ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Social and Emotional Development
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2025.1508469
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial Influences on Ontogenetic DevelopmentView all articles
The Impact of Felt Obligation and Perceived Mutual Reciprocity on Support between Mothers and Their Adult Children
Provisionally accepted
- University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany
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Support is an important resource at every stage of development across the lifespan. In the mother-child relationship, the exchange of support is subject to change in relation to the tasks and framework conditions of the current phase of life. While values and norms typically include social expectations, attitudes summarize individual thoughts or feelings. During young adulthood and mid-life attitudes are particularly important for the mutual support of mothers and their adult children when there are no practical framework conditions that necessitate support, like care needs. This study uses social exchange theory to examine the mediating role of felt obligation (FOM; Stein, 1992) and perceived mutual reciprocity (POPRS; Wintre, Yaffe, & Crowley et al., 1995) as important attitudes in the well-known relation between receiving and giving support to mothers and their adult children. A paper-pencil survey included 598 German adults (20-49 years, 55.2% female) and 577 (40-87 years) mothers (40-87 years) of these adults. Both the adult children's and mothers' perspectives are taken into account. The results from the parallel mediation analyses, in which instrumental and emotional support were considered separately, showed a mediating effect of felt obligation on the instrumental support of adult children for their mothers. The received and given emotional support of the adults to their mothers was mediated by felt obligation and perceived mutual reciprocity. The received and given instrumental and emotional support of the mothers to their adult children was mediated by perceived mutual reciprocity. The different relevance of the various attitudes toward adults' and their mothers' support later in life is discussed.
Keywords: Felt obligation, Reciprocity, support, Mother-Child Relationship, lifespan development, social exchange theory
Received: 09 Oct 2024; Accepted: 27 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schoenert, Sommer and Buhl. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kathrin Schoenert, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany
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