New developments and recent research questions in the project "Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations"

Abstract

The “Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations” project is an interdisciplinary cross-cultural study on values, fertility, and intergenerational relationships. The VOC study focuses on reasons for having or not having children and investigates the interplay of values and parent-child relationships in three generations and across cultures (cf. Trommsdorff/Kim/Nauck 2005; Trommsdorff/Nauck 2005, 2006, 2010). By now, a large data set with N = 16.461 participants (adolescents, their mothers and maternal grandmothers and a sample of mothers with small children) is available from nineteen different countries in four continents. This report focuses on recent innovative research questions that are currently tackled by international researchers involved in the project. These topics refer to three thematic areas: value of children, intergenerational relations, and value transmission from a crosscultural perspective. These research questions have been raised in the framework of a recent international workshop on “Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations”, organized by Gisela Trommsdorff and Bernhard Nauck, principle investigators of the project, at the University of Konstanz (March 29 to 30, 2012), and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Some of the studies briefly summarized below will be submitted for publication.