First-generation college students (FGCSs) are known to experience more difficulty in the college education environment compared to continuing-generation college students. The current study used a person-centered approach to investigate subgroups of FGCSs that have had similar experiences of social, financial, academic, and cultural barriers in their college lives. A total of 382 undergraduate students in the U.S. participated in the study. A latent profile analysis revealed there may be two particular profiles for FGCSs including these four barriers. FGCSs in Profile 2 reported more social, financial, academic, and cultural barriers. In addition, these students also reported lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and drop-out intention than those in Profile 1. Students’ gender, their parent's marital status, and the estimated debt after graduation significantly predicted profile membership. Interventions to support FGCSs will also be discussed.

Given roles and expectations of father involvement in South Korea are in transition from traditional breadwinner to an involved caregiver to children, it is plausible that Korean fathers show diverse involvement behaviors in the contexts of work, family, and parenting. Using a person-centered approach, we explored if there were groupings of Korean fathers who could be identified from their involvement with their children. We also examined if those subgroup memberships were related to various factors in work, family, and parenting domains. With a sample of 212 married working fathers and the 12 items of involvement behaviors, we found four heterogeneous subgroups of people: low-involved, accessibility-focused, involved-but-less-accessible, and highly involved fathers. Significant differences among the four profiles were also found regarding various factors such as job stress, work and family conflict, work schedule, maternal employment, parenting satisfaction, and perceived level of involvement. Suggestions for future research, practitioners, and policymakers were discussed.

College students’ perceptions of filial obligation can differ across individual, familial, and cultural contexts. However, comparative and empirical studies on this issue are scarce. To address the gap in literature, we examined how American and Korean cultural contexts differently affect the association between two types of parent-child relationship quality (mother-child dyad and father-child dyad) and two types of filial obligation (instrumental support and emotional support). In addition, we examined how children’s gender moderates the above associations. We collected a sample of 500 college students, ages 18 to 25 years, from private universities in the United States (n = 224) and South Korea (n = 276). Regarding American college students, results showed that mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with emotional support of filial obligation. In terms of Korean college students, however, mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with two types of filial obligation respectively. These results indicate that Korean college students consider both instrumental and emotional support as important values of filial obligation, whereas American college students consider emotional support as the more important value of filial obligation compared to instrumental support. Regarding the moderating effect, we found that children’s gender moderated the associations between father-child relationship quality and two types of filial obligation in Korean college students. We suggest that Korean cultural contexts based on the tradition of patriarchy and gender socialization affect the association between father-child relationship quality and filial obligation.

With the emphasis on children’s responsibility for the care of ageing parents, this study examined how Chinese adult children’s support provided to parents was associated with filial piety, support from parents and parent-child contact frequency. With the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey, we used structural equation modelling with 1,452 adults with two living parents and tested the model for sons and daughters separately. For both groups, the results showed that (1) filial piety was positively associated with emotional support provided to parents; (2) support received from parents was positively related to instrumental and emotional support to parents; and (3) parent-child contact frequency was linked to instrumental support. For adult daughters, financial support was positively associated with the support received from parents and negatively related to parent-child contact frequency. This study suggests that the traditional norm of filial piety may be less influential than other factors for adult children’s support behaviour.