Defining the family: the role of personal values and personal acquaintance

Abstract

Applying Schwartz's values theory and Allport's contact theory, this study examines the role of personal values and personal acquaintance with non-traditional families as mediators of the association between socio-demographic variables (SES) and family concept. In the first known study of its kind on the Jewish-Israeli family, a sample of 1518 adult respondents took part in a panel survey. The main findings underline the strong contribution of personal acquaintance with non-traditional families and the values of Conservation, and Self-Transcendence as mediators of the association between SES and family definition. In addition, women, the better-educated, and secular respondents are more inclusive in the types of relationships sanctioned as family. These findings shed light on the complex mechanisms by which personal variables, SES and individual values, and the environmental variable of personal contact with non-traditional families underpin the definition of family, and further support the utility of Allport and Schwartz's theories.

Keywords:

• Family
• personal acquaintance with non-traditional families
• personal values
• Jewish-Israeli families

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions regarding additional analysis and revisions. We are thankful to Gershon Maller for his editorial consultation.

This study was partly supported by the Sara Peleg Foundation of Tel Aviv University.

Notes

1. Preliminary analysis revealed that the correlation between Openness to Change and Conservation values was significantly high (−0.78). The Variance Inflation Factor value for this variable was 4.35, suggesting a high probability for multi-collinearity. Thus, we omitted the Openness to Change variable from the analysis; results of the analyses using Openness to Change mirrors Conservation values.

2. Additional regression models were conducted using a single mediator predictor each time. Results of these regression models were similar to those presented in the results section, which includes multiple mediator variables.