Paths across generations: Academic competence and aggressive behaviors in young mothers and their children.

Abstract

This research compared the social and cognitive development of young mothers when they were children with the social and cognitive development of their offspring. Intergenerational development was investigated over a 17-year period for 57 women who had been studied longitudinally from childhood to adulthood and who became young mothers (R. B. Cairns & B. D. Cairns, 1994). The children of these women, in turn, were followed prospectively from 1 to 2 years old through the early school years. The academic competence of mothers when they were children was significantly linked to the academic competence of their children at school age. In contrast, the across-generation correlations between measures of aggressive behavior of the mothers when they were children and measures of aggressive behavior of their children in early school grades were modest and unreliable. Certain within-generation continuities were observed in both cognitive and aggressive development.

The Future of Research on Intimate Partner Violence: Person-Oriented and Variable-Oriented Perspectives

“…Testing whether and how IPV is transmitted intergenerationally requires that (a) participants are observed at about the same age in at least two successive generations, (b) the research design is longitudinal and the data collection is prospective, and (c) data are collected from multiple sources (Cairns, Cairns, Xie, Leung, & Hearne, 1998). Unfortunately, most of the research cited above does not meet these criteria.…”

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree (Or Does It?): Intergenerational Patterns of Antisocial Behavior—the American Society of Criminology 2008 Sutherland Address*

“…In particular, there is a growing consensus (Cairns et al, 1998; Kaplan and Tolle, 2006; Patterson, 1998; Smith and Farrington, 2004) that intergenerational studies should have comparable measures of G2 and G3 antisocial behavior covering the same ages or the same developmental stages.…”

Adolescent family environmental antecedents to transformational leadership potential: A longitudinal mediational analysis

“…However, these studies are limited by their retrospective designs, which have acknowledged problems related to reporting. These problems can include forgetting, altering or reconstructing, as well as understanding the past from the perspective of the present (Avolio & Gibbons, 1988;Cairns, Cairns, Xie, Leung, & Hearne, 1998).…”