International Comparative Perspectives on Family Goals and Values

This proposed session aims to examine cross-national comparative research on family values and goals. Whether maximizing the happiness and well-being of family members or ensuring the social and economic advancement of progeny, families may pursue explicit and implicit goals through various strategies. A better understanding of family goals is important because it allows us to think through how mechanisms governing micro-level intimate family contexts scale up to partially explain macro-level trends in family patterns (e.g. national-level trends). A comparison across cultures would then tell us how individuals think differently about what goals and priorities they put into the family institution. There is however limited research on how individuals view family goals across cultures. Countries vary by socioeconomic development, heritages, culture, and policies that shape family values and goals. It will be useful to understand if, and how, these different aspects as well as individual characteristics and family background affect an individual's family goals and values and the extent to which they differ across nations.