Ethnicity, families as opportunity structures and adolescents’ aspirations

Abstract Longitudinal data were used to examine relationships between the opportunity structures of early family environments as defined by parents, adolescents’ perceptions of later family opportunity structures, and adolescents’ educational and occupational aspirations. Data were collected from sixteen‐year‐olds and their parents from Anglo‐Australian, English, southern Italian and Greek groups, within Australia. For the analysis, regression surfaces were constructed from models that included terms to examine for possible linear, interaction and curvilinear relationships among the variables. The findings suggest the general propositions that: (a) there are significant variations in the family opportunity structures of adolescents from different Australian ethnic groups, (b) parents’ early aspirations and adolescents’ perceptions of family opportunity structures combine to be associated with large amounts of variance in adolescents’ aspirations, and (c) there are ethnic group differences in the associations among parents’ aspirations for their children, adolescents’ perceptions of family opportunity structures, and adolescents’ aspirations.