José L. Arco-Tirado, professor at the CIMCYC, together with professors Francisco D. Fernández Martín, Elena C. Mitrea and Levente Littvay, carried out a study aimed at identifying evidence of intergenerational transmission from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. Mitrea and Levente Littvay, conducted a study aimed at identifying evidence on the intergenerational transmission from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters of psychological traits like grit, defined as passion and perseverance to achieve long-term goals.
Psychology's interest in these types of research questions has always been present, although the methodological and statistical challenges and challenges involved in investigating these types of questions have also been constant. To overcome some of these limitations, this study provides the following elements: (a) an appropriate research design (observational) to the type of research questions; (b) abundant data on individual, educational, occupational, social and cultural variables generally associated with this type of complex learning and development processes; c) the use of the multivariate statistical regression technique to calculate the estimated relationship between the children's level of grit and the parents' level of grit, taking into account the possible moderating role of certain parental behaviors, while controlling for the possible effects of other potentially explanatory variables (age, level of education, profession, nationality, etc.), and finally, d) an estimate of the relationship between the children's level of grit and the parents' level of grit, and finally, d) a large sample of 20,008 children and 5,945 fathers and mothers.
The results suggest that: a) the level of parental grit is statistically significantly associated (i.e. the results obtained in the sample apply to the population) with the level of gritg of the offspring, although in a modest way; b) the three types of parental behaviors analyzed seem to lead to similar levels of grit among parents and offspring. Specifically, high psychological control seems to weaken the transfer of parent-to-offspring grit, if parents present low levels of grit, while closeness and autonomy-supportive behaviors seem to weaken the transfer, if parents present high levels of grit. The possible explanation could lie in the first case in the fact that in the face of parental control, children need to develop higher levels of grit as an adjustment and resilience mechanism to adapt to parental demands (regardless of the level of parental grit), while in the second case, accepting and supportive parental behaviors (with low level of grit) may facilitate children's relinquishment of their goals and thus weaken the development of grit, whereas accepting and autonomy-supportive parental behaviors (with high level of grit) may increase children's motivation to follow their parents' example.
The importance of these results lies at the theoretical level in proving, for example, the malleability of this psychological trait and at the practical level of intervention in the identification of operationalized parental behaviors (emotional, cognitive and behavioral) that can be trained to improve the effectiveness of intervention programs aimed at improving the enthusiasm, interest, capacity for hard work, commitment and long-term motivation of young people.
Fernández-Martín, F. D., Arco-Tirado, J. L., Mitrea, E. C., and Littvay, L. (2022). Parenting Behavior's Impact on the Intergenerational Covariation of Grit. Current Psychology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-022-03185-w