Overall and unique similarities between parents’ values and adolescent or emerging adult children’s values

The transmission of values between generations has gained more and more research interest over the last few years. One important outcome of the process of value transmission is the degree of similarity between parents and their children, that may vary across child’s developmental stages. This study aimed to estimate the cultural stereotype effect on parent–child value similarity in adolescence and in emerging adulthood. Participants were 423 Italian fathers, mothers, and their adolescent (56.7%) or emerging adult (43.3%) children, who were asked to fill out the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Parent–child value similarity was small in size among families with adolescents, and significantly higher among families with emerging adults. Nevertheless, after removing stereotype effects, this difference disappeared, suggesting that the higher parent-emerging adult value similarity was to a great extent socially derived. Implications of this finding were discussed.