Intergenerational Continuity Research Articles

Putting flesh to the bone: looking for solidarity in diversity, here and now

ABSTRACTIn many Western European countries, concern rises that both formal mechanisms of redistribution and informal acts of charity, reciprocity and support are challenged by ethnic and cultural diversity. Against such gloomy perspectives, this paper draws on insights from sociology, geography, pedagogy and political science to argue that four traditional sources of solidarity (interdependence, shared norms and values, struggle and encounter) remain relevant, but require a rethinking of their spatial and temporal framing to capture today's intricate engagements of solidarity. More specifically, we draw on theories from the aforementioned disciplines to claim that our understanding of solidarities grounded in the spatial boundedness of territorial states and the intergenerational continuity of supposedly culturally homogeneous nations should be complemented and enriched with an in-depth knowledge of solidarities developing in an entirely different spatio-temporal register, namely that of the everyday places and practices in which people engage across ethnic and cultural boundaries.

Intergenerational continuity in parents' and adolescents' externalizing problems: The role of life events and their interaction with GABRA2.

We examine whether parental externalizing behavior has an indirect effect on adolescent externalizing behavior via elevations in life events, and whether this indirect effect is further qualified by an interaction between life events and adolescents' GABRA2 genotype (rs279871). We use data from 2 samples: the Child Development Project (CDP; n = 324) and FinnTwin12 (n = 802). In CDP, repeated measures of life events, mother-reported adolescent externalizing, and teacher-reported adolescent externalizing were used. In FinnTwin12, life events and externalizing were assessed at age 14. Parental externalizing was indexed by measures of antisocial behavior and alcohol problems or alcohol dependence symptoms in both samples. In CDP, parental externalizing was associated with more life events, and the association between life events and subsequent adolescent externalizing varied as a function of GABRA2 genotype (p ≤ .05). The association between life events and subsequent adolescent externalizing was stronger for adolescents with 0 copies of the G minor allele compared to those with 1 or 2 copies of the minor allele. Parallel moderation trends were observed in FinnTwin12 (p ≤ .11). The discussion focuses on how the strength of intergenerational pathways for externalizing psychopathology may differ as a function of adolescent-level individual differences.

The Moderating Effects of Maternal Age at Childbirth and Emotion Dysregulation on the Intergenerational Continuity of Emotionally Unsupportive Parenting Behaviors

Little research has investigated factors that may moderate the intergenerational transmission of emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors. The present study examined the role of two moderators, emotion dysregulation and maternal age at childbirth, on the relation between maternal childhood history of emotional maltreatment and current observations of emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in 64 mother–child dyads. Results indicated that mothers who were younger at childbirth seemed more likely to engage in emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in the context of high levels of sustained childhood emotional maltreatment, regardless of their level of emotion dysregulation. Mothers who were older at childbirth were at high risk for emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in the context of high levels of sustained emotional maltreatment histories and high emotion dysregulation, yet were not at such risk if emotion dysregulation was low. Implications for the buffering effects of emotion regulation on the risk for emotionally unsupportive behaviors were discussed.

Continuities and changes in infant attachment patterns across two generations

This study examined the intergenerational continuities and changes in infant attachment patterns within a higher-risk longitudinal sample of 55 female participants born into poverty. Infant attachment was assessed using the Strange Situation when participants were 12 and 18 months as well as several decades later with participants’ children. Paralleling earlier findings from this sample on the stability of attachment patterns from infancy to young adulthood, results provided evidence for intergenerational continuities in attachment disorganization but not security. Children of adults with histories of infant attachment disorganization were at an increased risk of forming disorganized attachments. Although changes in infant attachment patterns across the two generations were not correlated with individuals’ caregiving experiences or interpersonal stresses and supports during childhood and adolescence, higher quality social support during adulthood was associated with intergenerational changes from insecure to secure infant–caregiver attachment relationships.

