Children's value orientations as they traverse adolescence and emerging adulthood: Alternative routes of parental transmission

Abstract

Parental influence on children's values is usually examined by direct value transmission. In addition to the direct transmission, this study investigates two alternative routes of parental influences: (1) an indirect link between parents’ and children's value orientations via parenting behaviors (based on the identification perspective) and (2) a direct link between parenting behaviors and children's value orientations, independent of parents’ value orientations (based on the need (dis)satisfaction perspective). Regression and dominance analyses were conducted on a three-wave longitudinal dataset of 295 Dutch intact families spanning 10 years. We found direct mother-to-emerging adult transmissions on self-determination; direct father-to-mid adolescent and emerging adult transmissions on work ethic and political traditionalism; indirect parent-to-adolescent transmissions on work ethic and political traditionalism via parental conformity demands; and an independent negative influence of parental autonomy granting on emerging adults’ work ethic and political traditionalism. Apparently, adolescents’ and emerging adults’ values not only reflect their parents’ values, but also their parents’ parenting practices.

Keywords:

• adolescence
• emerging adulthood
• longitudinal
• parent–child value transmission
• parenting behaviors
• social–cultural value orientations

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and issue editors for their constructive comments concerning our manuscript. This work was part of the Social Science research program, which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

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