Is there intergenerational continuity in early life experiences? Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Abstract

There has been longstanding and widespread interdisciplinary interest in understanding intergenerational processes, or the extent to which conditions repeat themselves across generations. However, due to the difficulty of collecting longitudinal, multigenerational data on early life conditions, less is known about the extent to which offspring experience the same early life conditions that their parents experienced in their own early lives. Using data from a socioeconomically diverse, White U.S. American cohort of 1,312 offspring (50% female) and their fathers (N = 518 families), we address three primary questions: (1) To what extent is there intergenerational continuity in early life experiences (social class, home atmosphere, parent-child relationship quality, health)? (2) Is intergenerational continuity in early life experiences greater for some domains of experience compared to others? and (3) Are there person-level (offspring sex, birth order, perceptions of marital stability) and family-level factors (family size, father education level and education mobility, marital stability) that moderate intergenerational continuity? Multilevel models indicated that intergenerational continuity was particularly robust for childhood social class, but nonsignificant for other early life experiences. Further, intergenerational continuity was moderated by several family-level factors, such that families with higher father education/mobility and marital stability, tended to have offspring with the most optimal early life experiences, regardless of what their father experienced in early life. We discuss the broader theoretical implications for family systems, as well as practical implications for individual-level and family-level interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).