Will they turn back on you? The relations between young cohabiting people and their parents

This article investigates the relation between cohabitation of young people and the frequency of meetings with their parents. These issues have recently attracted increasing attention because, while nonmarital living arrangements are becoming common in most European countries, the consequences of this process are not yet well understood. Our analysis focuses on Poland and Italy, two countries dominated by tradition and strong intergenerational ties. We use the data from the recently released Polish Generation and Gender Survey and the comparable Italian Family and Social Subjects Survey, which provide information on both union formation patterns and the frequency of meetings with parents. Notwithstanding similarities between the two countries, our results show that in Italy cohabitation lowers contacts of adult children with parents, whereas for Polish youth we do not find strong evidence in such sense.