Intergenerational transmission of attitudes towards the family: the role of family size

Within the wider concept of intergenerational relations, when intergenerational transmission is strong, children turn out much like their parents and social mobility is low. Such a continuity within the family and between generations in the society is identified as intergenerational attitude congruence. The main question we address in this study is whether congruence of family related attitudes is different in small families as compared to large families (i.e. where there are less or more children). The importance of intergenerational transmission processes might be accentuated in the current climate of low (and lowest-low) fertility in contemporary societies. Other than distinguishing congruence levels in mother-daughter, father-daughter, mother-son and father-son relationships, we investigate on the role of education and religiosity. In this paper, we use a multivariate approach on a large database data, the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS).