Role Reversal: When Emerging Adults Initiate Health Confrontations With Their Parents

Utilizing theories of social confrontation, this study explores communication shifts in family dynamics during emerging adulthood, focusing on the motivations, barriers, and emotional outcomes of health-related confrontations between emerging adults and their parents. Results indicated that emerging adults’ perceived legitimacy and urgency of health concerns play important roles in the emotional expression in their health confrontations as well as their impact on parents’ future health behaviors, suggesting that emerging adulthood can be a critical time of communicative role-reversal when children begin to prepare themselves for their eventual roles as caregivers for aging parents. Theoretical implications, practical applications, and areas for future research are discussed.