Chapter 10: “That’s a Value I would Transmit in Some Way, But How Concretely, I Don’t Know”: Intergenerational Value Transfer Revisited in Light of Memory

Being a parent is not always easy. We want our children to behave in certain ways, to share our values and to take over our ideals. We have goals for our children and ideas about what kind of person they should become. Yet, in the midst of everyday life we draw back to compromises that make our lives easier. We do not want to be authoritarian, but we react angrily and harsh when our children just don’t want to listen. We do want to be consequent and not too indulgent, but for the sake of peace, we give finally into their wishes. Our children watch us; they are attentive observers who study our behavior closely. They make sense of what they are being told and of what they see. They learn and they remember. But do they take over what we want them to? Will their memories be the same as ours when, as adults, they look back at their childhood experiences with us? As children, on the other hand, we might want to distinguish and differentiate ourselves from our own parents and from the family as a whole, we attach great importance to our autonomy and we want to lead our own lives, making things differently. But when, as adults, looking back at our childhood memories, we suddenly recognize a certain continuity in that we behave just like our parents did.