Russian Parental Values in the international Context, 1990/1991–2017/2020

The aim of the paper is to analyze parental values in Russia and 33 other countries, and explore how they’ve changed between 1990 and 2017–2020. Russian dynamics are shown on 7 waves, international — on 2 waves. We used a combination of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study. We found that in 1990 the Russian value agenda in regards to children was essentially directed towards survival. By 2017–2020 certain changes had occurred: Russians no longer considered survival values to be as important (such as hard work, thrift, obedience); self-expression values (e.g., independence and imagination) became more popular; humanistic values lost much of their importance for Russians. In 33 countries humanistic values remained as popular as in 1990, while survival values seem to be less important. Russian parental values change in the same direction as do Russian personal values.

Social class, intensive parenting norms and parental values for children

As the global trend towards both middle- and working-class families raising their children intensively increases, social class differences in parenting beliefs and choices for their children have become more subtle. In light of the proliferation of intensive parenting norms, however, few studies have explored particular mechanisms underlying the subtle class differences linked to parental values. Drawing on in-depth interviews of 51 Hong Kong Chinese parents, this study investigated how parents contended with competing values in socialization, which in turn shaped their parenting choices. Three common values emerged from the interviews – academic excellence, hard work and happiness – showing that the middle and working classes managed their values for children in two different ways, termed here as ‘values coupling’ and ‘values juggling’, respectively. Middle-class parents were able to make their value choices cohesive through a ‘twist’ to reconcile between competing values. However, working-class parents were inclined to ‘drift’ their value choices in the face of unreconciled value tensions as well as structural constraints. Subtle differences in parental values were found to be tied to class position, and contributed to maintaining class inequality and social reproduction.

The Pitfalls of Heterosis Coefficients

Heterosis (hybrid vigour) is a universal phenomenon of crucial agro-economic and evolutionary importance. We show that the most common heterosis coefficients do not properly measure deviation from additivity because they include both a component accounting for “real” heterosis and a term that is not related to heterosis, since it is derived solely from parental values. Therefore, these coefficients are inadequate whenever the aim of the study is to compare heterosis levels between different traits, environments, genetic backgrounds, or developmental stages, as these factors may affect not only the level of non-additivity, but also parental values. The only relevant coefficient for such comparisons is the so-called “potence ratio”. Because most heterosis studies consider several traits/stages/environmental conditions, our observations support the use of the potence ratio, at least in non-agronomic contexts, because it is the only non-ambiguous heterosis coefficient.

The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization

Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent–child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents’ values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socialization. The authors test their model using three independent studies in the United States that together comprise 4,852 parent–child dyads. They find that the transmission of partisan orientations from parent to child occurs less than half the time, which is qualitatively different from the generally held view. More importantly, the findings provide a greater understanding of how key predictors facilitate the political socialization process. Specifically, politicization improves child perception, but has no role in the child's motivation to adopt parental values. Closeness and parental value strength influence children to want to be like their parents, but do nothing to improve children's ability to recognize their parents' values. And education, previously thought to have little role in transmission, does not influence a child's ability to understand their parent's affiliation, but appears to make children more likely to reject whatever they believe it to be.

Heterosis indices: What do they really measure?

Heterosis (hybrid vigour) is a universal phenomenon of crucial agro-economic and evolutionary importance. We show that the most common heterosis indices do not properly measure deviation from additivity because they include both a component accounting for “real” heterosis and a term that is not related to heterosis since it is derived solely from parental values. Therefore, these indices are inadequate when the aim of the study is to compare heterosis levels between different traits, environments, genetic backgrounds or developmental stages, as these factors may affect not only heterosis but also parental values. The only relevant index for such comparisons is the so-called “potence ratio”. These observations argue for the careful choice of heterosis indices depending on the purpose of the work.HighlightUnlike dominance indices, heterosis indices, with one exception, do not properly measure the level of deviation from additivity, thus making them unsuitable for comparative analyses.