Getting into Fishing: Recruitment and Social Resilience in North Norfolk's ‘Cromer Crab’ Fishery, UK

AbstractThe intergenerational continuity of fishing communities is a growing concern for the sustainability of small‐scale fisheries around Europe. This is exemplified through the case of an English crab fishery where young people are being encouraged into fishing through funded training programmes with limited success. Opportunities for work have declined, most notably through a reduction in crew size to save costs. Interviews with fishermen of different ages are explored using access theory to elucidate how the social reproduction of fishing has changed. This shows how the agency of young aspiring fishermen is increasingly constrained by regulatory and financial factors. Improved social and spatial mobility among fishing families mean that recruitment into the fishery through a father‐to‐son pathway is increasingly uncommon. Youngsters from non‐fishing families face additional financial and relational barriers. Funded courses alone cannot provide a solution. A holistic approach to rural coastal development is required to build social resilience in fishing communities across Europe faced with similar problems.

Early bilinguals and adult heritage speakers: What are the links?

of phenomena that seemingly result from the close contact of two (or more) grammatical systems. Societal bilingualism is characterized by constant and rapid changes which may be observed as they arise and spread in the linguistic and social systems. Likewise, bilingual first language acquisition is characterized by constant changes as children become cognitively and linguistically more mature. This article compares aspects of the grammars of two developing English-Spanish bilinguals with those of adult bilinguals in order to examine the general issue of intergenerational continuity and change in a situation of societal bilingualism. Two types of contact-induced change are identified: copy, a qualitative mechanism that underlies the notion of transfer, and quantitative influence, that is, patterns that are frequent in one language affect the frequency of parallel patterns in a contact language. Changes caused by copying are clearly the result of contact, while those that result from influence may have an internal or an external motivation, or both. The study supports the hypothesis that crosslinguistic interaction affects the lexicon and discoursepragmatics,but not the core syntax of the languages. Some concrete connections are indentified between early bilingual grammars and those of adult bilinguals, namely the increased production of overt subject pronouns and preverbal subjects,a reduced verbal system, and the reproduction of the meaning of word combinations from English into Spanish. The theoretical implications of the parallels identified between the children’s linguistic behavior and that of adult bilinguals are discussed.

Intergenerational continuity in high-conflict family environments

In the current study, we examined continuity in conflict across generations and explored potential mediators and moderators that could explain this continuity. We followed 246 targets from adolescence to adulthood and examined family conflict as reported by multiple reporters in targets' family of origin and current families. Results showed that conflict in the current family was strongly correlated with that of the family of origin in women but not in men. Continuity in family conflict across generations was mediated by patterns of elevated adolescent externalizing behavior in members of the second generation (G2). In addition, analyses revealed an interaction between both G2 partners' externalizing behavior such that if one partner in the G2 family demonstrated high levels of externalizing behavior, elevated levels of family conflict resulted. Potential explanations and implications of these findings are considered.

Intergenerational Continuity and Change in Conceptualization of the “Child” Among Guji People of Ethiopia

The rapidly growing globalization that embodies new technologies has greatly characterized intergenerational difference by fostering change and hindering continuity of values and traditions. However, the effects of cultural change on intergenerational continuity and change in less technologically developed societies have not been documented adequately. This article presents change and continuity between adults and children in conceptualization of the “child” in the context of the Guji people of Ethiopia. It discusses how the meaning of “child” is variable across synchronic generations among the Guji people and how this variability reflects discontinuities and continuities in intergenerational transmission of local knowledge. The difference between adults and children in their knowledge of generational structure is observed as a ground for their divergence in conceptualization of the “child.” Accordingly, for adults, one’s position in generational structure is a basis for identifying somebody as a child. However, for children, one’s level of physical maturity is a basis for defining somebody as a child. The data on which this article is based are drawn from 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji people.

