Intergenerational contact and support: the long term effects of marital instability in Italy

The incidence of marital instability has increased throughout Europe since the mid 1960s. The number of adults who experienced the break-up of their parents' marriage or partnership while growing up has therefore increased. And a growing number of parents have had to learn how to maintain meaningful and lasting contact with their children, notwithstanding that they are no longer co-residing with them. A substantial amount of research has been carried out on parent-child relationships in the years immediately subsequent to parental separation and/or divorce. But very few studies have addressed its long-term consequences for intergenerational relationships. This chapter explores the intensity of intergenerational contacts and support experienced by those (now old) parents who belong to the cohorts that initiated the increase in marital instability in Italy and therefore were the first to face the task if "inventing" new ways of "doing family" as lone or as long-distance parents. Specifically we examine the distinct characteristics of the relationship between elderly divorced parents, their adult children and, when present, their grandchildren. We found that marital break-up affects the three generational relationship between parents, children and grandchildren and is not compensated by stronger horizontal kinship ties. We also found that the impact is most negative in the case of contacts, while in the case of material support it is more neutral.