Intergenerational Transmission in a Bidirectional Context

Abstract

Traditional approaches to the study of parent-child relationships view intergenerational transmission as a top-down phenomenon in which parents transfer their values, beliefs, and practices to their children. Furthermore, the focus of these unidirectional approaches regarding children's internalisation processes is on continuity or the transmission of similar values, beliefs, and practices from parents to children. Analogous unidirectional perspectives have also influenced the domain of family therapy. In this paper a cognitive-bidirectional and dialectical model of dynamics in parent-child relationships is discussed in which the focus is on continual creation of novel meanings and not just reproduction of old ones in the bidirectional transmission processes between parents and children. Parents and children are addressed as full and equally agents in their interdependent relationship, while these relational dynamics are embedded within culture. This cultural context complicates bidirectional transmission influences in the parent-child relationship as both parents and children are influenced by many other contexts. Further, current research in the domain of parent-child relationships and current concepts of intergenerational transmission in family therapy are reviewed from a bidirectional cognitive-dialectical perspective.

Stepfamilies Doing Family: A Meta‐Ethnography

“…Central to dialectics is the concept of contradiction, referring to people's experiences of simultaneously opposing tensions in their relationships. Relational dialectical processes have been studied by family researchers (De Mol, Lemmens, Verhofstadt, & Kuczynski, ), and even in the context of stepfamilies (Baxter et al., ; Braithwaite, Toller, Daas, Durham, & Jones, ). However, the dialectical tension identified in our synthesis seems to be different.…”

An Exploratory Study Into the Negotiation of Cyber-Security Within the Family Home

“…However, there is an argument that rather than parents being solely in charge of household cyber-security, children are becoming the leading experts in technology use in the household (Livingstone, 2009). Indeed, children influence their parents, particularly in encouraging them to take up social media and teaching them how to use new technology in the home such as computers and the internet (De Mol et al, 2013;Correa, 2014;Correa et al, 2015). So, if children influence their parents in their use of new technology, how does this relate to the management of cyber-security within the home?…”

Theorizing religious socialization: a critical assessment

“…Partly in response to such critique, some socialization theories have also developed towards understanding socialization as a process that requires the active and reciprocal involvement of both the ones being socialized and the ones doing the socializing (Kuczynski and Parkin 2007;Maccoby 2007;Mol et al 2013). When the reciprocity of the socialization process is better accounted for, it also becomes more understandable how and why social and religious changes occur over time.…”