81%)

If respondents had the skills and their children wanted help with their resumes, the mothers would help. However, most respondents did not think help was needed. Mothers noted that their kids were already well-versed in the business world, or that the mothers did not understand what needed to be done. Respondents remember doing the occasional online job search and would forward appropriate advertisements. I will describe some of the responses from different levels of involvement. In all, 17 parents remembered giving some type of clerical job help. Eleven had given a single type of clerical help, and six had given two types of clerical job help. There were 11 respondents who said they offered resume help, and 11 searched online job sites or monitored listservs of job postings. Two respondents conducted mock interviews with their children.

Ruth, a middle-class academic, pointed out that her daughter’s web skills had surpassed her own, and her daughter no longer looked to her parents for critique. By the time of the interview, Ruth’s daughter had built two websites and was maintaining a blog for her studio.

Interviewer: Has Amy asked for help in resume building?

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Ruth: She has yes in the past, but now she’s built two websites, she’s doing a blog for

her own studio and all this kind of thing. She’ll send it to us and say, “Here is my latest

page.” Not “Look it over.” I’ve hired her here on campus to grade for me and so she’s

done copy-editing and stuff. She’s a great writer so she’ll catch things, mistakes that I

make as well as I’ll catch hers, so she’s really good.

Ruth provided Amy with copy editing practice when she hired her as a grader. In this way the transmission of skills happened due to opportunity and proximity, as Amy had access to such a job because her mother was an academic. In other words, her mother was not actively teaching Amy copy editing skills for the sole purpose of professional development, the family’s social location gave Amy the opportunity to get hands on experience in a way that was beneficial to both mother and daughter. Ruth used the tools in her toolkit to help where she could and stepped back when her daughter did not need help.

As mentioned earlier, Elaine uses different parenting strategies depending on the child’s need. Elaine did not help her daughter Alexandra navigate the job search after college because her daughter already had a job lined up with a major insurance firm. Alexandra began working there part-time during college and could negotiate a full-time position upon graduation. At the time of the interview, Alexandra was working in management for the firm.

Elaine gave Mark, the foster son she welcomed into her house as a teenager, help throughout the process. As illustrated in the anecdote about traveling to his college to help him pass his algebra class, Elaine and her wife worked hard to get him through college. Mark’s K-8 education did not prepare him academically, and Elaine was heavily invested in his high school and college work to try to fill in the gaps. Elaine helped him more than her other children because he needed help more.

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Elaine’s flexible parenting behaviors continued into her children’s adulthood.

Interviewer: And so, what was the job search like for him when he was looking for the

social work position? Was it a stressful search?

Elaine: Yes, it was an awful stressful search for him. Yes.

Interviewer: What ways did you help him during that process?

Elaine: Well, I mean I was encouraging him. I talk to him, he'd talk to me a lot about

what he was hoping to work his way into. You know I gave him instrumental support in

which I had an apartment in [a major west coast city] and he didn't have to pay very

much rent. Actually, he didn't pay any rent until he got a job. It's like he's having the

startup support of having a place to live so that he could look for work when he wasn't

employed very well. He had stability. I mean I didn't look for jobs for him, but I gave him

that background support.

This is in stark contrast to her daughter’s job search. Alexandra needed a nudge in college to find a job, but she found one with a company she liked and has been able to remain there and work her way up the ladder.

Interviewer: What about Alexandra, did you help her? She's been working [Insurance

company] for a long time, right?

Nancy: Since she's 18. [laughs]

Interviewer: Did you help her get the job?

Elaine: I did not. What we did do, back when she was in college, is about her 2nd year,

we said, "You have got to get a part-time job. You have to earn some money." And we're

like very firm like, "just get a job on campus doing something." […] And then when she

went into the business college, she found ads for [the insurance company] who was

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recruiting part-time workers from the business school in particular. So, she, on her own,

got [them] to hire her.

Elaine expends her emotional and administrative energies where she thinks they are needed. Mark has needed help, Alexandra has not, so she focused her energies on Mark. Once again, this is an example of Elaine giving intensive parenting to her young adult foster child. She did not provide the same level of intensive parenting to her biological children, just for the foster child who needed more assistance than the other children. Elaine gives resources as needed, it is not an automatic parenting style. Without looking at the holistic family dynamic, Elaine might be described as a helicopter parent based on her interactions with Mark, or a hands-off parent based on her interactions with Alexandra. For this reason, it is important for researchers to take family dynamics into account when looking at parenting styles.

Although there is literature on middle-class parents helping their children navigate the job search (Byrne 2014; Hamilton 2016; Kramarz and Skans 2007; Ludden 2012; Lythcott-Haims

2015; Settersten and Ray 2010), not all middle-class parents are helping their children. My findings suggest that some parents have confidence that college trained and prepared their children well for the job hunt. I also found this to be another example of a nuanced and flexible parenting style, with parents like Elaine, who helped the child she felt needed the help, while giving the others the freedom and responsibility to find jobs on their own.

When it comes to networking, mothers were not unilaterally working their contacts for their kids. Only six of the 31 parents gave some type of networking help, and 25 did not give any. The help tended to be low-key, with parents asking at their workplaces if there were job openings. Of the six parents who gave networking help, two were successful in helping their children get jobs after college.

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Even though Elaine gave Mark a lot of help in the job search, she stopped short of networking help.

Interviewer: You are in [a related field], correct?

Elaine: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you have overlap with the--Do you know people in his field?

Elaine: You mean in his field in social work?

Interviewer: Yes.

Elaine: No, not in [his city]. I mean I have friends who are social workers or who are into

community services or community organizations, but not nonprofits.

Interviewer: Were you able to kind of send him to people?

Elaine: No. I didn't have any overlap for exactly what he was doing.

Interviewer: Did you look at his resume for him?

Elaine: Yes. All the time. I helped him draft his resume multiple times, many times.

Interviewer: Were you tempted to do job searching for him?

Elaine: No.

When asked why she was not tempted to help him beyond clerical and emotional support,

Elaine noted although Mark was living in her apartment in a community within a large western city, Elaine did not have connections that would be helpful to Mark. She noted, “[his] social circle [were] not my social circles.”

Simone used her contacts to dissuade her daughter from attending law school. While her daughter wanted to go to law school, Simone knew that it would be expensive, and her daughter was not sure if she wanted to practice law upon graduation. Therefore, Simone set up meetings

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between her daughter and lawyers as well as a policy worker. This gave her daughter the opportunity to learn more about the specifics of the job and the job market.

Cristina has two sons in the sample demographic: Tony, who was working in IT at his alma mater at the time of the interview, and Morgan, who was unemployed and traveling to

Europe. Cristina did not help either son with networking. She said that Tony knew what he was doing and is very good at researching job opportunities. She was confident that he would land a job quickly after graduation.

Even though Cristina or her husband could have networked for Morgan, they chose not to. He tried to break into the film industry, which is a career field that is driven by connections.

Furthermore, she did not think that his college gave him the help he needed. She and her spouse have some ties to the industry, and they discussed tapping their network connections.

When asked whether she was tempted to give job help to her sons, Christina noted that she and her husband Ron knew people in her son Morgan’s field, but they still did not give help:

Morgan, with Morgan we were-- film is all about connections. It was just struggling to

figure out who do we know? Is there someone-- actually Ron and I talked many times

about hitting old contacts at [large west coast state university] even though we haven't

seen them in how many years. It's like 'look can he come down and just intern for you'. I

never did that, I don't know if it's because on my part I was hesitant, or it just didn't come

up. He kept talking about wanting to-- you know Morgan was like 'I want to go to [large

west coast state university] for graduate school, I'm going [there] for graduate school'.

Could happen, depending on what he does on Germany at this point, from his college

education he's not getting in. He does not have the experience he needs, and I don't think

he was guided well. I'm sad about that.

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Although she was uncertain about her motives, her answer suggests she may have been hesitant because she was performing impression management (Goffman 1990). Christina noted that the connections she has to the industry are old and she has not been in touch with them in many years. To reach out and ask for a favor would be an act of real vulnerability. Since Morgan was still unsure of his path, there was a chance that he would not follow through on the referral.

Furthermore, she stated that his university did not prepare him for graduate work, which means that if he applied he would likely be rejected. Either of these situations would leave his parents in the awkward position of asking a colleague that they had not seen in years to vouch for a son who might not be able to follow through, which could lead to professional embarrassment for the parents and the colleague.

Maggie and her spouse are both highly educated professionals with careers in education.

They gave their children specific job help. Their son participated in a competitive government agency internship in his field, which he discovered through his college. He also did a paid internship with a private company in his field, and this led to a fulltime job after college.

However, they gave him resume help and advice when choosing a graduate program. When I interviewed Maggie, her daughter Lilly was working as an intern. Maggie and her spouse had read about the company’s good reputation and brought it to their daughter’s attention. Based on their advice, she applied for the internship. However, the parents did not have any connections to the company and were not able to offer networking or tailoring advice.

After an internship and some time spent working in his field, Bryce decided to go to graduate school. Although Henry and Maggie did not help him when looking for his internship or the job that followed the internship, they were very involved with his graduate application process, specifically emotional and clerical support.

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Interviewer: How many schools did he apply to?

Maggie: I think maybe four or five.

Interviewer: How involved were you helping him with, first of all, with finding the job

after college? Did you help him with his resume?

Maggie: Yes.

Interviewer: Were you looking for jobs for him?

Maggie: No.

[…]

Interviewer: Right, and what about when he was applying to graduate school? How

involved were you and Henry with that process?

Maggie: We were very involved, particularly his dad, in terms of picking the right

universities that would give him what he wanted.

Interviewer: Did that start when he was trying to decide which ones to apply to?

Maggie: Yes, I would say right from the beginning.

Interviewer: How involved were you in the actual putting together of the materials?

