Parents, Children and the Distance between Them: Long Term Socialization Effects in the Netherlands

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the extent to which parents affect attitudes of their children and to what extent these parental influences vary with family characteristics. We use a Dutch survey with a representative sample and study attitudes toward three issues: euthanasia, homosexuality and the presence of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands . We include information from primary respondents, their parents and their siblings in structural equation models. We find that parents exert a large influence on their adult children’s attitudes, even when we control for structural similarities between parents and adult children. Families that the children perceive as emotionally warm are more successful in influencing children’s attitudes than families that are not supportive. The effects of parents’ attitudes diminish as respondents get older.