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This chapter examines how parents' own romantic experiences as adolescents serve as models for the way they address their adolescent offspring's romance and sexuality and how this, in turn, shapes adolescent romantic behavior. In particular, emerging adolescent romantic interests and activities can reawaken parents' own relationship difficulties and doubts from the past and set the stage for their current parenting. These linkages are examined within a broader conceptual framework, influenced by attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives, that attempts to understand the dynamics of intergenerational transmission of parenting.

This chapter provides an overview of Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty following the lives of 12,000 children in 4 developing countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) over 15 years. The authors outline the study's conceptual and analytical framework and report on some early findings concerning trends in child welfare and the dynamics of child poverty, in particular looking at how poverty is transmitted across generations. Based on data collected when the children were aged 5 and 12, they conclude that economic growth itself will not solve the problems associated with poverty in childhood, and in some instances can accentuate inequalities. They also conclude that the experience of deprivations in childhood cast a very long shadow for children as they grow and develop, and that properly designed social policies can have a protective effect against economic shocks (such as the global financial crisis).

This chapter explores how sexual liberalisation values differ between young people with an immigrant background and their majority peers in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and England. It focuses in particular on cultural aspects of immigrant integration, including acculturative change associated with immigrant generations, as well as youth’s varying ethno-cultural heritages and religious affiliations. Analyses document the tendency to more-conservative attitudes among minorities with a more traditional background, in terms of both religious affiliation and country of origin. That cultural imprints are resilient towards acculturative tendencies is also sustained by our findings of no significant differences between first- and second-generation immigrants. Consistently across all four CILS4EU countries, the more religious individuals displayed lower levels of sexual liberalism, other things being equal. Parents are proved to be influential in young people’s value formation, with the congruence of values between parents and children being significantly stronger in more-religious families. Finally, the study highlights the assimilative role of interethnic mixing in terms of either intermarriages or young people’s interethnic friendship ties.

This chapter analyzes the intergenerational transmission of gender preferences in education investment at the macro and the micro level using the Taiwan PSFD data. The macro‐level analysis shows that, relative to the older generation, (1) parental differential treatment of girls has become weaker for the younger generation, (2) the influence of parental educational background on child schooling is weaker for the younger generation, and (3) the helping effect of elder siblings has become a competing effect for the younger generation. Tracing each micro lineage, however, a weak habitus effect of the gender‐specific mindset within each lineage is found, in the sense that mothers who were treated unfavorably when they were young tend to treat their female children unfavorably. It is also shown that education is the most important factor in the dilution of this habitus effect.

In this chapter dissimilarities of findings regarding intergenerational continuities of attachment are discussed in the light of developmental processes, contextual variables and measurement issues. The distinction between intergenerational transmission and its outcome - intergenerational congruence of attachment - is used to distinguish between two types of conclusions that may be drawn based on studies on individual attachment in the parent-child dyad. It is proposed that evidence on intergenerational congruencies of attachment add more to our knowledge on the intergenerational transmission process rather than its outcome, congruence. Adaptability of parent-child behaviours is stressed as the cause of both similarity and divergence of attachment quality across generations.

This chapter reviews some of the findings of a multi-cohort longitudinal study spanning over three decades, focusing on the secondary post-traumatic stress symptoms among adult offspring of Israeli former prisoners of war (POWs) whose fathers were captured by the Egyptians and Syrians during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The effects of captivity on the ex-POWs’ mental health and parenting as well as its consequential effects on their offspring are examined in the veterans (fathers), their wives (mothers), and their offspring. The chapter discusses offspring characteristics that may render them vulnerable or resilient: (1) gender; (2) the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism; and (3) differentiation of self. Findings include the strong intergenerational effects of trauma, particularly on sons; very late–onset results of PTSD in the fathers; the possible mediating effects of parental PTSD; and the role of the offspring’s genetic and personality characteristics.

This introductory chapter describes the research approach to the question, “How do religious parents in the United States approach the task of passing on their religious faith and practice to their children?” It then goes further to consider the implications of the question on theories of culture and how it works. The chapter suggests two different answers to these questions, one substantive and one theoretical. Substantively, it shows how American religious parents tackle the challenge of intergenerational religious transmission to children. Theoretically, the chapter reveals what an inquiry into that substantive concern can teach about the nature and operation of culture more generally.

This chapter explores the effects of exposure to violence during childhood in contexts of poverty, as well as some of the psychosocial mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of violence. Essential processes of child-parent attachment in the early years are explored, as well as the disorganization of early attachment related to violence. Among the effects of early attachment disorganization are failures in emotion regulation, social agency, and mentalization, all of which tend to distort future parent-child relationships, thus exposing the next generation to violence. Principles and policies to promote resilience among children in contexts of poverty are discussed in the last section of the chapter.

This chapter discusses how lifecourse imperatives require an intergenerational transmission of family land about every twenty-five to thirty years. How parents transfer family resources to children is strongly influenced by inheritance priorities intrinsic to cultural beliefs about land. Household-level decisions—the inheritance patterns of previous generations and the responses of sibling heirs to the patrimony received—have cumulative effects on farm community land tenure patterns. Loyalty among siblings and to the farm—symbolized by a sense of a shared patrimony—is powerfully shaped by the family environment. Families, aware that sibling strife can potentially destroy a landed patrimony, generally attempt to forge solidarity by socializing children to honor an “axiom of amity.”

