Good Parenting: Do Younger Parents Learn from Their Mothers?

Diane Patel, Ohio State University
Jamie L. Lynch, Ohio State University
Frank Mott, Ohio State University

In ongoing research, we are utilizing a unique data set, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 cohort) and their Young Adult children, to explore cross generational connections in the propensity of young men and women at adolescent and young adult ages to follow parenting practices evidenced by their mothers a generation earlier. Our particular focus will be to contrast their mother’s child-raising behaviors (NLSY79) for their children in the 1980s with how these young women and men (NLSY Young Adults) are currently raising the children in their households, as evidenced using the HOME scale (Caldwell and Bradley 1984). In addition to describing these cross generational connections, we will focus on the extent to which these connections may retain their independence in a multivariate context after controlling for a wide range of factors available in the data set that might be considered to be independently linked with parenting behaviors.