Intergenerational continuity in parenting: a review and theoretical integration

Abstract

Objective: This review evaluates literature on how parenting behaviors are passed from one generation to the next in families by providing a new definitional framework to organize existing work, utilizing this framework to review literature on intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors, and proposing a new developmental framework for understanding the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Design: The present review examines 31 studies of intergenerational continuity in parenting, summarizes the findings offered by these studies, and integrates this existing literature in a theoretical framework for considering the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Results: Results indicate that parental warmth, hostility, and behavioral control each demonstrate intergenerational continuity, and that internalizing and externalizing behavior serve as potential mediators of intergenerational continuity across all three types of parenting behaviors.

Conclusions: Parenting behaviors falling in the warmth, hostility, and behavioral control domains each demonstrate modest continuity across generations. Internalizing and externalizing behaviors developed by children in response to parenting in their family of origin may persist and cause similar patterns of parenting when these children grow up and start their own families. Partner psychopathology and parenting styles may moderate these externalizing and internalizing pathways to intergenerational continuity in parenting.

Keywords:

• behavioral control
• externalizing problems
• hostile
• intergenerational processes
• internalizing problems
• parenthood/parenting
• parenting styles
• warmth

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Dr. Anna Bardone-Cone, Dr. Andrea Hussong, and Dr. Deborah Jones, who provided invaluable feedback and insight throughout the process of manuscript creation.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805, as well as a National Research Service Award (NRSA) and predoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [T32-HD07376] through the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.