Mothers May Hold the Key to How Young Adults Forge Their Identity, Turkish Study Finds

For most of the twentieth century, psychologists assumed that becoming an adult was a relatively predictable march: finish school, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Today, that sequence has unraveled, particularly in societies where higher education is expanding and marriage is delayed. Developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett captured this shift with the concept of emerging adulthood, a distinct phase spanning roughly the late teens through the twenties in which young people explore love, work, and worldviews before settling into stable adult commitments. A new study from Turkey, published in BMC Psychology, adds an unusually rich data point to this conversation by asking how the relationships emerging adults maintain with their mothers and fathers shape one of the central psychological tasks of this period: the formation of identity.

The research, led by Meva Demir Kaya of Atatürk University together with Hüsna Albayrak Yalçın of the Turkish National Police Academy, Figen Çok of Başkent University, and identity-development specialist Koen Luyckx of KU Leuven, stands out for a methodological reason that is rarer than it should be in this literature. Rather than relying solely on the self-reports of young people, the team recruited both generations. In total, 553 Turkish university students and 1,106 of their parents took part in the cross-sectional study, allowing the researchers to compare how children and parents each perceive the parent–child relationship and to test whether both perspectives predict the young adults’ identity outcomes.

The study was designed around three questions. First, does identity formation differ between emerging adults who live with their parents and those who live apart? Second, do the relationships that young adults perceive with their mothers and fathers predict how their identities are developing? Third, and crucially, do the parents’ own perceptions of those same relationships also predict identity formation in their children? This third question is what gives the study its multi-informant edge. In much of the existing research, the parent’s voice is missing entirely, leaving open the possibility that findings reflect only how young adults choose to portray their families.

To measure identity, the researchers used the Dimensions of Identity Development Scale, an instrument grounded in contemporary models that treat identity formation as a dynamic process rather than a single achieved endpoint. This framework distinguishes between adaptive dimensions, such as exploring one’s options and committing to choices, and maladaptive ones, such as ruminating endlessly about alternatives or avoiding the question of who one is altogether. The team also administered Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage Inventory, tapping the broader psychosocial maturity associated with Erik Erikson’s stage theory, in which identity versus role confusion is the defining crisis of adolescence and young adulthood. Relationships with parents were assessed with the Parent–Adult Relationship Questionnaire, adapted for use with adult offspring.

The first finding may surprise readers who assume that flying the nest is a psychological prerequisite for growing up. Whether the university students lived with their parents or separately made no measurable difference to their identity formation. In Turkey, where multigenerational households remain common and many students attend universities in their home cities, this null result carries real weight. It suggests that physical co-residence, in itself, neither hinders the exploration and commitment processes that build an identity nor accelerates them. What matters, the data indicate, is not the shared roof but the quality of the relationship beneath it.

That quality was examined through two structural equation models, a statistical technique that allows researchers to test networks of hypothesized relationships among variables simultaneously rather than one correlation at a time. In the first model, built from the emerging adults’ own reports, characteristics of the relationship with the mother predicted several features of identity formation, while the relationship with the father predicted fewer. In the second model, constructed from the parents’ reports, the pattern repeated: mothers’ perceptions of their relationship with their adult children predicted multiple aspects of identity development, whereas fathers’ perceptions predicted only a few. The convergence across informants strengthens the case that the mother–child bond occupies a privileged position during this developmental window, at least in this Turkish sample.

Why would mothers loom larger than fathers in the identity work of emerging adulthood? The authors’ findings are consistent with a broader body of developmental research showing that mothers in many cultures, including collectivistic ones, tend to remain the primary emotional confidants as children grow, engaging in the kind of sustained, exploratory dialogue in which young people rehearse values, career ambitions, and beliefs. Fathers, meanwhile, may function more as figures of authority or material support, roles that matter for well-being but may be less directly entangled with the day-to-day negotiation of identity. The multi-informant design makes this asymmetry harder to dismiss as a reporting artifact, since both the children and the parents themselves pointed in the same direction.

The study also exemplifies a technical trend in developmental science: the move toward multi-informant, multi-method designs as a safeguard against shared-method variance. When a single person reports both the predictor and the outcome, correlations can be inflated by that person’s overall mood, self-presentation style, or response tendencies. By collecting data from two family members and analyzing them in parallel path models, the researchers could check whether the same relational dynamics predicted identity outcomes regardless of who was doing the reporting. The team reported standard diagnostics for their models, including checks for multicollinearity through variance inflation factors and evaluation of established fit indices, reflecting the analytical conventions of contemporary structural equation modeling.

Conducted across seven Turkish universities with ethical approval from Atatürk University and funding from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey through its Career Development Program, the project also speaks to a cultural question that has long hovered over developmental psychology: how much of the emerging adulthood framework, built largely on Western samples, travels to other societies? The Turkish context is a compelling test case. It combines strong family obligations and relatively late departure from the parental home with rapid urbanization, expanding university enrollment, and generational shifts in values. Finding that co-residence is developmentally neutral, while relationship quality with parents, especially mothers, is meaningfully linked to identity processes, suggests that the underlying psychological mechanisms of this life stage may be more universal than the living arrangements that surround them.

As with any cross-sectional study, the design captures a single moment in time, so the direction of influence cannot be pinned down with certainty; it is equally plausible that young adults who are further along in forming their identities experience warmer, more open relationships with their parents. Longitudinal follow-ups would be needed to disentangle cause from consequence. Still, the practical implications are inviting. For families navigating the twenties together, the message is that staying under the same roof is neither a threat nor a shortcut. What counts is cultivating a relationship, particularly between mothers and their emerging adult children, in which exploration is supported rather than foreclosed, and in which both generations feel heard as the young person assembles an answer to the oldest question in psychology: who am I?

Subject of Research: The role of parent–child relationships in identity formation among Turkish emerging adults

Article Title: Identity formation and relationships with parents in Turkish emerging adults: a multi-informant examination

Article References: Demir Kaya, M., Yalçın, H. A., Çok, F., & Luyckx, K. (2026). Identity formation and relationships with parents in Turkish emerging adults: a multi-informant examination. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05686-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05686-w

Keywords: emerging adulthood, identity formation, parent-child relationship, developmental psychology, multi-informant method, Turkish university students, mother-child bond, structural equation modeling, Erikson psychosocial stages, co-residence, BMC Psychology, family relationships