PATHS ACROSS GENERATIONS - ACADEMIC COMPETENCE AND AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS IN YOUNG MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN

This research compared the social and cognitive development of young m others when they were children with the social and cognitive developme nt of their offspring. Intergenerational development was investigated over a 17-year period for 57 women who had been studied longitudinally from childhood to adulthood and who became young mothers (R. B. Cairn s & B. D. Caims, 1994). The children of these women, in turn, were fol lowed prospectively from 1 to 2 years old through the early school yea rs. The academic competence of mothers when they were children was sig nificantly linked to the academic competence of their children at scho ol age. In contrast, the across-generation correlations between measur es of aggressive behavior of the mothers when they were children and m easures of aggressive behavior of their children in early school grade s were modest and unreliable. Certain within-generation continuities w ere observed in both cognitive and aggressive development.