Effects of parents' job insecurity on children's work beliefs and attitudes

The authors hypothesized that children's perceptions of their parents' job insecurity mediate the effects of parental job insecurity and layoffs on children's work beliefs and work attitudes. Male and female undergraduate students (N = 134; M age = 18.9 years), as well as their mothers (M age = 47.0 years) and fathers (M age = 49.1 years), participated voluntarily. With structural equation modeling as implemented by LISREL VIII, support for the proposed model was obtained, whereas no support was obtained for a competing model. Moreover, identification with fathers moderated the influence of perceived paternal job insecurity on children's humanistic work beliefs, but no comparable effect emerged for mothers.