Like grandparents, like parents: Empirical evidence and psychoanalytic thinking on the transmission of parenting styles

The authors discuss the issue of intergenerational transmission of parenting from an empirical and psychoanalytic perspective. After presenting a framework to explain their conception of parenting, they describe intergenerational transmission of parenting as a key to interpreting and eventually changing parenting behaviors. Then they present (1) the empirical approach aimed at determining if there is actually a stability across generations that contributes to harsh parenting and eventually maltreatment and (2) the psyphoanalytic thinking that seeks to explain the continuity in terms of representations and clinical phenomena. The authors also discuss the relationship between the attachment and the caregiving systems and hypothesize a common base for the two systems in childhood experience. Finally, they propose the psychoanalytic perspective as a fruitful theoretical framework to integrate the evidence for the neurophysiological mediators and moderators of intergenerational transmission. Psychoanalytically informed research can provide clinically relevant insights and hypotheses to be tested.

Intergenerational Transmission of Authoritative Parenting Style: Evidence from Japan

We examine and verify our hypothesis from a theoretical model that parents are more likely to be authoritative if they are from wealthy families. Using the data from the Preference Parameters Study of Osaka University, Japan, we find that there are significantly positive associations between respondents’ authoritative parenting style and their family living standards when 15 years old. This result shows how childhood family economic status influences the intergenerational transmission of parenting style.