Social Class,Workplace Experience,and Child-Rearing Values of Mothers and Fathers in Southern Brazil

Abstract

We investigated associations among social class, parents’ work experiences, and their child-rearing values in a sample of mothers and fathers drawn from southern Brazil, testing Kohn’s hypothesis that parents who experience greater decision-making autonomy at work and who perceive their jobs to be more complex will be more likely to value self-direction and less likely to value conformity in their children. We also tested the hypothesis that the relation between social class and values would be mediated by workplace experiences. Participants included 68 parents (38 mothers, 30 fathers; 46 working class, 22 middle class) of 36-month-old children who were part of a longitudinal study. Correlation analyses revealed few associations among social class, workplace experiences, and child-rearing values among the mothers, but among the fathers these variables associated in the expected direction. The results also indicated that workplace experience mediates the relation between social class and values, although only for fathers. Our findings supported Kohn’s hypothesis regarding differences between social-class groups and highlighted that the relation between work experience and parental values varied by parents’ gender. Social and cultural issues regarding work context and parental values between women and men in southern Brazil are discussed.