Distance to parents and geographical mobility Paper for the PAA Annual Meeting, New York 2007 Francesca Michielin, Clara H. Mulder University of Amsterdam Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130 NL-1018 VZ Amsterdam E-mail F.Michielin@uva.nl Introduction Proximity between parents and children is beneficial to providing care and maintaining regular face-to-face contact between them. Living close (or moving closer) to the parents or the children is particularly appealing in situations of a greater need or desire for contact. For example, when the adult children become parents themselves, geographical proximity between generations allows the grandparents to meet their grandchildren regularly, and to provide childcare easily when necessary. When a decline in health or the death of the spouse takes place, older parents will attach increasing importance to proximity to their children or to at least one of their children. The importance of family ties may lead people to move closer to parents or children, but also to refrain from moving further away from them. During the life course there are many potential triggers for moving, related for example to educational attainment, the labor market career and the household career. This is particularly true of young and middle-aged adults. It is likely that in the relocation or migration decision of these adults, the residential location of the parents is taken into account. The individual and family dimensions of the life course are thus connected, and individual choices oriented towards reaching personal goals might compete or interfere with the desire to maintain family solidarity (Bengtson, 2001). In the research on residential relocation and migration, much attention has been devoted so far to identify the triggers for different kind of moves (short versus long distances) and the resources and constraints hampering or facilitating such moves (Mulder, 1993). Despite the general acknowledgement of the importance of geographical proximity between parents and children for provision of care and more in general for the exchange of support and contact, the scarce research on convergence between parents and children has mainly focused on moves of the parents towards their children (Litwak & Longino, 1987; Silverstein, 1995; Rogerson et al., 1997; Van Diepen & Mulder; 2005). The location of parents has rarely been investigated directly as a factor influencing migration decisions of their children. This influence might be important: family ties are particularly strong between parents and children (Rossi & Rossi, 1990), and the exchange of support is fairly strong. Thus, focusing on migration decisions of young and middle-aged adults, we can expect two kinds of possible influences of the residential location of the parents. On the one hand, current proximity to the parents might discourage moving away from them. On the other hand, migrations might be pursued with the aim of moving closer to the parents, especially in relation to changes in the need for support or contact. This may occur for instance when the parents become old, or when the children experience divorce.