The Impact of Family Social Capital to Intergenerational Value Transmission

The processes of globalization are changing the way of life at micro and macro levels of society [Friedman, 1994; Giddens, 2000]. However, the increasing economic integration leads to increasing social disintegration [Munck, 2005]: the breaking of traditional social values, weakening of social ties, including intra-and intergenerational ones, which ultimately leads to social conflicts, breaking of cultural continuity in the society, weakening of interpersonal and institutional trust [Golenkov, Igitkhanyan, 1999; Furstenberg, Kaplan, 2004]. In these circumstances the particular relevance is the study of patterns of social cohesion – in particular, the "vertical" (inter-generational), therefore we turn to the analysis of the process of intergenerational transmission of values and its mechanisms. Values play a key role in maintaining and changing the culture, influencing the behavior and providing the basis for making important life decisions [Schönpflug, Bilz, 2009; Schwartz, 2014]. In this regard, the study of the conditions and psychological mechanisms of value transmission deserves special attention.

Family (parents) is the major agent of socialization. Parents can affect values of children both through personal example (modeling - learning through observation of parents’ behavior), and by means of rewards and punishments [De Houwer et al., 2001]. Family members usually help, support, and trust each other. Such relationships form family social capital (FSC) that is defined as a set of resources (trust, mutual support, mutual assistance, attention to the needs of each other) and is mediated by relations between family members. Thus the nature of the relationship within the family can have some impact on intergenerational value transmission.

We interviewed 180 families – parents and adolescents (N=360) living in Russia and found that FSC has a strong impact on intergenerational value transmission (β=.866, p < .001), especially on transmission of Self-Transcendence values (β=.917, p < .001). Obtained results are being discussed.