Maggie: Well, again, he would run the resume by us, and even in the decision making

prior to graduate school, he really was very thoughtful in whether or not to stay with the

company, because he liked his job. And so, I would say the whole year before that, we

just had lots of discussions.

Maggie noted that they did not connect Bryce with anyone in their network when he was applying for graduate school. The parents also held an advisory and supportive role for their daughter, Lilly. Even though she had more trouble finding secure employment, Maggie and her husband remained in the clerical/emotional/advisory support role.

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Interviewer: Can you tell me about the job she’s had?

Maggie: She started out after college working [in retail]. She became a manager for

them, and I think she did it for about two years, and she absolutely hated it. […] we

stumbled upon a magazine […] and it said, “The best place to work.” And she had been

interested [the type of work the company does].

… [the article] said they have this training that they would pay minimum wage, and it

was like three months. And so, Henry and I brought her the article, and it sounded very

interesting and said that we would pay for her […]

Maggie noted that in addition to giving Lilly the article, she and Henry helped her get her resume in order and offered emotional support, visiting Lilly and sending her money to come home for a visit during her job searching time. For both children, Henry and Maggie remained in specific roles, offering advice, emotional and financial support when needed, and giving clerical help. Even though it was stressful to know that Lilly did not have an ideal job, the parents did not reach out to make networking connections.

Natasha was not willing to give her son networking help, even if she could. She is a working-class parent who was in school at the same time as her son. She speculated that she would not have helped her son Robert get a job in the news industry even if he asked. Instead, she saw her role as encourager.

Interviewer: And so, if Robert had needed help finding a job, do you think you would

have helped him or would you just encourage him?

Natasha: It would have been more of just sort of encourage. I mean he has so many

contacts from working in the industry here in [smaller local market] that there were a lot

of people that he knew from the [larger regional] area and the [nearby metropolitan] area

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and I think he would have been okay. It just would have been me going, “okay, time to

pay your way.”

There were different reasons why parents did not help. With the notable exception of

Christina, the parents in this section felt their children were well prepared for the job search, through a combination of academic and administrative support and an innate ability and drive to perform the tasks needed to get the job. Some parents felt they could not be helpful because their children were in very different fields. For many parents, their children did not ask for this type of help, so the parents did not provide it. Colleges have career centers devoted to help their students and alumni succeed, so it is not surprising that recent college graduates do not need parental help in the job search. While these findings are in contrast to reports of helicopter parents who play the part of employment agencies, they add necessary restraints and caveats to that narrative. With this complicating factor acknowledged, future research can look at the small percentage of parents who did provide help and try to understand what their underlying motivations are.

Erica helped her daughters with their job searches. She was very involved in Sarah’s application to medical school and with Jennifer’s college internship and postgraduate job. Here she is talking about the help she gave Jennifer:

You know looking on the internet, trying to find stuff, writing a resume, networking with

my friends in [the occupational field they share] to give her the job that she got, you

know the internship and the other [first post-college job in the same field], and that’s all.

Erica was very involved in Sarah’s medical school admissions process, which occurred in the early 2000s, before helicopter parenting had even been identified as a phenomenon. Sarah had applied to medical school and was rejected her first round. Erica wanted to help the process

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when Sarah was waitlisted the next year. After helping Sarah with her essay and paperwork and driving her to her interviews, Erica still felt there was more she could do.

After they [the medical school admissions committee] interviewed her, I sent a batch of

cookies to thank them [for helping] my daughter, and they remembered her the next time

she came. [laughter] So of course I had to make more cookies. And I put a note -- I made

like three dozen cookies -- and I put a note in there and said, “These are from my

daughter, applicant [Sarah], please be very nice to her.” When she came back from her

interview, she started to… she said she was a little embarrassed because somebody

introduced her as, “The one with the cookie mom.”

Erica was so invested in the process that she became the first person in the family to hear of Sarah’s acceptance.

When she was accepted there, when her number came up on the wait list, the secretary

called [….] to talk to Sarah and I had of course the caller ID […] and I said, “[…] please

tell me, because I want to know what’s going to happen before I give her the phone to get

ready. […] And she told me she’d been accepted, and she was going to start next week. I

was screaming and jumping up and down and I ran upstairs and gave the phone to Erica

and I said tell her, tell her and [she] told her, and I took the phone back and I ran, and I

gave it to dad, I said tell him, tell him again. And I didn’t realize that I was being kind of

a loon because this is something in me that wanted it for so long and I was so excited by

it when it happened.

According to Erica, the medical school still speaks of this experience, and shares the story with incoming parents. Although Erica was the most involved with Sara’s process, she was invested in the career of Jennifer, her younger daughter as well, networking and helping with ’s

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job search and resume. She was successful in helping Jennifer find jobs during and immediately after college. Jennifer sought jobs in the Erica’s industry, and could use her mother’s contacts and reputation to secure employment in the small city they lived in. However, Jennifer moved to a larger city on the other side of the country and was no longer able to use her mother’s social capital.

I highlight Erica’s story because she goes against the common narrative that helicopter parenting is restricted to well-heeled millennials. Erica was helping Sarah in the late 1990s and early 2000s, demonstrating that helicopter parenting in college and beyond is not a new phenomenon. Erica raised her children in a middle-class household, but she was a first- generation college student who received very little help from her parents. Erica married a military officer, spent two decades completing her college degree, and has worked in engineering and as a politician. Erica is an expansion of the helicopter parenting definition in that she started earlier and did not enter adulthood with her own cultural capital intact.

The parents I interviewed were emotionally supportive of their children and were willing to help them if they could and if they felt it was appropriate. For these parents, job help meant editing resumes, searching for jobs on their work websites or a general job website, and mentioning the job search to their friends with a request to pass along jobs if the friend saw one.

The only case of overt interference in a child’s career happened before helicopter parenting was a known phenomenon. Parents tailored the level of help to the specific children and circumstance. For instance, Maggie and her husband did some research on the company where their daughter Lilly applied, and researched their son Bryce’s graduate school options, but they did not do any networking for either child nor did they help Bryce to get his first job. They helped when they saw a need and did not help when their children had a plan or skills in place.

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This is also an example of parents using their cultural toolkit, as two parents who are employed in education, they know well how to help in the clerical realm and the research side of the job search. However, they will not have as many contacts in the non-academic networks as they will in academic ones, which would make networking for non-academic jobs more difficult.

DISCUSSION

The parents I interviewed had access to the same parenting literature and advice on best practices as the parents profiled in studies on intensive parenting. Sometimes my respondents used heavy interventions, other times the parents would be hands-off, after ensuring the situation was a safe environment for exploration and independence. This customized approach to parenting was used by working class and middle-class parents. The families in my study were neither elite nor were they impoverished. In this way, I was a studying a social class not often covered in parenting studies (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Lareau 2011; Nelson 2012). A limitation of these interviews is that I did not ask about income, which may have complicated my social class breakdown. Future research should include specific demographic questions to mine for differences based on income and race as well as education and profession.

Books that have been written about coddled college students seem to center on highly competitive colleges (Hofer and Moore 2010; Lythcott-Haims 2015). Students who attend such schools may have gained an advantage because of their parents’ helicopter tendencies, not in spite of them. These professional-class parents tend to spend a great deal of their resources grooming their children for elite colleges and executive-level jobs. Anecdotal accounts of overbearing parents’ communications with faculty and staff from non-elite schools abound.

However, these stories may reflect a small but visible sample of parents. My study expands this concept of parenting variability into lower-ranked universities across the country.

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These findings complicate the current literature that looks at parenting differences through the lens of social class. While my findings do not negate earlier research, it does complicate the ideal types. Perhaps parenting has more in common with Swidler’s cultural toolkit than has been accounted for (1986). In other words, each parent has a toolkit that they use in their parenting journey. The parents of my study were parenting at an unsettled time, when goals and outcomes were radically shifting from the more hands-off, parent-centric methodology common through the middle of the 20th century to a more child-centric style that saw children as precious commodities and centered a parent’s success as an individual on their children’s successes throughout life (Hays 1996; Nelson 2012; Warner 2006).

The parenting described by respondents is more involved than the parent-centric methods seen through the 1970s, but it is not as intensive as helicopter parenting. If the accomplishment of natural growth sits on one end of the parenting spectrum, and helicopter parenting sits on the other, the parenting described in these interviews would fall in the middle.

This study is preliminary and does not define the scope of this more flexible parenting. It may be widespread as parents try to balance competition with parenting behaviors formed in their own childhoods. This finding is important because it accounts for more of the variability in parenting than the broad categories of “intensive parenting,” “helicopter parenting,” and

“concerted cultivation” are allowing for. It demonstrates the agency parents have been practicing within the larger structure of American parenting practices.

In contrast to studies of hyper-involved parents of young adults (Bradley-Geist and

Olson-Buchanan 2014; Fingerman et al. 2012; Gray 2015; Hunt 2008), many respondents of this study viewed high school as a first step towards independence. Parents began the process of letting go, giving more responsibility and autonomy as their children demonstrate competence. In

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this way, the parents give both the “safety nets” and “scaffolding” into adulthood that allow for a gradual transition to adulthood (Swartz et al. 2011).

In sum, I interviewed middle- and working-class parents from the Midwest and western states. The common thread shared by these parents was they each had a child who had graduated from college within five years of the interviews. The parents in my sample displayed flexibility with childrearing that resulted in a highly individualized parenting plan that could involve concerted cultivation, helicopter parenting, or a more hands-off approach depending on the child’s needs and development stage.

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CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study was to shed light on the ways in which parenting styles and

SES impact the job search and the likelihood of parents giving job search help to their recent college graduates. I conducted a survey and found that few respondents had listed parent help in the job seeking process. The original purpose of the parental interviews was to establish their motivation for helping or not helping during the job search, but so few parents gave any help that

I was not able to discern any type of motivational pattern. Furthermore, I had expected many respondents’ parents to have frequently displayed helicopter-parenting behaviors such as homework help into the college years. Instead, very few respondents had parents who acted this way.