Intergenerational Downward Mobility in Educational Attainment and Occupational Careers in West Germany in the Twentieth Century

What happens in the occupational careers of men if the intergenerational continuity in status reproduction is disrupted by the failure to reproduce the parental level of educational attainment? We frame this failure as a risk for intergenerational status maintenance and ask whether such a risk induces extra effort by way of compensation. By studying eight birth cohorts born between 1919 and 1971 characterized by largely differing conditions with regard to educational and occupational opportunities, we examine how macro-social conditions contribute to opportunities to compensate for such failure later on. In examining this question, we add a new piece to the puzzle of how social origin and education contribute to status attainment and of how the social context shapes these linkages across historical time. We estimated multilevel growth curve models to assess the effect of educational downward mobility (EDM) on the development of occupational status over the career. Our empirical results show that the status of men who experience EDM increases faster over the course of their careers. Moreover, these men reach a slightly higher status as compared with their peers who had reached at least the same educational level as their fathers. The prevailing macro-societal conditions did not cause variation in the effect of EDM on men’s career attainment.

Intergenerational continuity of cell shape dynamics in Caulobacter crescentus.

We investigate the intergenerational shape dynamics of single Caulobacter crescentus cells using a novel combination of imaging techniques and theoretical modeling. We determine the dynamics of cell pole-to-pole lengths, cross-sectional widths, and medial curvatures from high accuracy measurements of cell contours. Moreover, these shape parameters are determined for over 250 cells across approximately 10000 total generations, which affords high statistical precision. Our data and model show that constriction is initiated early in the cell cycle and that its dynamics are controlled by the time scale of exponential longitudinal growth. Based on our extensive and detailed growth and contour data, we develop a minimal mechanical model that quantitatively accounts for the cell shape dynamics and suggests that the asymmetric location of the division plane reflects the distinct mechanical properties of the stalked and swarmer poles. Furthermore, we find that the asymmetry in the division plane location is inherited from the previous generation. We interpret these results in terms of the current molecular understanding of shape, growth, and division of C. crescentus.

Childhood adversities and adult use of potentially injurious physical discipline in Japan.

Using data derived from the World Mental Health Japan Survey (n = 1,186), this study examined the intergenerational continuity of potentially injurious physical discipline of children in a community sample from Japan with a special focus on the confounding effects of 11 other types of childhood adversities (CAs) and the intervening effects of mental disorders and socioeconomic status. Bivariate analyses revealed that having experienced physical discipline as children and five other CAs was significantly associated with the use of physical discipline as parents in the Japanese community examined. However, childhood physical discipline was the only CA that remained significant after adjusting for the other CAs. The association of childhood physical discipline with adult perpetration was independent of the respondents' mental disorders and household income. No significant gender differences were found in the associations between childhood physical discipline and adult perpetration. The current study on Japan provided empirical support consistent with results found in other countries regarding the intergenerational transmission of child physical abuse.

The Family Behind the Farm: Race and the Affective Geographies of Manitoba Pork Production

As increasing toxicity of Manitoba lakes garners public concern, the environmental impacts of pork producers have come under scrutiny. In this context, the Manitoba Pork Council launched The Family Behind the Farm, a series of advertisements and testimonials featuring pork producers and their families. We examine how this campaign operates affectively to distance the family farm from industrial pork production. Building upon geographical literature theorizing the relationship between race and affect, we argue that the campaign mobilizes pride in the family farm through heteronormative and racialized affects of intimacy, tradition, and intergenerational continuity. In the process, not only is pork production made innocent, but the family farm, and rural Manitoba itself, is reproduced as a white, heteronormative space with an innocent past and secure future. By analyzing this specific case, the paper demonstrates the role of the heteronormative family in reproducing affective geographies of whiteness.

