Parent-child proximity and personality: basic human values and moving distance

BACKGROUND An important event in many young people's lives is moving out of the parental home. This event is often operationalized as the distance between parents and their children, i.e., parent-child proximity. METHODS The present study (N = 1,451) analyzed correlates of parent-child proximity through the lens of human value theory (Schwartz, Advances in experimental social psychology, 1992). Besides a classical proximity measure (i.e., parent-child), we also calculated the distance between childhood and current place of residence (i.e., childhood-now), as well as parent-childhood proximity (distance between children's childhood place of residence and the current place of residence of parents), which acts as a control group because this distance is most probably chosen by the parents. RESULTS As hypothesized, we found that participants valuing universalism and self-direction as important (i.e., associated with growth and anxiety-freedom) moved further away from the place where their parents live and the place where they grew up than participants valuing self-protection and anxiety-avoidance (e.g., tradition, security, conformity). CONCLUSIONS This study not only adds to research on psychological motivations to move, it endorses value theory as being a useful lens through which to analyze migration behavior.