Nov. 03--Parents who embrace Facebook, texting and other communication channels enjoy better relationships with their young adult children than parents who stick to phone calls alone.
New research out of the University of Kansas looks at relationship satisfaction between emerging adults and their parents and finds that the quality of the bond increases with the number of communication tools each party is willing to use.
"A lot of parents might resist new technologies. They don't see the point in them, or they seem like a lot of trouble," says communication studies doctoral student Jennifer Schon, who authored the study. "But this study shows while it might take some work and learning, it would be worth it in the end if you are trying to have a good relationship with your adult child."
Schon told me she was partly inspired to embark on the study by her non-texting dad, who she had a hard time staying in touch with once she moved five hours away for graduate school.
"The only time we connected was when we could both be on the phone at the same time, and our schedules are very different," said Schon, 31. "I was curious if other people had the same problem."
Schon surveyed 367 adults ages 18 to 29 about the methods they use to communicate with their parents (land line phones, cellphones, texting, instant messaging, Snapchat, email, video calls, social media), how often they use each method and how satisfied they are with their relationships with Mom and Dad.
Communication competency -- the ability to get your point across clearly and appropriately with each other -- played the biggest role in relationship satisfaction, she found. So if you tend to twist each other's words and bring out the worst in each other, friending each other on Facebook may not help matters.
But respondents who give their parents decent marks for communication competency experience even higher levels of satisfaction if their parents use three or more methods to keep in touch.
"Parents attempting to improve relationships with their adult children may thus want to try communicating with their children via additional channels," Schon writes in her study.
A second portion of Schon's research will look at the value of frequent, brief points of contact between parents and their grown children.
"It appears that parents checking in to say, 'Hey, I'm thinking of you,' 'I know you exist and appreciate our relationship,' is important to this generation of emerging adults," she says. "Not necessarily to get information, but just to say, 'You're on my mind.'"
hstevens@tribune.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
