Transgenerational Transmission of the Beliefs of Competent Parenting

Abstract

Transgenerational transmission of family values and beliefs in upbringing children is performed continuously from generation to generation. Family system of values is determined by emotional relationships, attitude towards the family goals, principles, distribution of authority, and the preferred method of parenting style. In this regard, we wanted to investigate whether there were significant positive correlations between the assessment of parenting style in the primary student's family and their beliefs about the competent parenting. We examined 584 students of the University of Nis. The survey used the following instruments: Index of family relations (IFR, author of Hudson 1982) and the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ, Authors: Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 2001). We also used vignettes which present parenting styles of father and mother: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, inconsistent and uninvolved. The results showed that authoritarianism in the student's primary family contributed to their favourable assessment of those families where a parent manifest was authoritarian and indifferent parenting style and student's primary family was consistently less favourable in the assessment of corrective actions within the authoritative, permissive, and inconsistent parenting style. Coercion and Non-Reasoning as authoritarian style features contributed to a better assessment of indifferent parental style. The reference literature (Baumrind, 1966, 1991; Rohner, 2009; Teti, Candelaria, 2002), this parenting style is recognized as the most dysfunctional, because of its negative impact on the child development outcomes. This implies that influence of dysfunctional parenting is transferred transgenerationaly, which confirms the systemic approach to the family and its transgenerational analysis of patterns of functioning.