It is often believed that how people were parented is key to how they parent their own children. Although research generally supports this idea, the degree of so-called intergenerational transmission of parenting also varies across families. Little is known about the conditions under which intergenerational transmission is stronger or weaker. We also do not know which parenting dimensions are most likely to be echoed across generations. By better understanding individual differences in intergenerational transmission, parenting programs may become more effective in breaking intergenerational cycles of negative parenting and in maintaining positive parenting practices that are already present within families. The goal of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project BTA was therefore to identify parenting dimensions that are more and less likely to be transmitted across generations, as well as to identify factors that account for the degree of intergenerational continuity and discontinuity in parenting.
Conducting research on the intergenerational transfer of parenting is difficult. Researchers prefer to measure parenting at the moment it takes place and not afterwards, when participants are already adults. The risk that people no longer know exactly how they experienced their upbringing as a child is very high. But in research on intergenerational transmission of parenting, it can take two or three decades before the original children in a study start a family of their own. Therefore, it is important to make good use of the data that already exists. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project BTA therefore combines the data from existing studies by means of an Individual Participant Data (IPD) meta-analysis. These analyses are similar to traditional meta-analyses: data from studies are systematically reviewed and taken together. But while traditional meta-analyses look at information at the level of the study, IPD meta-analyses are based on data of individual participants. In other disciplines, such as biomedical sciences, IPD meta-analyses are already the gold standard of the systematic review. In the social sciences, however, this type of study is still relatively rare. Therefore the aim of BTA was also to further introduce IPD meta-analyses into the social sciences and, more specifically, in the field of developmental psychology.
Overall, the research objectives of BTA were to: [1] Identify parenting dimensions that are more and less likely to be transmitted across generations; [2] Identify factors that account for the degree of intergenerational continuity and discontinuity in parenting; [3] Add a developmental perspective to models on intergenerational transmission of parenting; and [4] Implement state-of-the-art IPD meta analyses to examine individual differences in the field of developmental psychology.
Within BTA, we have been able to gather 16 studies for the IPD meta-analysis. Because these studies come from different research groups, and different choices were made in the set-up of these studies, various steps had to be taken to make these studies comparable. The scripts that are being used to harmonize studies are available to other researchers, and as new scripts are being produced these will also become available. Part of the BTA project was to develop a procedure to make parenting measures comparable across studies. This procedure has been presented at an international conference aimed at researchers interested in harmonizing studies and study results. All used materials are also available via the Open Science Framework, enabling other social scientists to use those materials when setting up an IPD meta-analysis.
Gathering the 16 studies took more time than anticipated and the results of the analyses are not yet available. However, the results of a traditional meta-analysis were also completed and already give a first answer to some of the research questions posed within BTA. The results obtained within BTA indicate that certain parenting practices are indeed more often transferred to the next generation than other parenting practices. Overall, the parenting in people's family of origin predicts the parenting they later provide to their own children. This association is small in magnitude, but it is larger when parenting involves acceptance and/or negativity when compared to providing structure and/or supporting children's autonomy. In a second study, we also show that in particular closeness within the parent-adolescent relationship, rather than conflicts or power-balance, predicts later cognitions regarding parenting and children. Second, we found that intergenerational transmission of parenting is indeed stronger under some conditions that others. For instance, intergenerational transmission of parenting is stronger for early parenting experiences (e.g. parenting experienced in early childhood) as compared to later experienced parenting. In addition, parenting of mothers is a stronger predictor of next-generation parenting than parenting of fathers.
By focusing on parenting dimensions that are most predictive of future generation parenting (acceptance and negativity), as well as developmental periods in which parenting is most influential for future generation parenting, parenting programs may become more effective in breaking intergenerational cycles of negative parenting. We anticipate that the results of the IPD meta-analysis, for which results still have to come in, will provide a more detailed overview of individual differences in intergenerational transmission of parenting.
