ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idea that the processes of continuing education beyond high school and launching a career pose challenges for young adults that are related to the processes of achieving autonomy while maintaining relatedness with parents as adolescents. Many different conceptual models of adult educational attainment have been explored in which intergenerational factors play a major role in academic success or failure. It is well documented that students who come from relatively small, intact, middle-class families, where they are expected to succeed, go further in school, and ultimately obtain relatively high-prestige jobs in comparison to their peers. Darling and Steinberg presented a contextual model of parenting whereby parental goals and values affect both parenting style and parenting practices. Parents' goals for their children, which are related to adult outcomes, may be confounded with socioeconomic status. Economic hardship, for example, may make parents more pessimistic about their children's futures and consequently lower their goals for their children.
