I hear the phrase “family values” all the time. Will my kids get my values?

The answer to this question is a definite “maybe.”  Presumably I first learned about what was important by watching and listening to the important people in my life – my parents.  But we all know people (maybe you are one of those people) who hold values that are very different from those

of their parents.  Sometimes we choose to be different because we didn’t like what we saw.  In psychology, there is a lot of theory about family transmission of values, but research in this area is tricky and not much of it has been done. 

Veronika Huta (2012) has studied parenting and values.   She did this by asking people about the things that they valued and grouping them into two categories:  things they did for fun (hedonic pursuits) and things they did because they were meaningful (eudaimonic pursuits).  These are the same two categories we talked about in answering the question “Will values make me happy?” on February 5^th.  She also examined the well-being of these participants (positive feelings, self-esteem, vitality, meaning, elevating experiences, carefreeness, and self-connectedness) along with what they remembered about how they were raised.  Specifically, she asked if their parents were more meaning-oriented or pleasure-oriented and a) did they talk about it, and b) did they model it?   She found that parents had an influence either by talking about or by modelling either pleasure or meaning seeking.  But their children only derived well-being from following the path that they had modelled, not the path that they just talked about.  Interestingly, only those parents who modelled meaning-seeking had children who could derive well-being from both meaning and pleasure seeking activities.   So if you are thinking about your children’s values and well-being, this study suggests that showing them is better than telling them, and showing them what is meaningful to you is better still. 

Reference

Huta, V. (2012). Linking people’s pursuit of eudaimonia and hedonia with characteristics of their parents: Parenting styles, verbally endorsed values and role modeling. Journal of Happiness Studies, 13, 47-71, DOI 10.1007/s10902-011-9249-7