While these findings could suggest that parents are not helping at all, it is more likely due to the sample. I did not sample based on social class, therefore I did not study people at the extremes of social class. While this is a very small, preliminary study and is confounded by the fact that my sample is comprised of college graduates, the parents in my study did practice a moderate approach to parenting. This is an interesting finding that can be used as a starting point for future research. Much of the literature focused on families that are wealthier or poorer than the average American family (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Lareau 2011; Nelson 2012). By looking at families closer to the average American’s social class, this dissertation points to more social class variations in parenting than were previously realized.

Chapter 4 reviewed the results of the survey. I looked at the effects of socioeconomic status and parenting styles on the types of job search tools respondents and their parents used as well as the respondents’ likelihood of underemployment. Chapter 5 focused on the interview analysis. I discussed the parenting behaviors practiced by interview respondents, their role in the

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job search, and their relationships with their grown children. In this section, I will discuss the findings of my study, bringing the findings of two chapters together for greater explanation and validation when possible.

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS EFFECTS

My findings on the job search did not turn out as I had expected. SES, defined by parental education levels, household income when the respondent was in high school, and qualification for FRPL, did not have an effect on job search methods. This was an unexpected finding that may have to do with the fact that all respondents had attained a college degree. A bachelor’s degree is seen as an economic leveler (Torche 2011), and the employment results may reflect that. However, it may be a selection effect, as there may be something different about low-income students who graduate college compared to low-income students who do not finish college. Comparative studies on college completers versus college non-completers of different

SES backgrounds is needed to parse out the effects of college.

PARENTING STYLES AND THEIR EFFECTS

Parenting styles had predictive power on parental help in the job market. The behaviors that are indicative of helicopter parenting such as heavy parental academic and job involvement when the respondent was in high school and college (Factors 1 and 3) were indicators that the parent would be more involved with the job search process after the respondent graduated from college. During the interviews, Elaine shared examples of this correlation. She gave Mark homework help during college and job help in the job search after college, specifically offering

Mark housing while he job searched in a new city. As with the survey respondents, most parents interviewed did not demonstrate helicopter behaviors, nor did they offer substantial job search

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help. The interview data supports my argument that helicopter parenting is rare but is indeed associated with parents continuing such behaviors into adulthood.

If a parent had strict expectations for the respondent (Factor 4), the parent was more likely to help with the post-college job search. However, parents who were very involved in the respondent’s activities during elementary school (Factor 2) were not significantly more likely to help with the post-graduate job search. In other words, parental involvement in elementary school is not a reliable indicator of parental help in the post-college years. Interview respondents gave a qualitative demonstration of the journey between elementary involvement and the post- college cord-cutting. Respondents described a process of pulling back on oversight starting in high school and continuing through college and into the job search. While most parents share a goal of happy, successful adult children, my study demonstrates that they do not all share the same pathway, and some remain very involved throughout while others use strategies that allow children more and more autonomy as they age.

Even parents who were involved during the college years by giving advice and intervening when academic issues arose (Factor 5) were not more likely to give post-college job help compared to parents who did not practice those behaviors. Although it is not a perfect metric, the parental factors that predict post-graduate job help have overlapping behaviors with helicopter parenting, since they are examples of heavy parental involvement and expectations in high school and college. The factors that did not predict post-graduate job help are similar to behaviors practiced as concerted cultivation (Factor 2) and intervention as needed (Factor 5).

Factor 5 most closely mirrors what Hamilton (2016) called “paramedic parenting” because parents are offering advice and only intervening when academic issues arise. These findings demonstrate that there are parents who are close to their children in the elementary years and

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remain on hand as emotional support, only intervening when a crisis arises, and that these parents are able to let go as their child ages into adulthood. There are parents who are more hands-on, and if they are hands-on during high school and college, that behavior will continue.

However, an important caveat is that very few parents are giving their college graduates any type of job search help. Only 21 percent of parents gave any type of clerical help and 15 percent of parents gave any type of networking help.

The interviews I conducted help to explain why parents are not helping with post- graduate jobs. These parents view their children as capable, and the parents’ job is to help them be self-sufficient. The parents are more hands-on when their children are young and gradually give their children more responsibility and autonomy as they get older. My sample is a small exploratory one, and much more research is needed to learn what parenting behaviors being embraced on a large scale. Future research should explore parenting across the social class spectrum to isolate factors such as geography, age and gender of parent, number of children, and social class of the family. But this study does provide some preliminary evidence to support the assertion that parenting styles are more complicated than the ideal types allow for.

PARENTING IN A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

Parents in my sample had a wide range of intervention levels with their children. For example, one parent remembers heart-to-heart talks during dinner while another allowed her children to plan and prepare their own dinners on their timetable. My exploratory study suggests that this flexibility may explain some of the role that agency plays in parenting. The parenting practices described by interview respondents make sense when seen through the lens of

Swidler’s concept of the cultural toolkit (1986). Parenting has undergone a drastic shift in the past 40 years, and this shift left many parents with what Swidler refers to as “unsettled lives,”

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trying to navigate old parenting styles and new ones to create enduring habits and doctrine. In this time of unsettledness, a parent will pull from her cultural toolkit the wisdom of her own parents, her experiences growing up, her friends, parenting books, and childhood experts to find the method of parenting that works best. When seen in this context, the expert advice that family dinners are important for a child’s overall well-being is a primary tool in the toolkit for the mother who favored dinnertime as a site of conversations. Meanwhile, the mother who allowed her children to make their own meals was using the tools in her toolkit that stressed childhood autonomy as a key to happy children and well-adjusted adults.

SES, PARENTING STYLES, AND THE MYTHS WE TELL

The finding that SES was not a predictor in the job search is surprising. However, it may help narrow down the reason why college degrees help close the income gap. Students may learn how to navigate the job market during college, and all students pick up the skills, regardless of income. However, there may be a correlation between successful completion of college and ability to network, or students who come from a poor or working-class family who finish college may have underlying differences compared to young adults from similar backgrounds who do not finish college. For instance, having a social network of teachers is a predicts the likelihood of high school graduation (Croninger and Lee 2001) as well as success in college (Reid and Moore

2008). These students enter college with an understanding of the importance of networks, and some academic network already in place in the form of their high school teachers, which may increase their likelihood of expanding their network throughout college and into the job search.

Further study is needed, but my research shows that parenting styles have an effect on parental job help, and the job search itself may be a site for further research when trying to understand why, and if, college serves as an economic equalizer.

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It is important to have gain empirical understanding with regards to parent-child relationships and the current economic realities in order to avoid a phenomenon similar to the

Opt-Out Myth. In the 2000s, Lisa Belkin (2013) asserted that female executives were temporarily dropping out of the workplace because they could not find a way to balance work and family, so they chose family over work, and this choice came from a biological imperative.

Further examination uncovered a story that was more complicated (Graff 2007; Percheski 2008;

Stone 2007). Some women were opting out or scaling back on their work hours after they had children. However, those women tended to either be very high-ranked corporate women who were “mommy-tracked” at their work or low-income mothers who could not afford childcare on their salaries (Stone 2007). In other words, there were exogenous factors for their leaving.

Furthermore, even when researchers accounted for women’s time off for child raising, there was still a gap in wages (Budig 2001; Correll 2007; England 1992, 2005; Hodges 2010; Reid 2002).

Women’s salaries are lower because bosses expect them to take off work, even if they do not

(Budig 2001; Correll 2007; England 1992, 1982, 1982; Mandel and Semyonov 2005; Markus

Gangl and Andrea Ziefle 2009). Women tend to be encouraged into roles that are less lucrative, while men are encouraged towards management (Williams 1992). However, when the story was told, it became an example of individual choices suppressing wages instead of larger outside factors (Graff 2007; Stone 2007; Williams, Manvell, and Bornstein 2006).

In a similar fashion, millennials and their parents, especially their mothers, are being singled out as the root cause of millennials fumbling in pursuit of adequate work (Begley 2013;

Byrne 2014; Cassling et al. n.d.; Gillespie 2014; Ludden 2012; Quigley 2015). Work has changed over the past 40 years. Employees need more training and internships are common

(Taylor et al. 2014). When my respondents were finishing school, the country was in the grips of

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the worst economic crisis since the 1930s (Burke 2015; McNichol et al. n.d., n.d.). Housing costs and college costs have risen to unprecedented levels (Clark 2012; Martin 2017). All these factors add up to young adults needing some help getting started.

It is possible that, like the Opt-Out Myth, helicopter parenting into college is only happening infrequently, and is happening disproportionately among certain economic sectors. In this case, it is possible that helicopter parenting into college is happening most frequently in middle- and upper-class families who have sent their children to competitive or highly competitive schools, where having an involved parent can be an asset. Many studies use aggregate results or keep research locations anonymous (Cassling et al. n.d.; Hamilton 2016;

LeMoyne and Buchanan 2011; Schiffrin et al. 2014), and the selectivity of the colleges attended is not included in the data. However, some studies do include locations, and the overall selectivity can be tested. For example, there are two books that have been written recently that focus on the parent-child relationship in college. Each of the books have highly competitive colleges and universities as main research sites. How to Raise an Adult draws from discussions with administrators around the country, but the author also draws heavily from her own experiences as a dean at Stanford University, which is currently the most competitive school in the nation, with an acceptance rate under 5% (Anderson 2016; Lythcott-Haims 2015).

The book iConnected (2010) highlights the troubling issue of parents and college students remaining close, mostly due to the increased access that technology brings. The authors write that students are not getting the opportunity to make mistakes and decisions on their own.

Students who have parents who frequently initiate contact and those who nag their children in adulthood have the lowest level of confidence and life satisfaction. When a parent is involved

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and available to listen and advise as needed without overstepping and taking care of problems for the student, it works well (Hofer and Moore 2010).