This concluding chapter reviews, highlights, and elaborates on some key points. Many scholars in the social sciences and the humanities study various aspects of religion. Despite it being a question of huge importance for religion and family life, however, extremely few scholars have studied how and why religious parents raise their children to pass on to them their religious practices and beliefs. This chapter engages this question of intergenerational religious transmission by taking a cultural approach, in the hope of further opening up this area for additional study and providing helpful answers and greater understanding. In the process, the chapter discusses some important things about the nature and workings of culture generally. But it notes that much more research on both religious parenting and cultural models is needed beyond what has been accomplished here.

This chapter examines three other important cultural models that condition their approach to religious transmission to children—those concerning the nature of children, the task of parenting, and the importance of family solidarity. The dominant view of religious American parents about intergenerational religious transmission is also informed by a particular understanding of children's nature and potentials. In addition, American religious parents have a cultural model not only of the nature of children but also the job of parenting. Finally, conversations with religious parents about passing on religion to children brought to the surface a distinct cultural model with its own beliefs and associated feelings about the importance of family solidarity. This outlook is related to the cultural models of the nature of children and the task of parenting described above, but not reducible to them.

I met Channi for the first time when I was a senior house officer (trainee) in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, and I worked under his supervision for 6 months, in 1998. At that time, Channi was the only Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist at the Maudsley, covering the Liaison Services at King’s College Hospital, the outreach work, and the Mother and Baby Unit. And, of course, he was leading the academic section. It is perhaps the best tribute to his memory that it takes now three consultants and two academics to do the work that he was then doing all by himself! I was already interested in neuroendocrinology, and Channi was fascinated by the possibility that hormones might have a role in the mental health problems of the perinatal period. At that time, the notion that hormonal changes in pregnancy could have long-lasting effects on the offspring was still at its infancy, and I remember fondly the many discussions on this topic with Channi, sitting at his famous old desk. Channi was a pioneer in this field: he was the first to emphasize the dramatic impact of depression in pregnancy on the wellbeing of mothers and children. I am honoured to be able to continue this line of research today. The intergenerational transmission of stress has powerful clinical and social consequences, consolidating social adversity and psychopathology in future generations. The 2007 Policy Briefing by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, ‘Preventing child maltreatment in Europe: a public health approach’ (WHO 2007), recognizes that ‘there is an association between maltreatment in childhood and the risk of later . . . becoming a perpetrator of violence or other antisocial behaviour as a teenager or adult’. The report also highlights that the costs are both overt (for example, medical care for victims, treatment of offenders, and legal costs for social care) and less obvious (for example, criminal justice and prosecution costs, specialist education, and mental health provision). In Europe, only the United Kingdom has calculated the total economic burden, estimated to be ￡735 million in 1996 (WHO 2007).

This chapter picks out some themes that have emerged from the different aspects of the children's lives covered in the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). It draws together a few implications for the future. It notes that the threads running through this volume and this study tell of diversity, mobility, and intergenerational transmission. It explains that the diversity of the points from which the MCS children have started out in life include inequality in their family origins, while variation and inequality are beginning to emerge in the development paths of the children themselves. It further explains that on mobility, the longitudinal data permits a view of the fluidity of the families' situation over the first five years in family composition, poverty, parental employment, location, and childcare. It notes that the study also provides an important building block to assess secular change in intergenerational social mobility, and detailed evidence on the various routes through which parents transmit well-being and also social advantage to their children.

This chapter presents evidence of how attitudes toward gender roles in the home and market are shaped by Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions. Children of immigrants in a broad set of European countries with ancestry from across the world are studied. Individuals are examined within country of residence using variation in cultural dimensions across countries of ancestry. The approach focuses attention on how gender roles are shaped across generations within families. Both influences on the father’s and mother’s side are studied. Ancestry from more masculine cultures shape more traditional gender roles on both parents’ sides. On the father side more pragmatic cultures foster gender equality on the mother’s side power distance promote equality attitudes, although this influence differs markedly between daughters and sons. Pragmatism is in several circumstances the strongest influence on gender norms.

Guilt and its denial shaped intergenerational conversations in West Germany. Based on a letter written by a convict for his son's seventeenth birthday in 1966, this chapter analyzes the moral lessons transmitted by perpetrators to their children. The father's denial of culpability undermined his parental integrity and moral authority. While he tried to impress his son with his sincerity, he carefully avoided any mention of his involvement in mass killings of Jews in Minsk/Belarus. Such strategies of evasion characterized intergenerational interactions in postwar Germany, where young people were forced to choose between complicity in the deceptive cover-ups of their elders or angry rejection and betrayal of filial loyalty. This moral dilemma shaped the coming of age of the German generation of 1968, who were deeply conflicted in their rebellion against the parents as morally corrupt and politically tainted by National Socialism

This chapter explores the fundamental drivers of economic development and political institutions. It provides a novel empirical analysis of the determinants of institutional differences and the diffusion of institutional innovations across societies. A critical discussion of the recent literature is presented, documenting how economic and political outcomes are affected by traits that have deep historical and geographic roots and that are passed on from generation to generation. The hypothesis is presented that intergenerationally transmitted traits affect current outcomes by acting as barriers to the diffusion of technological and institutional innovations: a longer historical separation time between populations creates greater barriers. Hence, the degree of ancestral distance between a given society and the society at the frontier of institutional and technological development should be associated with higher barriers and lower adoption. This hypothesis is tested empirically with cross-country data. Empirical findings provide substantial support for the proposition that long-term historical distance from the frontier affects both current institutions and development.