Does one language really disappear every two weeks? The statistic is widely cited in discussions of language endangerment, yet its empirical basis remains unclear. This article traces the origins of the claim and reviews the evidence on which it rests. We first revisit the conjecture that half of the world’s languages were already no longer transmitted to the next generation in the early 1990s and examine how this assumption gave rise to the “one language every two weeks” figure. Using assessments from major linguistic catalogues, including the UNESCO Atlas and Ethnologue, we show that the proportion of languages no longer transmitted to younger generations is substantially lower than originally assumed. We then review more recent attempts to estimate the rate of language extinction from documented disappearances, rather than from current intergenerational transmission statuses. These studies suggest a much lower rate of roughly one language every six to thirteen weeks but rely on methods that are subject to important – yet difficult to quantify – sources of bias. We conclude that the widely cited claim that one language disappears every two weeks is probably too high, while the accuracy of more recent estimates cannot presently be determined. Drawing on approaches developed in biological extinction research, we conclude by outlining how methods that account for the population at risk, supported by data documenting the demographic trajectories of the world’s languages, could enable more robust estimates of the current rate of language extinction.

While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender-generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender-generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left-leaning parents have a general advantage over right-leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left- and right-wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.

This paper presents an analysis of the relationships between intergenerational transmission of philanthropic values and prosocial behavior in three areas: monetary donation of money, volunteering, and civic engagement. Using a multivariable analysis for each area, while controlling for socio-demographic and social environment variables, this study found that the main intergenerational transmission variables are the family as the nuclear unit, the parents as role models, and discourse in the parents’ home. Together these create a family environment that supports philanthropic values of donating money and volunteering and at the same time engaging in civic activities. The relationships between the three areas reflecting prosocial behavior are complementary rather than substitutional. Explanations of these relationships are provided and discussed.

The present study examined developmental pathways beginning in pregnancy and extending into early childhood that contribute to child emotion regulation (ER). Leveraging data from a sample of 157 mixed-sex couples, who largely identified as White and non-Hispanic/Latino, and their typically developing children (50.3% female), we examined whether parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs; i.e., general emotion talk, specific supportive and nonsupportive responses to children’s negative emotions) at preschool age (child age 3) mediated the link between parental trauma-related distress spanning pregnancy to toddler age (2-years postpartum) and child maladaptive ER at the transition to formal schooling (age 5). Chronic elevations in maternal trauma-related distress contributed directly and indirectly to child maladaptive ER at age 5, and maternal nonsupportive responses emerged as a potential pathway driving the intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation. In contrast, paternal trauma-related distress neither undermined ERSBs nor contributed to child maladaptive ER. Instead, chronic elevations in paternal trauma-related distress predicted more supportive responses to children’s negative emotions. Results highlight the utility of repeated screening for trauma-related distress and prevention and early intervention efforts targeting parental trauma-related distress and nonsupportive responses to children’s negative emotions. These strategies may help promote adaptive ER at school entry and reduce risk for later psychopathology.

Despite the growing body of research on the intergenerational transmission of problem behavior, there is a need for more integrative approaches that consider the interplay between genetic and environmental factors. This study uses unique longitudinal data from TRAILS (analytic sample n = 2202), a prospective multiple-generation cohort study in the Netherlands to examine whether parents’ problem behavior (parents’ self-reported lifetime antisocial behavior and substance use, reported at mean age 40 years) predicts offspring problem behavior nearly two decades later (offspring self-reported aggression and delinquency at mean ages 29 and 32 years). In path analyses, independent and relative contributions of genetic (polygenic scores of parents and offspring) and environmental (harsh parenting) pathways were tested. Results confirm intergenerational transmission and consistently point to genetic nurture whereby genetic predisposition predicts parental problem behavior, which in turn predicts harsh parenting, which in turn predicts offspring problem behavior, all while accounting for offspring genetic predisposition, sex and family socioeconomic position. Though these findings are surprising in light of genetic contributions to behavior, they allow for tentative considerations regarding implication for practice to help reduce the continuation of problem behaviors across generations.

Parental criminality is a risk factor for crime, but little is known about why some individuals exposed to this risk refrain from crime. We explored associations of resting heart rate (RHR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), cognitive ability (CA), and psychological functioning (PF) with criminal convictions among men with a convicted parent, accounting for unmeasured familial factors in sibling analyses. Data were obtained from Swedish registers, including all men born in Sweden between 1958 and 1992 with a convicted parent (N = 495,109), followed for up to 48 years. The potential protective factors were measured at mandatory conscription. Outcomes were conviction of any, violent, and non-violent crime. Survival analyses were used to test for associations, adjusting for measured covariates and unmeasured familial factors. Higher levels of RHR, SBP, CA, and PF were associated with reduced risk of criminality after adjusting for covariates. RHR associations were largely explained by familial factors. CA and PF associations were not due to sibling-shared confounders, in line with a causal interpretation. SBP results, indicating a protective effect against non-violent crime, warrant further investigation.