The authors, a psychologist and a reporter, surveyed students at two colleges and interviewed students, faculty, administrators, and parents at several colleges (2010). Although they included multiple colleges to get a more comprehensive sample, the overall competitiveness of the schools they chose is still very high. The original study was at Middlebury College, which is a private liberal arts college in Vermont. The researchers were concerned that the student demographics were skewing their results, and that in this setting, parents were more likely to be involved. In order to correct this, they expanded their study to the University of Michigan, which is a large Midwestern state school. They found similar results (Hofer and Moore 2010).

However, almost all schools sampled are competitive schools, which will inadvertently reward students who have involved parents (Hamilton 2016). Although Michigan is a not a private school, with a 32.2 percent acceptance rate, it is still considered a selective college by U.S. News and World Report. The students who attend there may well have fundamental differences from the average 4-year American college student, since the average acceptance rate at 4-year colleges has been between 63.9 percent and 69.6 percent over the past 15 years (Clinedinst, Koranteng, and Nicola 2015).

I did not ask survey respondents to identify their alma maters by name, but I did learn about respondents’ children during the interviews. Hofer and Moore (2010) did not list every school they researched, but I pulled every school listed to compile a fairly extensive list. I compare acceptance rates between my interview sample’s schools and Hofer and Moore’s sample’s schools. The children of my interview respondents tended towards colleges that were had similar or higher acceptance rates compared to the national average. A full 80 percent of the

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students in my interview sample attended schools that accepted more than 60 percent of

applicants.

Figure 6.1 Acceptance Rate Comparison

Table 6.1 Acceptance Rate Comparison

Interview rates (n=46) iConnected Rates (n=25) 0-20% 0.04 0.16 21-40% 0.02 0.32 41-60% 0.13 0.24 61-80% 0.39 0.24 81-100% 0.41 0.04

Among the colleges attended by students quoted in the book, there is an unidentified

selectivity difference between parenting styles. The students with helicopter parents attended

schools with an average acceptance rate of 33.6 percent. The students who attended school with

parents that were more hands-off attended schools with an average acceptance rate of 59.42

percent. When interviewing students from less selective schools, the researchers found that

students were more likely to draw boundaries and not allow their parents to call daily. They were

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also portrayed as students who were able to advocate for themselves. Others who attended less competitive colleges were working and contributing to their family’s finances. While the authors included information on each type of school, they did not make the connection between school type and parenting style explicit (Hofer and Moore 2010).

My study adds evidence to the trend I found in Hofer and Moore (2010) that there is a connection between parenting styles and school selectivity. This was an unexpected finding. I did not sample on college selectivity. This is an area that needs further study. Current reports that identify the schools tend to focus on more selective or even elite schools or for profit “diploma mills” that disproportionately target low-income studies (Cottom 2017; Hofer and Moore 2010;

Lythcott-Haims 2015; Seefeldt 2017). While these studies are important, future research on non- flagship state colleges would add depth to our understanding of the path to adulthood and parenting strategies used by a wide range of parents.

CONCLUSION

This dissertation has demonstrated the following concepts. (1) For the respondents of my survey and interviews, SES is not an indicator of a person’s job search methods nor is it associated with the likelihood that a parent will help in the job search. (2) For the respondents of my survey and interviews, parenting styles were associated with the likelihood that a parent will help in the job search. Specifically, if a parent had demonstrated behaviors indicative of helicopter parenting, the parent was more likely to have given job help. (3) Concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting are distinct intensive parenting styles that require further study to learn of overlaps and contradictions. (4) For the respondents of my survey and interviews, very few parents had demonstrated helicopter-parenting behaviors. However, concerted cultivation and a continued closeness between parent and the adult children was present. (5) My dissertation

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demonstrates a need to study families who are clustered closer to the median SES when studying parenting styles. (6) My dissertation demonstrates a need to study college graduates who attended colleges that have high acceptance (less competitive) rates. (7) My dissertation demonstrates a need to study low-income college graduates.

My findings demonstrate that the reasons for the choices people make in conducting job searches are more complicated than only SES. In fact, in my samples, SES was not a factor in whether a respondent used formal or informal search methods, nor was it a predictor of whether a parent was likely to help. What did have an effect was whether parents practiced helicopter- parenting behaviors when the respondent was in high school and college. If those behaviors had been present, the parent was more likely to help. However, the total number of parents who practiced those behaviors was small. Future research on this topic can isolate these factors by sampling for parenting style and comparing a larger group of people who were parented with different methods to see if the significance remains with a larger sample.

My findings expand on the intensive parenting literature by arguing that concerted cultivation and helicopter parenting are two distinct, potentially overlapping styles of intensive parenting that must be studied in tandem to get a full picture of parenting in the 21st century.

Both interview respondents and interview subjects affirmed that parents practiced concerted cultivation behaviors in the elementary years, such as reading together and an active participation in the children’s sports and activities. There was little evidence of helicopter parenting behaviors such as parental decision-making and extensive homework help in college. The majority of survey respondents and interviewees alike noted that parents and children had maintained close relationships into adulthood, communicating at least weekly and often more.

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Furthermore, I argue that in order to fully understand parenting trends, scholars must also look at families that fall close to the median of social class. My study shows that parenting in this demographic has blurry distinctions between intensive parenting and hands-off parenting, as well as the finer points of differences between helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation and may practice any one of them on any given day. Furthermore, family researchers should try to determine the social class and geographic boundaries of the different types of intensive parenting, further delineate helicopter parenting and concerted cultivation, and the overall scope of helicopter parenting into college and beyond. In a similar vein, there is also a need to study parenting interventions and job search strategies for students who attend less competitive colleges and universities. The majority of students attend schools that are not elite (Clinedinst et al. 2015), and by studying students at these schools, scholars can add depth to our understanding of American families. Researchers who are interested in these subjects should also consider adding low-income college graduates to samples to learn more about the role of college in networking across social classes.

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APPENDIX A Rotated factor loadings (pattern matrix) and unique variances

Variable Factor1 Factor2 Factor3 Factor4 Factor5 Uniqueness Read to R 0.63 0.50 Ate dinner together 0.66 0.52 Volunteered for R's sports or activities 0.75 0.39 Coached R's sports or activities 0.46 0.64 Advise R in HS 0.69 0.40 Gave R Career Advice in HS 0.83 Parent wrote R's resume in HS 0.53 0.62 Parent submitted R's resumes in HS 0.58 0.61 Parent filled out job applications in HS 0.63 0.55 Parent advised R in college 0.56 0.52 Gave R Career Advice in College 0.46 0.70 Parent wrote R's resume in College 0.64 0.50 Parent submitted R's resumes in College 0.48 0.64 Parent filled out job applications in Col 0.53 0.62 Parent completed R's homework in HS 0.58 0.60 Parent proofread R's homework in HS 0.51 0.55 Parent edited R's homework in HS 0.56 0.54 Parent spoke to R's teacher-HS 0.44 0.71 Parent intervened-academic issues (HS) 0.64 0.45 Parent completed R's homework-Col 0.60 0.57 Parent proofread R's homework-Col 0.63 0.55 Parent edited R's homework in college 0.62 0.59 Parent spoke to R's teacher-College 0.57 0.57 Parent helped with R's homework-Col 0.66 0.54 Parent intervened-academic issues-Col 0.51 0.56 Growing up, R felt closely supervised 0.54 0.60 Growing up, R felt like it was important that R not fail 0.75 Growing up, R felt like parent's project 0.62 0.50 Parents were very involved with R's activities 0.67 0.46 Parent expected R to attend a certain college 0.80 0.33 Parent expected R to have a certain major 0.76 0.38 R's parent helped R write college essay 0.44 0.62

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APPENDIX B Logistic regression predicting the effects of childhood SES on underemployment status, using multiple imputation

Multiple-imputation estimates Imputations = 10 Logistic regression Number of obs = 344 DF adjustment: Large sample Average RVI = 0.0089 Model F test: Equal FMI Largest FMI = 0.0501 Within VCE type: OIM DF: min = 3660.29 avg = 8048291.32 max = 2.85e+07 F( 6,451438.7)= 2.77 Prob > F = 0.0107

Respondent is Underemployed Independent Variables Odds ratios (SE) Respondent’s family was low-income 1.59 (0.39) Parent attended a 4-year college 0.47** (0.12) Female 0.87 (0.22) Age 1.06 (0.05) Respondent graduated college during the recession (2008- 0.85 (0.24) 2009) Respondent’s college major 1.25 (0.20)

_cons 0.33 (0.41)

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APPENDIX C Regression Analysis predicting the effects of SES on Search Methods (Formal searching)

Multiple-imputation estimates Imputations = 10 Logistic regression Number of obs = 344 DF adjustment: Large sample Average RVI = 0.0156 Model F test: Equal FMI Largest FMI = 0.0895 Within VCE type: OIM DF: min = 1163.83 avg = 7232144.21 max = 2.65e+07 F( 6,146104.0)= 1.32 Prob > F = 0.2438

Formal searching Independent Variables Odds (SE) ratios Respondent’s family was low-income 1.09 (0.27) Parent attended a 4-year college 1.31 (0.33) Female 0.79 (0.20) Age 1.01 (0.04) Respondent graduated college during the recession (2008- 1.67 (0.46) 2009) Respondent’s college major 1.17 (0.19)

_cons 0.27 (0.33)

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APPENDIX D Regression Analysis predicting the effects of SES on Search Methods (Informal search)

Multiple-imputation estimates Imputations = 10 Logistic regression Number of obs = 344 DF adjustment: Large sample Average RVI = 0.0322 Model F test: Equal FMI Largest FMI =0.1857 Within VCE type: OIM DF: min = 278.14 avg = 3.44e+07 max = 1.04e+08 F( 6,35608.5) = 0.78 Prob > F = 0.5890

Informal searching Independent Variables Odds ratios (SE) Respondent’s family was 0.96 (0.25) low-income Parent attended a 4-year 1.59 (0.45) college Female 0.82 (0.22) Age 0.97 (0.45) Respondent graduated college 0.85 (0.26) during the recession (2008- 2009) Respondent’s college major 1.12 (0.21)

_cons 0.50 (0.67)

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APPENDIX E Expectation maximization for factor analysis

Factor analysis/correlation Number of obs = 262 Method: maximum likelihood Retained factors = 5 Rotation: orthogonal varimax (Kaiser on) Number of params = 145 Schwarz's BIC = 1523.25 Log likelihood = -357.9194 (Akaike's) AIC = 1005.84

------Factor | Variance Difference Proportion Cumulative ------+------Factor1 | 3.61400 0.60201 0.2704 0.2704 Factor2 | 3.01199 0.44370 0.2253 0.4957 Factor3 | 2.56829 0.44027 0.1921 0.6878 Factor4 | 2.12802 0.08305 0.1592 0.8470 Factor5 | 2.04497 . 0.1530 1.0000 ------LR test: independent vs. saturated: chi2(465) = 3099.60 Prob>chi2 = 0.0000 LR test: 5 factors vs. saturated: chi2(320) = 676.22 Prob>chi2 = 0.0000

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Rotated factor loadings (pattern matrix) and unique variances

Variable F actor1 Factor2 Factor3 Factor4 Factor5 Uniqueness Read to R 0.62 0.50 Ate dinner together 0.58 0.64 Volunteered for R's sports or activities 0.82 0.26 Coached R's sports or activities 0.51 0.58 Advise R in HS 0.74 Gave R Career Advice in HS 0.41 0.62 Parent wrote R's resume in HS 0.47 0.62 Parent submitted R's resumes in HS 0.50 0.55 Parent filled out job applications in HS 0.56 0.55 Parent advised R in college 0.63 0.67 Gave R Career Advice in College 0.55 0.55 Parent wrote R's resume in College 0.64 0.66 Parent submitted R's resumes in College 0.53 0.60 Parent filled out job applications in College 0.61 0.57 Parent completed R's homework in high school 0.57 0.49 Parent proofread R's homework in HS 0.64 0.51 Parent edited R's homework in HS 0.64 0.73 Parent spoke to R's teacher on R's behalf in HS 0.50 0.57 Parent intervened when academic issues arose (HS) 0.59 0.56 Parent completed R's homework in college 0.63 0.54 Parent proofread R's homework in college 0.49 0.56 Parent edited R's homework in college 0.54 0.56 Parent spoke to R's teacher on R's behalf in College 0.63 0.54 Parent helped with R's homework in college 0.60 0.54 Parent intervened when academic issues arose (college) 0.59 0.59 Growing up, R felt closely supervised by parents 0.41 0.75 Growing up, R felt like it was important that R not fail 0.80 Growing up, R felt like parent's project 0.59 0.52 Parents were very involved with R's activities 0.61 0.54 Parent expected R to attend a certain college 0.81 0.29 Parent expected R to have a certain major 0.77 0.37 R's parent helped R write college essay 0.46 0.62

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Factor1: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching (COLLEGE YEARS) Factor2: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching (HIGH SCHOOL) Factor3: Parent was involved in R’s activities (K-8) Factor4: Parents had strict expectations of respondent (K-12) Factor5: Parent advised and intervened with academic issues (COLLEGE)

Average interitem covariance: 0.07 Alpha: 0.83

Comparison to factor analysis using listwise deletion: Factor 2 and Factor 3 are flipped compared to Factor 2 and Factor 3 in the dissertation. Factor 5 is College Only in this analysis, and High School and College in the dissertation.

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APPENDIX F Logistic regression models predicting parent job search help, using multiple imputation

Parent Gave Job Search Help Independent and Control Odds Ratios SE Variables Factor1: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer 2.1*** (0.37) job searching (COLLEGE YEARS) Factor2: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer 1.74** (0.57) job searching (HIGH SCHOOL) Factor3: Parent was involved in R’s activities (K-8) 1.16 (0.25) Factor4: Parents had strict expectations of respondent (K-12) 1.37 (0.23) Factor5: Parent advised and intervened with academic issues 0.99 (0.25) (COLLEGE) Respondent’s family was low-income 1.94 (0.66) Parent attended 4-year college 1.15 (0.37) Female (Respondent) 0.74 (0.25) Female (Parent) 0.74 (0.25) Age (Respondent) 1.06 (0.06) Age (Parent) 1.01 (0.03) Respondent graduated college during the recession 0.92 (0.32) (2008-2009) Respondent’s college major 0.71 (0.16) _constant 0.03 (0.07)

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APPENDIX G Results of logistic regression for underemployment

Multiple-imputation estimates Imputations = 10 Logistic regression Number of obs = 344 DF adjustment: Large sample Average RVI = 0.3198 Model F test: Equal FMI Largest FMI =0.5668 Within VCE type: OIM DF: min = 30.91 avg = 1434.10 max = 10179.18 F( 13, 1691.2) = 1.49 Prob > F = 0.1121

Underemployment Independent and Control Variables Odds Ratios SE Factor1: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching 1.43* (0.23) (COLLEGE YEARS) Factor2: Parent very involved in academics and PT/Summer job searching 1.11 (0.21) during (HIGH SCHOOL) Factor3: Parent was involved in R’s activities (K-8) 0.92 (0.16) Factor4: Parents had strict expectations of respondent (K-12_ 1.00 (0.19) Factor5: Parent advised and intervened with academic issues (HS and (0.13) 0.80 COLLEGE) Respondent’s family was low-income 1.4 (0.39) Parent attended 4-year college 0.43** (0.12) Female (Respondent) 1.13 (0.34) Female (Parent) 0.91 (0.26) Age (Respondent) 1.02 (0.05) Age (Parent) 1.02 (0.03) Respondent graduated college during the recession (0.30) 0.99 (2008-2009) Respondent’s college major (0.23) 1.3 constant 0.53 (1.01)

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APPENDIX H Survey invitation

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APPENDIX I Post Grad Job Search Survey

Post Grad Job Search Survey

Q1 WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Sociology

Research Study Consent Form

Study Title: Social Networks of Recent College Graduates-How are Young People Finding Jobs? Researchers: Principal Investigator: Julie Kmec, Associate Professor, WSU Department of Sociology (509) 335-8760 Co-Investigator: Valerie Adrian, Doctoral Candidate, WSU-Pullman Department of Sociology (360) 292-8590

You are being asked to take part in a research study carried out by Julie Kmec and Valerie Adrian. This form explains the research study and your part in it if you decide to join the study. Please read the form carefully, taking as much time as you need. Ask the researcher to explain anything you don’t understand. You can decide not to join the study. If you join the study, you can change your mind later or quit at any time. There will be no penalty if you decide to not take part in the study or quit later. This study has been approved for human subject participation by the Washington State University Institutional Review Board.

What is this study about?

This research study is being done to understand what strategies recent college graduates are using to search for jobs, and what role parents have in the job search process. You are being asked to take part because you are a college graduate who has been identified as part of the target population. You cannot take part in this study if you are under 18.

What will I be asked to do if I am in this study?

If you take part in the study, you will be asked to answer survey questions about your job search, as well as questions about your college and family experiences. The survey should take between 10 and 30 minutes. You may refuse to answer any question, and you can exit the survey at any time. You can also exit the survey temporarily at any time, and return at a later time. If you choose to return, you can continue your survey from the place where you stopped. The survey answers will be saved for quantitative analysis, and your data will be kept secure.

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Are there any benefits to me if I am in this study?

There is no direct benefit to you from being in this study. If you take part in this study, you may help others to understand how college graduates are getting jobs.

Are there any risks to me if I am in this study?

The potential risks from taking part in this study are psychological strain or distress from sensitive questions. We will guard against these risks by changing all names and identifying features in documents and password protecting all files regarding this survey. If the questions are uncomfortable for you, you may skip the question.

Will my information be kept private?

The data for this study will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by federal and state law. No published results will identify you, and your name will not be associated with the findings. Your data will be coded and a key that matches your identity to the code will be maintained separately. All survey responses will be private and confidential. The completed surveys will be stored in locked offices and password protected computers. Only researchers associated with the project will have access to the data. Consent to the recording is a requirement for participation in this study. During the course of the interview, if I discover evidence of child abuse, I am legally obligated to disclose that information to the proper authorities.

The results of this study may be published or presented at professional meetings, but the identities of all research participants will remain confidential.

The data for this study will be kept for 10 years, after which it will be destroyed.

Are there any costs or payments for being in this study?

There will be no costs to you for taking part in this study.

You will not receive money or any other form of compensation for taking part in this study.

Who can I talk to if I have questions?

If you have questions about this study or the information in this form, please contact the researchers Julie Kmec WSU-Pullman

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PO Box 644020 Washington State University Pullman WA 99164-4020 [email protected] (509) 335-8760

Valerie Adrian Washington State University Vancouver 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue Vancouver, WA, USA 98686-9600 [email protected] (360)292-8590

If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, or would like to report a concern or complaint about this study, please contact the Washington State University Institutional Review Board at (509) 335-3668, or e-mail [email protected], or regular mail at: Albrook 205, PO Box 643005, Pullman, WA 99164-3005.

What are my rights as a research study volunteer?

Your participation in this research study is completely voluntary. You may choose not to be a part of this study. There will be no penalty to you if you choose not to take part. You may choose not to answer specific questions or to stop participating at any time.

What does my acceptance of this consent form mean?

Your acceptance of this form means that: You understand the information given to you in this form You have been able to ask the researcher questions and state any concerns The researcher has responded to your questions and concerns You believe you understand the research study and the potential benefits and risks that are involved.

