Filipino Youth in Multigenerational Household

Clarinda R Lusterio-Berja, University of the Philippines

Kinship extended households is usually considered as common in developing countries like the Philippines. It is expected in rural areas where traditions are still intact. In urban areas, it is expected that the movement would be towards nuclearization due to urbanization and development but recent Philippine census data reveals otherwise. There is an increasing proportion of multigenerational households in highly urbanized areas. This new trend is seen as a response to various social and economic pressures to families. Several possible factors can be easily identified: lack of income, employment, lack of available housing facilities, teenage pregnancies and solo parenthood. Most of these problems stem from poverty therefore multigenerational household arrangements are not only seen as family survival strategy but also specifically seen as a coping strategy to poverty situation. Are family members particularly the youth able to cope in this kind of household structure? What are the conditions of youth in multigenerational households? Current researches on adolescents show a major paradigm shift in the conception of adolescents from viewing adolescents as liabilities to seeing them as assets and from being alienated to adults to seeing their need to be connected with caring adults. Using this paradigm, it is worthwhile to ask whether multigenerational arrangements contribute to the success or failure of youth's transition from childhood to maturity? This study utilizes data from the 2002 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Survey III (YAFS3). This survey is third of a series of youth surveys covering all 16 administrative regions of the Philippines including the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Its respondents total 20,000 young people ages 15-27 years old. Household data were generated from 17,000 sample households and community data from 1,200 barangays or communities. This study will identify multigenerational households using the relationship to household head, age and marital status variables in the household record. The characteristics of these households and the conditions of youth in these households will then be described and compared to non-multigenerational households. The household data will then be linked to the respondents data and the community data. To determine whether it is contributing more to the success or failure of the youth's transition, multilevel analysis of youth risk behaviors will be done. The first stage utilizes individual characteristics, the second stage utilizing household structure (multigenerational vs. non-multigenerational) and the third, community variables. The statistical softwares to be used are SPSS and MLn for the multilevel estimates. The expected findings would center on the criticality of settings that youth are exposed to. Their risk behaviors are not only determined by their individuality but also greatly shaped by how their parents and other adults have organized their educational and social experiences. Thus, the onus of responsibility for problems not only lies on the young but also with adults, particularly their parents (and grandparents) and institutions in the community. In the first part the nature of multigenerational households are described as problematic and certainly, the conditions of multigenerational households should be looked into closely to ensure that the youth are safe, secure and stable within these household arrangements during the critical time of their transition from childhood to adulthood.