The Transmission of Social Class and World of Work Information in Parent

Abstract

The process by which information about social class and the world of work is transmitted between parents and adolescents within families was explored via Grounded Theory. Data were gathered from separate individual semistructured interviews with 18 participants (9 parents and 9 adolescents from the same family). The themes that emerged from the data are depicted by the grounded theory and reveal an interconnected storyline through which messages about social class and the world of work are communicated in explicit and implicit ways within parent–adolescent relationships. Within each of these themes, three similar subthemes further delineated the nature of these processes within the parent–adolescent dyads: shared emotional reactions between parents and adolescents, the process by which familial communication occurs within the parent–adolescent dyads, and the ways in which adolescents internalize messages from their parents and initiate their own self-learning. Limitations of this study and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords

parent–adolescent dyads career development grounded theory intergenerational communication social class

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