Childhood Neglect and Parent Contact In South Korea: When Do Socioeconomic Resources Matter In Young Adulthood and Midlife?

Background and Purpose: Parent-child contact remains central to adult child-parent relationships, yet its patterns and meanings shift and evolve throughout the life course. While much research focuses on midlife family roles, less is known about how childhood neglect shapes contact with parents in young adulthood versus midlife. Guided by the Life Course Perspective and Cumulative Inequality Theory, this study examines how childhood neglect may shape parent-child contact across the life course. We examine whether education and income moderate these associations.

Methods: We used data from the 2017 Survey on Life Course Experiences of Children and Families to compare young adults (ages 22-39) and midlife adults (ages 40-59) in Korea. The dependent variable was contact frequency with biological parents (weekly-or-more vs. less than weekly). Two indicators of childhood neglect were examined: physical neglect (inadequate food provision) and educational neglect (not allowed to attend school). Logistic regression models with robust standard errors were estimated separately by age groups. Models were adjusted for gender, marital status, and self-rated health. Education (high school or below vs. any college) and income were tested separately as moderators.

Results: Childhood neglect was generally associated with lower odds of weekly-or-more contact with parents in young adulthood and midlife, although the pattern varied by neglect subtype. Physical neglect showed a relatively consistent negative association across age groups, with no significant moderation by education or income. Educational neglect was also negatively associated with parent contact in both age groups, although the main effect varied across interaction models. The key life-stage difference was in education moderation. In young adulthood, educational neglect was significant in the income interaction model (OR = .24, p < .01) and marginally significant in the education interaction model (OR = .26, p < .1), with no significant education interaction effect. In midlife, educational neglect was significant in the education interaction model (OR = .25, p < .01) and marginally significant in the income interaction model (OR = .55, p < .1), and education significantly moderated the association between educational neglect and parent contact (OR for interaction = 5.36, p < .05), indicating that the negative association was weaker among adults with any college education than those with a high school education or below. Income did not significantly moderate either neglect subtype, and education did not significantly moderate physical or educational neglect in young adulthood.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings suggest that childhood neglect may have lasting implications for parent-child contact across adulthood, including young adulthood and midlife. However, socioeconomic buffering was limited overall, with later educational attainment partially offset the long-term association between educational neglect and lower parent contact only in midlife. These findings point to the importance of education as a potential protective resource, although its buffering role was selective. In contrast, associations involving physical neglect were more consistent and less impacted by later socioeconomic resources. Overall, the findings support a life-course perspective on how childhood neglect may shape parent-child ties across adulthood, while also highlighting differences across neglect subtypes, life stage, and socioeconomic resource type.