The Case for Parental Transmission of Educational Goals: The Importance of Accurate Offspring Perceptions

Hypothesized relationships between parent-offspring concordance on educational goals and variables which might be expected to facilitate parental influence are tested in data from sixth, eighth, and tenth grade students and their parents. The findings, like those of most previous studies, do not support relationships between parent-offspring concordance and variables reflecting parental support; but concordance is strongly related to the accuracy of offspring perceptions of parents' goals, which supports the idea of generational transmission of orientations and shows the importance to the transmission process of clear offspring understanding of parental orientations. Accuracy of perception also participates in several joint interaction effects, which vary by sex of parent and which illustrate the complexity ofgenerational transmission. Interpretation of the findings suggests that socialization theory pay more attention to factors involved in communication and persuasion.