Parents' transmission of educational goals to their adolescent children

The relationship between parents' educational expectations for their adolescent children and children's expectations was studied using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). Specifically, the 1992 to 1994 panel sample was used. Several hypotheses derived from previous research literature were tested, and some were supported whereas others were not. Contrary to previous research, we found that fathers and mothers equally influenced adolescents' educational expectations, despite the fact that more mothers than fathers lived with their adolescent children. Consistent with previous literature, educational goal transmission was not stronger for same-gender-as opposed to opposite-gender-adolescent/parent pairs. Results suggest that the goal-transmission process is strong, and disagreement among parents and children on educational goals was infrequent. Somewhat surprisingly, adolescents tended to have slightly higher postsecondary educational expectations than parents had for them, and adolescents more often revised their expectations upwards than downwards.