Communication with family and friends across the life course

TL;DR

This study analyzes mobile communication patterns across the human life course, revealing how social contact types and intensities shift from young adulthood to old age, highlighting gender and generational differences.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to classify social relationship types from mobile phone data and maps their evolution across different life stages.

Findings

Young adults shift communication from parents to friends and romantic partners.

Middle adulthood shows high dependence on parents and peak female friendships.

Old age is characterized by dependence on children and intergenerational contact.

Abstract

Each stage of the human life course is characterized by a distinctive pattern of social relations. We study how the intensity and importance of the closest social contacts vary across the life course, using a large database of mobile communication from a European country. We first determine the most likely social relationship type from these mobile phone records by relating the age and gender of the caller and recipient to the frequency, length, and direction of calls. We then show how communication patterns between parents and children, romantic partner, and friends vary across the six main stages of the adult family life course. Young adulthood is dominated by a gradual shift of call activity from parents to close friends, and then to a romantic partner, culminating in the period of early family formation during which the focus is on the romantic partner. During middle adulthood call patterns suggest a high dependence on the parents of the ego, who, presumably often provide alloparental care, while at this stage female same-gender friendship also peaks. During post-reproductive adulthood, individuals and especially women balance close social contacts among three generations. The age of grandparenthood brings the children entering adulthood and family formation into the focus, and is associated with a realignment of close social contacts especially among women, while the old age is dominated by dependence on their children.