Digitization and Materiality: Researching Community Memory Practice Today

Among the most deep-seated anxieties of the Internet age is the fear of technologically produced forgetting. Technology critics and sociologists of memory alike argue that daily exposure to overwhelming flows of information is undermining our ability to connect and synthesize past and present. Acknowledging the salience of these concerns our approach seeks to understand the contemporary conditions of collective memory practice in relation to processes of digitization. We do so by developing an analysis of how digital technologies (image and audio capture, storage, editing, reproduction, distribution and exhibition) have become embedded in wider memory practices of storytelling and commemoration in a community setting: the Salford Lads Club, an organization in the north of England in continuous operation since 1903. The diverse memory practices prompted by the 100th anniversary of the Club's annual camp provide a context in which to explore the transformations of access, interpretation and use, that occur when the archives of civic organizations are digitized. Returning to Halbwachs' (1992) seminal insight that all collective memory requires a material social framework, we argue, contrary to prevailing characterizations of digitization, that under specific conditions, digital resources facilitate new forms of materialization that contribute to sustaining a civic organization's intergenerational continuity.

The intergenerational continuity of breastfeeding intention, initiation, and duration: a systematic review.

In studies investigating predictors of breastfeeding behaviors, it is not uncommon for researchers to adjust for participants' having been breastfed as an infant. This assumes an intergenerational effect of breastfeeding continuity. Our aim was to investigate the veracity of that assumption. Specifically, we sought to summarize and evaluate evidence of associations between breastfeeding in one generation and breastfeeding intentions and behaviors in the second generation. A systematic search of psychological, nursing, and medical databases was conducted for studies examining "having been breastfed" as a factor in breastfeeding intention, initiation, or duration. Quality indicators were assessed and limitations reported. Effects were explored according to outcomes of intention, initiation, and duration. Fifteen papers were found to be eligible for the review. Having been breastfed as an infant was consistently correlated with breastfeeding intention, initiation, and duration. Effect sizes differed depending on methodology. Men's infant-feeding status was also related to later intentions to support or encourage a partner to breastfeed. Robust evidence for intergenerational breastfeeding continuity is present; however, mechanisms that explain this association were not considered in the studies reviewed and would best be explored within longitudinal cohort studies.

Ghosted Images: Old Lesbians on Screen

Screen images of old lesbians combine modes of representing female gender, lesbian sexuality, and old age, all of which contain layers of otherness within a hetero-patriarchal and youth-centered society. Analyzing a range of films, from independent to mainstream cinema, this article explores how the ghosted lesbian paradigm intersects with narratives of aging as decline in representations of lesbian characters who are over the age of sixty. The spectral matters of illness, death, mourning, and widowhood inevitably culminate in an unhappy ending. Removed from a lesbian community context, intergenerational continuity vanishes and the old lesbian emerges as the cultural other.

Intergenerational transmission of psychopathy and mediation via psychosocial risk factors.

Intergenerational continuities in criminal behaviour have been well documented, but the familial nature of psychopathic personality is less well understood. To establish if there is an association between the psychopathic traits of a community sample of men and their offspring and whether psychosocial risk factors mediate this. Participants of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (n = 478 dyads) were assessed for psychopathy using the PCL: SV. Multilevel regression models were used to investigate intergenerational continuity and mediation models examined indirect effects. The fathers' psychopathy was transmitted to both sons and daughters. The transmission of Factor 1 scores was mediated via the fathers' employment problems. For male offspring, the Factor 2 scores were mediated via the fathers' drug use, accommodation and employment problems. For female offspring, Factor 2 scores were mediated via the fathers' employment problems. Understanding of the specific role of certain psychosocial risk factors may be useful in developing preventive measures for the development of psychopathy.