Empirical tests of the “cycle of maltreatment” hypothesis have typically focused on the presence or absence of child maltreatment across generations. However, this narrow focus does not account for diverse intergenerational pathways of maltreatment. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes data to determine the distribution of cycle maintainers, breakers, initiators, and unaffected families (i.e., controls). Of the 65 independent studies (80 samples), 30 examined intergenerational cycles of maltreatment broadly, while 27 reported data for physical abuse, 17 sexual abuse, 5 neglect, and 1 emotional abuse specifically. For maltreatment, 17.1% (95%CI: 12.1%, 22.1%) were cycle maintainers, 23.6% (95%CI: 18.0%, 29.2%) were cycle breakers, 11.4% (95%CI: 7.8%, 15.1%) were cycle initiators and 47.8% (95%CI: 39.7%, 55.9%) controls. Thus, although a parent’s maltreatment history is a risk factor, results suggest that a greater proportion of parents break the cycle of maltreatment versus maintain it. Moderator analyses showed that study design, assessment methods, and demographic characteristics influence maltreatment transmission rates. Intergenerational patterns of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect are also detailed. Our findings underscore the complexity of intergenerational maltreatment, highlighting the need to explore not only its maintenance but also the protective factors that help break cycles and the risk factors that drive its initiation.

This article investigates the life satisfaction consequences of migration through unique comparisons of “settler” migrants spanning three family generations and multiple European destinations with their “stayer” and “returnee” counterparts based in the origin country of Turkey. The data are drawn from 5,980 personal interviews conducted as part of the pioneering 2000 Families Survey. The results show that despite being monetarily the most impoverished across all destinations and generations studied, the settlers tend to be more satisfied with their lives than the “stayers” and the “returnees.” However, a downward trend is observed among younger generations, irrespective of their migration status and country context. The results confirm the significance of poverty and asset status for migrants’ and their descendants’ appraisal of life, as well as highlighting the independent effect of the context. Strikingly, however, those residing in countries with more generous welfare states proved not necessarily to be more satisfied.

Individuals who experience divorce in childhood are more likely to divorce themselves as adults. Notably, the magnitude of the intergenerational divorce transmission is stronger for groups among whom divorce is rare. This transmission may reflect differences in mating strategies passed from parent to child, or differences in cultural norms between groups. Sociologists and demographers have struggled to disentangle socioeconomic and cultural factors, because groups that are less wealthy also tend to have higher divorce rates. We use data from Finland, where two native ethnolinguistic groups with comparable socioeconomic characteristics – but different divorce risks – live side by side: Swedish-speakers and Finnish-speakers. Using register data on the entire Finnish population (N = 554,337 couples 1987–2020), we examine separation risk as a function of parental divorce. Data suggest that the intergenerational transmission is greater among Swedish-speakers, who have an overall lower separation rate. Group differences in separation risk persist even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and each partner’s experience of parental divorce. Notably, Finnish-speaking couples who reside in Swedish-dominated areas have both somewhat lower separation risk, and higher intergenerational transmission than their peers in Finnish-dominated areas. These results point to a cultural transmission of separation, beyond strong socioeconomic factors.

Striking a balance between individual and social learning is one of the key capabilities that support adaptation under uncertainty. Although intergenerational transmission of information is ubiquitous, little is known about when and how newcomers switch from learning loyally from preceding models to exploring independently. Using a behavioural experiment, we investigated how social information available from a preceding demonstrator affects the timing of becoming independent and individual performance thereafter. Participants worked on a 30-armed bandit task for 100 trials. For the first 15 trials, participants simply observed the choices of a demonstrator who had accumulated more knowledge about the environment and passively received rewards from the demonstrator's choices. Thereafter, participants could switch to making independent choices at any time. We had three conditions differing in the social information available from the demonstrator: choice only, reward only or both. Results showed that both participants’ strategies about when to stop observational learning and their behavioural patterns after independence depended on the available social information. Participants generally failed to make the best use of previously observed social information in their subsequent independent choices, suggesting the importance of direct communication beyond passive observation for better intergenerational transmission under uncertainty. Implications for cultural evolution are discussed.

