Intergenerational Transmission of Work Values: A Meta-Analytic Review

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Sociology

Background:

• Work values guide behavior and predict economic self-sufficiency, crucial for adult psychological well-being.
• Parental socialization is key to transmitting cultural values, yet family influence on youth's agentic pathways to self-sufficiency is understudied.
• Understanding intergenerational value transmission is vital for youth development and societal economic health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To meta-analytically review the intergenerational transmission of work values from parents to children.
• To investigate the association between parent-child value similarity and youth's transition to adulthood.
• To identify the role of parenting behavior and child age in this transmission process.

Main Methods:

• A meta-analytic review of 30 studies from 11 countries, including 19,987 participants.
• Analysis focused on parent-child work value similarities and parenting behaviors.
• Median child age in the included studies was 18.15 years.

Main Results:

• Parents' work values and parenting behaviors significantly predicted children's work values.
• A significant association was found between mothers' and fathers' work values and their children's values.
• Father-child work value similarity decreased with increasing child age, suggesting other influences.

Conclusions:

• Parental influence on children's work values is significant but moderate, indicating the impact of socio-cultural context and peer influences.
• The study highlights a scarcity of comprehensive empirical research on parent-child work value similarity.
• Findings have implications for labor market policies and understanding youth development toward economic self-sufficiency.