Family Matters: How Queering the Intimate Queers the International

A key insight of queer analytics is that codes and practices of “normalcy” simultaneously constitute “deviancy,” exclusions, and “otherings” as sites of social violence. To reveal how power operates in normative codes and normalizing practices, queer theory aims to “make strange”—disrupt, destabilize, deconstruct, effectively to queer— what is considered normal, commonplace, taken-for-granted, or the “natural order of things.” The point is to contest normativities and orthodoxies (Browne 2006:886), in part by exposing “regimes of the normal” (Eng et al. 2005:3) as historically contingent and power-laden social constructions and by disclosing inconsistencies, instabilities, and fluidities of social meanings and boundaries . In particular, queer work contests “power-ridden normativities of sex” (Berlant and Warner 1995:345) exemplified in heteronormative sex/affective arrangements, and the “normalizing mechanisms of state power” (Eng et al. 2005:1) exemplified in heteropatriarchal marriage/kinship arrangements. Drawing on extensive cross-disciplinary research over several decades, I argue that the making of states is the making of “sex.” In contrast to decentralized networks of societal organization, successful processes of political centralization, that is, state making, are distinguished by their formal (legal) codification of marriage (entailing the heterosexual matrix and “nuclear” family/household form) and patriarchal inheritance of property and citizenship (instituting “private” property and insider–outsider status differentiation). These processes and their power relations are legible initially in early (archaic) state formation, and subsequently (amplified by Christian ideology) in modern European state-making and colonizing practices, eventuating in the now hegemonic form of “sovereign” states constituting Disciplinary IR. In short, the (contingent and contested) normalization of heteropatriarchal principles has historically been key to securing “appropriate” social reproduction and reliable transmission of property and citizenship claims enabling intergenerational continuity of state formations. I have recently summarized this genealogy of “sex,” “the family,” and state formation (Peterson 2014a) and earlier considered the intentional and unintentional queering of states/nations (Peterson …

Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure.

Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly. The second highlights change: because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units, changing family compositions can offset individuals' changing economic chances. I examine whether black-white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage (continuity) or shifting forms of disadvantage (change). I combine cross-sectional and panel analysis using Current Population Survey, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census, and National Vital Statistics data. Results suggest that African Americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity (low upward mobility) and discontinuity (high downward mobility); both helped maintain racial inequality. Yet, intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge. On net, racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity. Economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing; as family structures shifted, family incomes did not fully reflect labor-market gains.

Dignity, Descent, and the Rights to Family Life

Abstract The Article brings together anthropological and legal approaches to the concept of descent. Since Henry Maine, legal theorists have been interested in descent as a link between the generations that assembles the generations into a corporate body, a single collective personality. The Article proposes a view of intergenerational corporate continuity and defends an interpretation of the rights to family life – the rights to marriage and parenthood – as constitutional safeguards of the institution of descent. It argues that descent is the foundation of human dignity, and that the rights to family life should therefore be considered key constituents of human dignity. This notion of dignity is pre-modern but, as a number of authors have argued, our idea of dignity remains partly continuous with pre-modern notions. Our ideas about human dignity conflate in fact two diametrically opposed bases of dignity: the distinctly human capacity for intergenerational continuity and the contrary capacity to break free of the past. The rights to parenthood and marriage are rooted primarily in the notion of dignity-as-descent and not, as several authors have argued, in the inherent value of the intimacy that exists between family members. The Article comments briefly on the current round in the perennial debate on the foundation of kinship between the respective advocates of culture and biology.

‘You can’t escape from it. It’s in your blood’: Naturalizing ethnicity and strategies to ensure family and in-group cohesion

This article studies the construction of ethnicity within majority and minority families and more in particular the strategies developed to ensure intergenerational continuity via an in-depth analysis of the narratives of Belgian-Flemish-, Italian- and Moroccan-origin parents in Flanders, Belgium. Parents were asked to discuss the upbringing of their children and the main elements they want to transmit, with a focus on their ethno-cultural identity. These narratives shed light on how parents perceive themselves, their children and other groups in society, and, more importantly, what these perceptions entail for the upbringing of their children. This article studies the strategies developed to ensure ethno-cultural continuity within the family and/or ethnic group, and discusses in which way these strategies become ‘logic’ in the eyes of these parents. The analysis shows how internalized perceptions and dispositions about one’s ethnicity, cultural background and religious affiliation influence strategy development to ensure linguistic and religious continuity and family cohesion, given the specificities of the social context. Overall, parents try to make sense of the burden of ethno-cultural continuity they feel resting upon their shoulders, but the article discusses how minority and majority parents’ perceptions and strategies tend to differ according to one’s social location and to power differences.