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The author establishes a framework for tying together two influential approaches linking family socioeconomic status (SES) to children's social psychological outcomes. Families shape children's occupational aspirations and values; however, these two phenomena have been studied in isolation. This article bridges these two literatures by suggesting that occupational aspirations stem, in part, from adolescents' value structures. The framework employs a wider range of values than previously studied so as to get a broader understanding of this relationship. This analysis finds qualified support for both the SES-values and the SES-aspirations literatures, and illustrates the potential of values as an additional explanatory mechanism for understanding family influences on adolescents' orientations during their transition to adulthood.
Steven Hitlin (Wed,) studied this question.