Statement of Consent I give my voluntary consent to take part in this study.

m Click here if you give your consent and are willing to participate in the survey (1) m Click here if you do not give your consent. Clicking here will allow you to exit this survey (2)

Skip To: End of Block If WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Sociology Research Study Consent Form Study Tit... != Click here if you give your consent and are willing to participate in the survey

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Q2 Student Information

Q3 College Graduation Year (Bachelor's degree) m 2008 (1) m 2009 (2) m 2010 (3) m 2011 (4) m 2012 (5) m 2013 (6) m 2014 (8) m Other (7) ______

Skip To: End of Block If College Graduation Year (Bachelor's degree) = Other Skip To: End of Block If College Graduation Year (Bachelor's degree) = 2014

Q4 Gender m Male (1) m Female (2) m Prefer not to say (4)

Q5 What year were you born? Year (1)

▼ 1995 (1) ... 1930 (66)

Q6 What is your hometown (where did you spend the majority of your childhood)? List your city and state. If your hometown is not in the United States, list your country.

______

Q7 College Degree Major (For double majors, list both of your majors)

______

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______

Q8 Did any of your parents (Check all that apply): q Attend a community college? (1) q Attend a 4 year college or university? (2) q Attend a vocational or technical school? (5) q None of the above (9) q Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Q9 Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) q I do not have paid employment (5) q I have paid employment (If you are in graduate school and receive a stipend for an assistantship, count that as paid employment) (4) q I am in graduate school (3) q I have a paid internship (7) q I have an unpaid internship (10) q I am a homemaker (13) q Prefer not to say (6)

Skip To: Q17 If Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I have an unpaid internship Skip To: Q17 If Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I do not have paid employment Skip To: Q17 If Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I am a homemaker

Display This Question: If Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I am in graduate school Or Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I have paid employment (If you are in graduate school and receive a stipend for an assistantship, count that as paid employment) Or Are you currently employed? (Check all that apply) = I have a paid internship

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Q10 If you are employed, how many jobs do you have? m One (1) m More than 1 (2) m N/A (4) m Prefer not to say (3)

Skip To: Q12 If you are employed, how many jobs do you have? = One

Q11 If you have more than one job, how many jobs do you have? Use your employer's designation for full time or part time (graduate assistantships are usually considered part time). 0 1 2 3

How many full time jobs do you have? (1)

How many part time jobs do you have? (2)

Q12 If you are employed, what is your job title? (If you have more than one job, please list each one here)

______

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Q13 If you have a job, what is your current annual income? Include only your income, not your household income. Include income from all jobs you currently hold. m $0-$10,000 (1) m $10,000-$15,000 (9) m $15,001-$20,000 (10) m $20,001-$40,000 (2) m $40,001-$60,000 (3) m $60,001-$80,000 (4) m $80,001-$100,000 (5) m $100,000+ (6) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (7)

Q14 Are you paid by the hour or do you receive a salary? If you have more than one job, check all that apply. q Hourly wages (1) q Receive a salary (2) q Other (Please explain) (3) ______

Q15 Did you negotiate for your current salary, wage, or employment benefits at the job you consider to be your primary job? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Q16 Which of the following statements are true of the job you consider to be your primary job? Check all that apply. q I hope to be in the field I am in 5 years from now. (1) q I am interested in promotion at my current place of work. (2) q My job required a college education. (3) q My college degree has provided me with specific skills and knowledge needed for my job. (4) q My job offers paid vacation time. (5) q My job offers paid sick and/or personal days (11) q I have health insurance through my job. (6) q I have a retirement plan through my job. (7) q None of the above (8) q Prefer not to say (10)

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Q17 When you were in K-12, did you participate in sports or other extracurricular activities? m Yes (7) m No (8) m Prefer not to say (9) m Other (10) ______

Skip To: Q19 If When you were in K-12, did you participate in sports or other extracurricular activities? = No Skip To: Q19 If When you were in K-12, did you participate in sports or other extracurricular activities? = Prefer not to say

Q18 If you participated in sports and/or other extracurricular activities, think about how much time you spent participating. During K-12, how many YEARS did you participate in at least one sport and/or other extracurricular activity? (1)

▼ 0 (1) ... 13 (14)

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Q19 Rate the following statements about YOUR CHILDHOOD. Think of the parent who spent the most time with you for each activity listed. Always (1) Often (2) Sometimes Rarely (4) Never (5) N/A (6) (3) My parent read to me when I was m m m m m m growing up (1) My family ate dinner m m m m m m together (2) My parent enrolled me in sports and/or m m m m m m other extracurricular activities (3) My parent attended my sports games m m m m m m and/or events for activities (4) Please select m m m m m m "Rarely" (8) My parent volunteered to help at my sports games m m m m m m and/or extracurricular activities (6) My parent was a coach m m m m m m for my sports team (7) Q20 Rate the following statements about your K-12 SCHOOL YEARS. Think of the parent who spent the most time with you for each activity listed. If the statement is true about any of your parents, click "Agree." Agree (1) Neither Agree Disagree (3) N/A (4) nor Disagree (2) My parent(s) m m m m

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supervised me very closely growing up (1) It was very important to my parent(s) that I m m m m did not fail in life (2) Growing up, I sometimes felt like I was my m m m m parents’ project (3) My parent(s) have been very m m m m involved in my activities (4) My parent(s) intervened when m m m m I had issues with a teacher (12) My parent(s) expected me to m m m m go to college (8) My parent(s) expected me to m m m m go to a certain college (13) My parent(s) expected me to m m m m graduate from college (14) My parent (s) expected me to m m m m major in a certain field (9) My parent(s) gave me advice about which m m m m college to choose (11) My parent(s) m m m m helped me fill

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out my college application (15) My parent(s) helped me write my college m m m m application essay (16) My parent(s) paid for my college m m m m application fees (18)

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Q21 Rate the following statements regarding your parent(s) involvement with your life CURRENTLY. If the statement is true about any of your parents, click "Agree."

My parent(s): Agree (1) Neither Agree Disagree (3) N/A (4) nor Disagree (2) Make important decisions for me (e.g., where I live, where I m m m m work, what classes I take) (1) Intervenes in settling disputes m m m m with my roommates (2) Intervenes in settling disputes m m m m with my friends (11) Intervenes in solving problems m m m m with my employers (3) Solves my crises m m m m or problems (4) Looks for jobs for me or tries to ﬁnd other opportunities for m m m m me (e.g., internships, study abroad) (5)

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Q22 How did you pay for college? Check all that apply q Scholarships (1) q Loans (2) q Grants (3) q My parents paid for college with loans (4) q My parents paid for college with savings (5) q My parents paid for college with cash (6) q My parents paid for college with other funds (Please explain) (13) ______q I worked a job to pay for school (16) q I paid for school with my own savings (15) q My grandparents paid for college (17) q Other (Please explain) (18) ______

Q23 Of the payment methods used to pay for college, which method covered the largest percentage of your college costs?

Q24 When you were IN COLLEGE, how often did your parents pay for or provide the following?

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All of the Often (12) Sometimes Rarely (14) Never (15) Time (11) (13) Parents paid for my living expenses m m m m m during the school year (1) Parents paid for my living expenses m m m m m during the summer (2) Parents allowed me to live at home (rent-free or at m m m m m a reduced rent) during the school year (3) Parents allowed me to live at home (rent-free or at m m m m m a reduced rate) during the summer (4) Parents paid for me to travel home for breaks m m m m m (gas costs, plane tickets, and/or train tickets) (5) Parents paid for me to travel in the United States m m m m m (not including trips home if your parents

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lived in the U.S.) (6) Parents paid for me to travel internationally (not including m m m m m trips home if your parents lived outside the U.S.) (7)

Q25 Job help

Q26 Think about the first full-time job you had after college graduation. How did you learn about that job? (Check all that apply) q I have not yet had a full-time job since I graduated (12) q I was already working at the company before graduation (11) q Classified advertisement in newspaper (1) q Online ad (2) q Recruited by the company (3) q Cold call to the company (4) q Professor (5) q Friend (6) q Parent (7) q Other relative (8) q Acquaintance (9) q Career fair (10) q Other (please specify) (13) ______q Do not remember/Prefer not to say (14)

Skip To: Q28 If Think about the first full-time job you had after college graduation. How did you learn about that job? (Check all that apply) = I have not yet had a full-time job since I graduated

Q27 Did you know anyone at the workplace where you got your first full-time post-college job before you got that job? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know/Prefer not to to say (3) m Other (5) ______

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Q28 QUESTIONS ABOUT PARENTAL ROLES IN THE JOB SEARCH

Q29 Parent 1: Think about the parent who has been most involved in your undergraduate college career and/or job search. Your parent can be whoever raised you, regardless of your relationship or their title. m To answers questions about this parent, click here (4) m If you do not wish to answer questions about your parent, click here (3)

Skip To: Q65 If Parent 1: Think about the parent who has been most involved in your undergraduate college care... = If you do not wish to answer questions about your parent, click here

Q30 Before college, how many years did you live with Parent 1?

