Beyond intergenerational transmission: Intergenerational patterns of family formation

Research about parent effects on family behavior focuses on intergenerational transmission: whether children adopt the same family behavior as their parents. This potentially overemphasizes similarity and obscures heterogeneity in parent effects on family behavior. In this study we make two contributions. First, instead of focusing on isolated focal events, we conceptualize family formation holistically as the process of union formation and childbearing between age 15 and age 40. We then discuss mechanisms likely to shape these intergenerational patterns. Second, beyond estimating average transmission effects, we innovatively apply multichannel sequence analysis to dyadic sequence data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG, N=461 parent-child dyads) and identify three salient intergenerational family formation patterns: a strong transmission, a moderated transmission, and an intergenerational contrast pattern. This enables us examine what determines parent’s and children’s likelihood to sort into a specific intergenerational pattern. Educational upward mobility is a strong predictor of moderated intergenerational transmission, whereas parent-child conflict increases the likelihood of intergenerational contrast in family formation. We conclude that intergenerational patterns of family formation are generated at the intersection of macro structural shifts and family internal psychological dynamics