Personal and Family Sources of Parents’ Socialization Values: A Multilevel Study

Abstract

This study was focused on parents’ socialization values, namely the values that parents want their children to adopt, and their sources. In a sample of 325 Italian families with one adolescent child (14-18 years), it aimed at comparing fathers’ and mothers’ socialization values and assessing parents’ own personal values and family value climate as antecedents of the values parents would like their children to endorse. For each family both parents and the adolescent were involved and asked to complete the Portrait Values Questionnaire individually. The Anova results showed significant differences between fathers’ and mothers’ socialization values: in particular, fathers gave more importance to openness to change and self-enhancement values in their children’s rearing than mothers did. Using multilevel analysis, as fathers and mothers were nested within families, we found significant and positive relations between parents’ personal values and all their socialization values, as well as between family value climate and some of the parents’ socialization values. Conversely, cross-level interactions between parents’ personal values and family value climate did not contribute to predict the values parents want their children to adopt. Implications of this research and its possible developments are discussed.