Full-time (1) ▼ 0 (1) ... More than 21 (23) Part-time (3) ▼ 0 (1) ... More than 21 (23)

Q31 What is the gender of Parent 1? m Male (1) m Female (2) m Prefer not to say (4)

Q32 How often do you CURRENTLY communicate with Parent 1? m More than once daily (1) m Daily (2) m 2-3 Times a Week (3) m Once a Week (4) m 2-3 Times a Month (5) m Once a Month (6) m Between Monthly and Yearly (7) m Less than once a year (8) m Never (9) m Parent 1 is deceased (10) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (11)

Q33 In what year was Parent 1 born? Year (1)

▼ 1985 (1) ... 1920 (66)

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Q34 Did Parent 1 attend college? q No (2) q Attended BUT DID NOT graduate from college (1) q Attended AND graduated from college (8) q Attended vocational or technical school (5) q Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Skip To: Q36 If Did Parent 1 attend college? = No Skip To: Q36 If Did Parent 1 attend college? = Do not know/Prefer not to say Skip To: Q36 If Did Parent 1 attend college? =

Q35 If so, was Parent 1 a first generation college student? Answer "yes" if his or her parents did not attend college. m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Q36 Is Parent 1 employed? m Yes (including self employed) (1) m Retired (5) m Homemaker (6) m No (2) m Deceased (10) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Skip To: Q38 If Is Parent 1 employed? = No Skip To: Q38 If Is Parent 1 employed? = Do not know/Prefer not to say Skip To: Q39 If Is Parent 1 employed? = Retired Skip To: Q38 If Is Parent 1 employed? = Homemaker Skip To: Q39 If Is Parent 1 employed? = Deceased

Q37 If your Parent 1 is employed, what is his or her job?

______

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Q38 Does Parent 1 participate in the following websites? (Check all that apply) q Facebook (1) q Twitter (2) q LinkedIn (3) q Simply Hired (4) q Monster (5) q Career Builder (6) q Indeed (7) q Dice (8) q None of the above (9) q Do not know/Prefer not to say (10) q Q39 Did Parent 1 help you find a job during high school or college? (Check all that apply) q Yes, part-time after school during high school (1) q Yes, summer job during high school (2) q Yes, part-time job during college (3) q Yes, summer job during college (4) q No (5) q Other (please explain) (8) ______q Do not know/Prefer not to say (6)

Q88 Did Parent 1 help you find a job during high school or college? (Check all that apply) q Yes, part-time after school during high school (1) q Yes, summer job during high school (2) q Yes, part-time job during college (3) q Yes, summer job during college (4) q No (5) q Other (please explain) (8) ______q Do not know/Prefer not to say (6)

Attention: For quality purposes, please type the word "survey" in the box below.

______

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Q40 Think about part-time or summer jobs you may have held during high school and/or college. Did Parent 1:

High School (1) College (2) Parent did not give help (3) Proofread or edit your q q q resume (1) Write your resume (2) q q q Search for jobs on your behalf through classified ads, online q q q sites, word of mouth (3) Fill out job applications for you q q q (4) Offer career advice q q q (5) Submit your resume or application to a q q q company (6) Help you get a job, volunteer position, or q q q internship at the parent's workplace (7)

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Q41 Think about your academic career (high school and/or college). Did Parent 1: High School (1) College (2) Parent did not give help (3) Proofread your papers q q q for grammar (1) Edit your papers for q q q content (2) Help with choosing classes and/or major q q q (3) Help with homework q q q assignments (4) Complete homework q q q assignments (5) Speak to teacher or professor on student's q q q behalf (6) Speak to adviser on q q q student's behalf (7) Intervene at school when academic or q q q social issue arises (8) Listen when academic or social issue arises q q q (9) Advise when issue q q q arises (10) Help with school q q q registration (11)

Q42 Did Parent 1 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know (3) m Prefer not to say (4)

Skip To: Q47 If Did Parent 1 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? = No Skip To: Q47 If Did Parent 1 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? = Prefer not to say

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Q43 What kind of clerical help did Parent 1 provide to help you find a full-time post-graduate position? (Check all that apply) q Look for jobs for you (1) q Help write your resume (2) q Write your resume (3) q Submit your resume (4) q Help you practice interviewing skills (5) q Research jobs for you: salary, requirements, or career path (6) q Researched the company you applied to (7) q Other (Please specify) (8) ______q Do not know/Prefer not to say (10) q None of the above (9)

Q44 What kind of networking help did Parent 1 provide to help you find a full-time post- graduate position? (Check all that apply) q Post your job needs for to his or her Facebook friends (1) q Post your job needs to his or her LinkedIn network (2) q Connect with online friends privately to ask about job opportunities (3) q Email friends about your job needs (4) q Call friends about your job needs (5) q Create his or her own profile on a job site in order to search for jobs for you (6) q Create profile for you on a job site (7) q None of the above (8)

Q45 If Parent 1 helped you in your job search in ways that are not listed here, please elaborate.

______

Q46 How often did Parent 1 engage in online activities to help you find a job? m Frequently (12) m Occasionally (13) m Not At All (14)

Q47 Parent 2: Do you have a 2nd parent you would like to answer questions about? m Click here to answer questions about a 2nd parent (9) m If you do not have a 2nd parent, click here. (1) m If you do not wish to answer questions about a 2nd parent, please click here. (2)

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Skip To: Q65 If Parent 2: Do you have a 2nd parent you would like to answer questions about? = If you do not have a 2nd parent, click here. Skip To: Q65 If Parent 2: Do you have a 2nd parent you would like to answer questions about? = If you do not wish to answer questions about a 2nd parent, please click here.

Q48 Before college, how many years did you live with Parent 2?

Full-time (1) ▼ 0 (1) ... More than 21 (23) Part-time (2) ▼ 0 (1) ... More than 21 (23)

Q49 What is the gender of Parent 2? m Male (1) m Female (2) m Prefer not to say (4)

Q50 How often do you CURRENTLY communicate with Parent 2? m More than once daily (1) m Daily (2) m 2-3 Times a Week (3) m Once a Week (4) m 2-3 Times a Month (5) m Once a Month (6) m Between Monthly and Yearly (7) m Less than once a year (8) m Never (9) m Parent 2 is deceased (10) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (11)

Q51 In what year was Parent 2 born? Year (1)

▼ 1985 (1) ... 1920 (66)

Q52 Did Parent 2 attend college? q No (2) q Attended BUT DID NOT graduate from college (1) q Attended AND graduated from college (8) q Attended vocational or technical school (5) q Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Skip To: Q54 If Did Parent 2 attend college? = No Skip To: Q54 If Did Parent 2 attend college? = Do not know/Prefer not to say

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Q53 If so, was Parent 2 a first generation college student? Answer "yes" if his or her parents did not attend college m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Q54 Is Parent 2 employed? m Yes (including self employed) (1) m Retired (5) m Homemaker (6) m No (2) m Deceased (10) m Do not know/Prefer not to say (3)

Skip To: Q56 If Is Parent 2 employed? = No Skip To: Q56 If Is Parent 2 employed? = Do not know/Prefer not to say Skip To: Q56 If Is Parent 2 employed? = Retired Skip To: Q56 If Is Parent 2 employed? = Homemaker Skip To: Q57 If Is Parent 2 employed? = Deceased

Q55 If Parent 2 is employed, what is his or her job?

______Q56 Does Parent 2 participate in the following websites? (Check all that apply) q Facebook (1) q Twitter (2) q LinkedIn (3) q Simply Hired (4) q Monster (5) q Career Builder (6) q Indeed (7) q Dice (8) q None of the above (9) q Do not know/Prefer not to say (10)

Q57 Did Parent 2 help you find a job during high school or college? q Yes, part-time after school during high school (1) q Yes, summer job during high school (2) q Yes, part-time job during college (3) q Yes, summer job during college (4) q No (5) q Other (Please explain) (8) ______q Do not know/Prefer not to say (6)

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Q58 Think about part-time or summer jobs you may have held during high school AND/OR college. Did Parent 2:

High school (1) College (2) Parent did not give help (3) Proofread or edit your q q q resume (1) Write your resume (2) q q q Search for jobs on your behalf through classified ads, online q q q sites, word of mouth (3) Fill out job applications for you q q q (4) Offer career advice q q q (5) Submit your resume or application to a q q q company (6) Help you get a job, volunteer position, or q q q internship at the parent's workplace (7)

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Q59 Think about your academic career (High school and/or college). Did Parent 2: High School (1) College (2) Parent did not give help (3) Proofread your papers q q q for grammar (1) Edit your papers for q q q content (2) Help with choosing a q q q major (3) Help with homework q q q assignments (4) Complete homework q q q assignments (5) Speak to professor on q q q student's behalf (6) Speak to adviser on q q q student's behalf (7) Intervene at school q q q when issue arises (8) Listen when academic or social issue arises q q q (9) Advise when academic or social q q q issue arises (10) Help with school q q q registration (11)

Q60 Did Parent 2 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know (3) m Prefer not to say (4)

Skip To: Q65 If Did Parent 2 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? = No Skip To: Q65 If Did Parent 2 help you find a full-time job that started when you graduated from college? = Prefer not to say

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Q61 What kind of clerical help did Parent 2 provide to help you find a full-time post-graduate position? (Check all that apply) q Look for jobs for you (1) q Help write your resume (2) q Write your resume (3) q Submitted your resume (4) q Help you practice interviewing skills (5) q Research jobs for you: salary, requirements, or career path (6) q Researched the company you applied to (7) q Other (Please specify) (8) ______q Do not know (10) q Prefer not to say (11) q None of the above (9)

Q62 What kind of networking help did Parent 2 provide to help you find a full-time post- graduate position? (Check all that apply) q Post your job needs for to his or her Facebook friends (1) q Post your job needs to his or her LinkedIn network (2) q Connect with online friends privately to ask about job opportunities (3) q Email friends about your job needs (4) q Call friends about your job needs (5) q Create his or her own profile on a job site in order to search for jobs for you (6) q Create a profile for you on a job site (7) q None of the above (8)

Q63 If Parent 2 helped you in your job search in ways that are not listed here, please elaborate.

