The present investigation examines the relationship between income change in the early 1980s, the outlook that parents have about their general life situation, and the extent to which adolescents expect to attain job success. In a sample of 112 West German families, correlations showed that income loss was associated with pessimistic life outlooks in fathers and mothers. The father's pessimism was highly related to the mother's pessimism and to the adolescent daughter's lower expectancy for job success. Path analytic procedures were used to model a process in which income loss leads to parental pessimism, and the father's pessimism, in turn, leads to lowered job success expectancies among girls. The results suggest that income loss is a stressor that may disrupt family functioning. The vulnerability of the daughter and the role of the father in the socialization process are discussed.
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Galambos et al. (1987) studied this question.