Depression is transmitted within families, but the mechanisms involved in such transmission are not clearly defined. A potential marker of familial risk is the neural response to errors, which may play a role in depression symptoms and is known to be partially heritable. Here, 97 mother-daughter dyads completed a Flanker task while electroencephalography markers of error monitoring were recorded: the error-related negativity (ERN) and response-locked delta and theta power. We assessed whether these measures of neural response to errors 1) were associated with history of recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD) and current depression symptoms among mothers, 2) were correlated among mother-daughter dyads, and 3) were associated with maternal history of recurrent MDD and maternal symptoms of depression among daughters. A history of recurrent MDD was associated with blunted delta and increased theta among mothers. Across mothers, delta and theta were negatively and positively associated, respectively, with current depression symptoms. Mothers’ and daughters’ ERN were positively correlated. Finally, current maternal depression symptoms were negatively associated with delta power in daughters. These results suggest that neural responses to errors may be implicated in the intergenerational transmission of depression. These results also support the relevance of delta oscillations to understanding pathways to depression.

This paper examines how the number of siblings that parents have affects their fertility decisions in China. The population control policies in China affected individuals unequally across birth cohorts and regions. The exogenous variation in fertility is used to identify the effect of the number of siblings on the number of children for the next generation. The results show that a couple tends to have 0.034–0.068 more children (2.3–4.6% of the average number of children) and is 2.4–6.8 percentage points more likely to violate the One-Child Policy (9.3–27.1% of the violation rate) if the husband and the wife have one more sibling each. Moreover, the effect on fertility is stronger for couples in lower-income provinces where the fertility rate is higher and in rural areas where the One-Child Policy was enforced less strictly. Finally, I show that the ideal family size of the husband and wife is an important channel through which the number of siblings affects fertility. I also find that the effect of people's number of siblings has a larger effect on their ideal number of children than on their actual number of children, suggesting that they are constrained from achieving their fertility ideals.

Psychopathology is intergenerationally transmitted through both genetic and environmental mechanisms via heterotypic (cross-domain), homotypic (domain-specific), and general (e.g., “p-factor”) pathways. The current study leveraged an adopted-at-birth design, the Early Growth and Development Study (57% male; 55.6% White, 19.3% Multiracial, 13% Black/African American, 10.9% Hispanic/Latine) to explore the relative influence of these pathways via associations between adoptive caregiver psychopathology (indexing potential environmental transmission) and birth parent psychopathology (indexing genetic transmission) with adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. We included composite measures of adoptive and birth parent internalizing, externalizing, and substance use domains, and a general “p-factor.” Age 11 adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptom scores were the average of adoptive parent reports on the Child Behavior Checklist (n = 407). Examining domains independently without addressing comorbidity can lead to incorrect interpretations of transmission mode. Therefore, we also examined symptom severity (like the “p-factor”) and an orthogonal symptom directionality score to more cleanly disentangle transmission modes. The pattern of correlations was consistent with mostly general transmission in families with youth showing comorbid internalizing and externalizing symptoms, rather than homotypic transmission. Findings more strongly supported potential environmental or evocative mechanisms of intergenerational transmission than genetic transmission mechanisms (though see limitations). Parent-specific effects are discussed.

Dr. Dante Cicchetti’s pioneering theory and research on developmental psychopathology have been fundamental to the proliferation of research on intergenerational transmission over the last 40 years. In part due to this foundation, much has been learned about continuities and discontinuities in child maltreatment, attachment, parenting, and psychopathology across generations. Looking towards the future, we propose that this field stands to benefit from a prospective, three-generation approach. Specifically, following established prospective, longitudinal cohorts of children over their transition to parenting the next generation will afford the opportunity to investigate the developmental origins of intergenerational transmission. This approach also can address key outstanding questions and methodological limitations in the extant literature related to the confounding of retrospective and prospective measures; examination of mediators and moderators; and investigation of the roles of biology, environment, and their interplay. After considering these advantages, we offer several considerations and recommendations for future research, many of which are broadly applicable to the study of two or more generations. We hope that this discussion will inspire the leveraging of existing prospective cohorts to carry forward Dr. Cicchetti’s remarkable contributions, with the ultimate aim to inform the development of preventions and interventions that disrupt deleterious intergenerational cycles.

We study a new driving factor of women's inclusion in politics: the economic empowerment of their mothers. We evaluate Swedish microdata on politicians and their parents over fifty years. The results demonstrate a strong intergenerational dynamic from mothers to daughters. Female politicians come from households where their mother is more likely to be employed, earns more in the labour market, and earns a larger share of household earnings. This pattern was strong among parliamentarians in the 1970s and 1980s when female numerical representation increased rapidly in Sweden but is not present in national politics after the introduction of gender quotas in the early 1990s or in local politics.