______

Q64 How often did Parent 2 engage with online activities to help you find a job? m Frequently (13) m Occasionally (14) m Not At All (15)

Q65 PROFESSORS' HELP

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Q66 Did any of your professors help you find a full-time job post-college? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know (3) m Prefer not to say (4)

Skip To: Q70 If Did any of your professors help you find a full-time job post-college? = No Skip To: Q70 If Did any of your professors help you find a full-time job post-college? = Do not know Skip To: Q70 If Did any of your professors help you find a full-time job post-college? = Prefer not to say

Q67 If yes, how many professors have helped you find a job? ______

Q68 If you have received help from a professor, think about the professor who helped you the most. Is this person (Check all that apply): q Your adviser? (1) q A professor for one or more classes that you took in college? (9) q A friend? (3) q A friend of your family? (4) q None of the above (5) q Other (6) ______q Do not know (7) q Prefer not to say (8)

Q69 Think about the professor that has helped you the most. What type of help did he or she provide? (Check all the apply) q Advice on the types of job to apply to (1) q Advice on what companies to apply to (2) q General career advice about the field (3) q Advice on graduate school (13) q Resume help (4) q Writing a letter of recommendation (5) q Personally contacting someone in the company for you (6) q Personally contacting their own friend who works at the company (7) q Posting to their personal network about your job needs (8) q Telling you about a job possibility they discovered through their network (9) q Maintained an email list of job openings (14) q Maintained an email list with other job assistance and advice (15) q Other (10) ______q Do not know (11) q Prefer not to say (12)

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Q70 Did you use the career center on campus in your post-college career search? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know (3) m Prefer not to say (4)

Skip To: Q72 If Did you use the career center on campus in your post-college career search? = No Skip To: Q72 If Did you use the career center on campus in your post-college career search? = Do not know Skip To: Q72 If Did you use the career center on campus in your post-college career search? = Prefer not to say

Q71 If you used the college career center or college career counselors in your post-college career search, mark all statements that apply. q I found a job that I learned about through the career center (1) q I applied for a job that I learned about through the career center, but I did not get hired (2) q I learned about jobs through the career center, but I did not apply for them (3) q The career center helped me with my resume (4) q I practiced interviewing at the career center (5) q I attended a career fair sponsored by the career center/university (6) q The career center/career counselor was helpful in obtaining a job (7) q The career center/career counselor was NOT helpful in obtaining a job (8) q I did not use the career services at my college (9) q Other (10) ______q Do not know (11) q Prefer not to say (12)

Q72 Family Income

Q73 When you were in K-12, did you ever qualify for or receive free or reduced price lunch? m Yes (1) m No (2) m Do not know (3) m Prefer not to say (4)

Q74 Think about the house you spent the most years in as a child. Did your parents own or rent? m Own (1) m Rental house (2) m Rental apartment (3) m Other (Please explain) (6) ______m Do not know (4) m Prefer not to say (5)

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Q75 On average, what was your parent's Estimated Financial Contribution (EFC) during your undergraduate years (the number can be found on your FAFSA).

______

Q76 What was your family's approximate income while you were in HIGH SCHOOL? If you lived in more than one household, please fill out both "Primary household" and "Secondary household" Primary household (1) Secondary household (2) 0-$20,000 (1) q q $20,001-$40,000 (2) q q $40,001-$60,000 (3) q q $60,001-$80,000 (4) q q $80,001-$100,000 (5) q q $100,000+ (6) q q Do not know (7) q q Prefer not to answer (8) q q

Q77 Your Social Media Habits

Q78 Do you have (check all that apply): q Facebook (1) q Twitter (2) q Tumblr (3) q Instagram (4) q Other (please specify) (5) ______q None of the above (6) q Prefer not to answer (7)

Q79 How many email accounts do you have? (Include both work and personal emails) m 1 (1) m 2-3 (2) m More than 3 (3) m Do not know/Prefer not to answer (4)

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Q80 How many text messages do you send and receive per day, on average? m 0 (1) m 1-10 (2) m 10-50 (3) m 51-100 (4) m 101-250 (5) m 251-500 (6) m More than 500 (7) m Do not know (8) m Prefer not to answer (9)

Q81 Which do you participate in daily (check all that apply): q Facebook (1) q Twitter (2) q Tumblr (3) q Instagram (4) q None of the above (5) q Other (9) ______q Do not know/Prefer not to answer (7)

Q82 Which of these sites have you joined or uploaded your resume to? (Check all that apply): q LinkedIn (1) q Simply Hired (2) q Monster (3) q Career Builder (4) q Indeed (5) q Dice (6) q Other (7) ______q None of the above (8) q Do not know/Prefer not to answer (9)

Q86 m Click here to submit survey. Thank you for your time! Your participation is appreciated. (1)

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APPENDIX J Interview Request

Would you like to be part of my dissertation project? I am looking to interview the parents of recent college graduates. Are you a parent whose child graduated from college between the years

2008 and 2014? Or are you a college graduate whose parent might like to talk to me? Please send me a message! I will be conducting interviews that are approximately 1 hour long, and I can do them in person, by phone, or by Skype. If you know of anyone fitting this demographic, feel free to forward, share, or tag! Thanks for your consideration!

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APPENDIX K Interview Schedule

Ask questions about R’s children, numbers, genders, ages, college completion or plans, career path, current career.

PARENTING WHEN THE CHILDREN WERE YOUNG

What type of activities did your child participate in?

Describe a typical day when your child was in middle school. Probe for activities, routine, dinner time, conversations, help with homework, how much time spent together.

Did your child ever run into issues with a teacher? If so, did you do anything to address the issue? Probe for types of interventions, if any.

What do you think is a parent’s role in their child’s life?

What were your goals for your child as he (she) was growing up?

What, if anything, did you do to help him (her) accomplish these goals?

CHILD’S COLLEGE

(Choose one college grad)

Whose idea was it for your child to go to college?

Did you want your child to go to college?

How did your child decide which school to apply to? Probe for parental help with the decision.

Did he/she go away to college?

How did he/she decide to go there?

How many schools did they apply to?

What was the application process like? (Probe for ways the parent helped with the application)

Did you keep in contact with your child when he (she) was at school? Probe for methods of contact.

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Did your child visit home during the college years?

How often did you speak to him (her) in college? How often did you visit him (her) at his (her) school? How often did he/she come home?

What was the college experience like for him (her)? What were your child’s college years like for you? Probe for rules about lifestyle and grades, discussions about the child’s career goals and the role college played in career preparation.

What were your expectations from college? Why did you want your child to go to college?

CHILD’S JOB

Is your child currently working?

If no:

What are they doing?

Is he (she) actively seeking work? What type of work is he (she) looking for?

If the child is currently working:

What type of job does your child have now?

How long has he/she been working there?

What was the job search like?

When did he/she begin the job search? How did s/he decide on a career? What were the influences?

How many jobs did he/she apply to?

What geographic area is he/she living in? What areas of the country did he/she apply to?

Was your child searching for a specific job, or was the job search more general?

That resources did your child use when looking for work?

PARENTAL ASSISTANCE IN THE JOB SEARCH

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IF THE CHILD IS CURRENTLY SEARCHING FOR WORK, THESE QUESTIONS WILL BE

ASKED IN PRESENT TENSE

Did you help your child find/land her (his) job? Distinguish between desire to help and actual help.

In what ways did you help?

Probe for types of network connections the parents used-online connections used in the job search. Calling friends and associates to ask about jobs or recommendations. Speaking to people in person-at work, at church, school, etc. Did parent post graduation accomplishments on

Facebook? Probe for effectiveness of help. They may forget unsuccessful job search attempts, so probe for times the parent helped but wasn’t successful

Probe for order and reason of help. Did the parent begin helping before the job search, or after it stalled? Did the parent offer help or give help after the child asked?

Did you perform online job searches for your child? How many? On what websites?

Did your child use his (her) social media to try to obtain work?

Do you have a LinkedIn? Does your child?

To what degree did your help make a difference in your child’s job search?

Before this job, have you ever helped your child find a job? In what ways did you help? Were those attempts successful? Probe for the parent’s job searches, when they were, how successful they were.

MOTIVATION

Do you remember what type of help, if any, your parents provided you when you were starting your career?

Did your child ask for help in finding a job? Did you offer help?

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Ask whether they would do the same for other children (hypothetical children or real children).

Why or why not?

What would you say is the primary motivation for helping/not helping your child in the job search?

PARTNER HELP

Are you currently married or residing with a significant other?

Does your child have any other primary parents or caregivers besides you (and the residential partner, if there is one)?

Did your partner provide your child with any help?

What type of help?

Was your partner successful in helping your child find a job?

(If both people helped)Walk me through what a typical helping task would look like? What did you do? When would you help (what time of day)? Did you find any tasks time consuming? Can you describe it?

EFFECTIVENESS

Did your child get a job at a place where your contacts work or have strong affiliations or contacts?

Did your child get a job at a place where your partner’s contacts work or have strong affiliations or contacts?

Did any other adult help your child in the job search?

(If yes) What is the relationship between your child and that adult?

What type of help was given?

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Was it effective? If so, how?

DEMOGRAPHICS

What type of work do you do?

(If there is a residential partner)-what type of work does your partner do?

(If there is another parent or guardian) What type of work does your child’s other parent do?

Is that person remarried? Does the spouse work? What type of work?

Age of respondent?

Age of partner?

Race?

Partner Race?

Education?

Partner Education?

How long in current house?

Home ownership?

Married?

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APPENDIX L Ethics

I took steps to ensure that my survey and interviews met ethical standards. The survey and interviews were subject to separate Institutional Review Board applications and each was ruled exempt. Survey respondents were asked to agree with a consent form on the survey in order to proceed with the survey. Those who disagreed with the consent form exited the survey.

Interview respondents were asked to sign a consent form if they were interviewed face-to-face.

For phone interviews, they were asked to agree to a consent form found in Qualtrics. The consent forms explained who was conducting the research and what the study hoped to accomplish. The forms gave a general overview of what the respondent could expect during the survey or interview, the length of time expected for completion, the risks and benefits to the respondent, and the confidentiality measures in place. The respondent was assured that participation was voluntary, and they could exit the survey or interview at any time with no penalty. Minimum age of 18 was required for participation.

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