Social Stratification and the Transmission of Values in the Family: A Cross-National Assessment

For both the U.S. and Poland, we develop measurement models of the family's social-stratification position and of parents' and children's valuations of self-direction. We find that the relationship between parents' and children's values is much stronger than past studies had indicated. In both countries the family's stratification position has an impressive bearing on the values of its adolescent and young-adult offspring. Much of this impact is through social stratification affecting parents' values, and parents' values, in turn, affecting children's values. Social stratification affects parental values primarily because of the impact of parents' occupational self-direction on their values. Although parents' and children's values may be reciprocally related, the predominant effects are from parents' to children's values. The one notable cross-national difference we find is in the relative roles of fathers and mothers in the intergenerational transmission of values: in the United States, fathers play at least as important a role as do mothers; in Poland, mothers play the predominant role.