Agency, Linked Lives, and Historical Time: Evidence from The Longitudinal Three Generation Youth Development Study

Abstract

Whereas Glen Elder and associates’ principles of the life course are usually articulated and investigated individually, they reference analytic distinctions that simplify their empirical coexistence and mutual interrelation. This article illustrates this complexity by focusing on the principle of agency and its intersections with ”linked lives” and “time and place.” Data are drawn from the Youth Development Study (YDS), which has followed a Minnesota cohort (G2, born 1973–74) from mid-adolescence (ages 14–15) to mid-life (ages 45–46). The YDS also includes G1 parents and G3 children, the latter surveyed at about the same age as their parents were when the research began. The findings indicate that multiple agentic orientations, observed in adolescence, affect adult attainments; they are shaped by the “linked lives” of grandparents, parents, and children over longer periods of time than previously recognized; and their associations with educational achievement are historically specific. Whereas the “linked lives” of parents and adolescents are generally studied contemporaneously, the agentic orientations of parents, measured as teenagers, were found to predict the same psychological resources in their adolescent children (self-concept of ability, optimism, and economic efficacy) decades later. We also found evidence that parents’ occupational values continue to influence the values of their children as the children’s biographies unfold. Suggesting an historic shift in the very meaning and behavioral consequences of agentic orientations, optimism and efficacy replaced educational ambition as significant predictors of academic achievement.

Three cardinal principles of life course analysis, “Agency,” “Linked Lives” and “Time and Place” (Elder, 1994, 1998; Elder, Johnson and Crosnoe, 2003), have guided scholars for decades. These principles constitute analytic distinctions, separately identifiable but referencing processes that empirically co-exist and mutually influence one another. While life course scholars would never allege that each acts only in isolation, their mutual interrelations deserve greater attention. Agency is most often developed in the contexts of “linked lives,” particularly in the family, but also within school and workplace settings. Children model the agentic orientations and behaviors of their parents, and parents often attempt to instill agentic traits in their offspring by encouraging them to aim high, develop action plans, and follow through. Though given less attention, the development of specific agentic orientations and their value in promoting successful agentic action plausibly differs across historical and societal contexts.

While the life course perspective highlights change over time, much research inspired by life course principles does not address long-term temporal dynamics. For example, most studies of the socializing impacts of parents on children (whether examining the development of agency or not) are contemporaneous and focus on early life when offspring are young children or adolescents. Little attention is given to the possibility that the biographies of both parents and children may be implicated in agentic development. Elder developed the principle of agency based on a comparison of the Berkeley and Oakland cohorts whose births spanned less than a decade (Elder and Rockwell, 1979; Elder, 1998), but the impacts of historical time on agentic processes may be most evident across longer spans of time that encompass multiple generations.

This article first considers the meaning of agency and noteworthy critiques of this principle. Using data from the longitudinal, three-generation Youth Development Study, it then examines the impacts of multiple adolescent agentic psychological resources on adult attainments and presents illustrative empirical intersections of agency with “linked lives” and “time and place.”

The Meaning and Critique of Agency

Following classic theoretical work by George Herbert Mead (1934), Emirbayer and Mische (1998) distinguish between agentic thought and action that is oriented to the past, the present, and the future. The latter, which they call “projective agency” comes closest to the interests of life course scholars:

“the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future”

(1998: 971).

Agency includes “imaginative generation” of action strategies, as well as expectations or beliefs about one’s level of agentic capacity, such as self-efficacy (see also Bandura, 1977; 1992; Hitlin and Elder, 2007). In the aggregate, the agentic action that follows can maintain or transform social structures (Dannefer, 2022; Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Sewell, 1992). At the individual level, agentic action often accentuates attitudes and values over time as people select companions and social contexts that align with prior orientations (Alwin et al, 1991). Agentic action can set in motion benign trajectories if individuals with strong beliefs in their capacities take on challenging tasks, persevere in their attainment, and achieve goals that reinforce agentic beliefs. Alternatively, people who lack such positive self-orientations may neglect to tackle new projects, lack persistence in overcoming obstacles, and fail to achieve desired goals, thus reinforcing negative self-evaluations, including those implicating agency (Dannefer, 1987).

Life course scholars have developed a more specific conception of agency than Emirbayer and Mische’s “projective agency;” for them agency is a constellation of orientations and behaviors that influence a person’s future life trajectory. According to Elder, Johnson, and Crosnoe (2003: 11),

“Individuals construct their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the opportunities of history and social circumstance.”

Thus, people can shape their future directions and achievements by setting goals, devising strategies, and then acting to achieve them. Central to life course scholarship is the notion of agentic resources: individual differences that promote goal attainment and positive life trajectories. In now-classic research, Clausen (1991, 1993) demonstrated that adolescent planful competence (indicated by self-confidence, dependability, and academic engagement) predicted adult educational attainment, family stability, and life satisfaction through old age. More recent research augments evidence that differences in agentic resources predict more-or-less favorable life outcomes (Ashby and Schoon, 2010; Hitlin and Elder, 2007; Reynolds et al, 2007; Schoon, 2008; Schoon and Lyons-Amos, 2017). Clearly there are personal and systemic inequalities in agentic resources and capacities. Accentuating constraints on choices and actions posed by disadvantaged social location, Shanahan (2000) speaks of “bounded agency.”

Despite the intuitive plausibility of “life course agency” and empirical demonstration of the predictive capacity of agentic resources, this principle has been subject to critique. Dannefer et al (2016) call agency the “big easy” of the life course, noting that while agency is often thought to be a universal capacity, it is generally merely invoked or assumed rather than measured empirically. Similarly, Hitlin and Elder (2007) call the concept “curiously abstract,” underspecified in research, and Marshall (2005) likens it to “unexplained variance” in statistical models. Dannefer and his colleagues (2016) point out that in the long-standing theoretical debate surrounding agency and structure, agentic action is erroneously considered as opposed to structure, as if agentic individuals are confronted with structural constraints at every turn. Moreover, agency is often conceptualized as the purview of an autonomous actor, unaffected by social location, despite the fact that agentic goals and actions are molded by both social structure and culture (Dannefer, 2022: Ch. 3). According to Dannefer et al (2016:93),

“what social structure does is to shape and define the individual’s consciousness, within which intentions and purposes are externalized into agentic action.” … The task for life course scholars..includes the need to understand how agency is shaped and directed by the field of interaction within which the individual resides.”

Despite widespread recognition among life course scholars that agency is “bounded,” Dannefer and Huang (2017) point out that escalating inequality, the increasing precarity of lives, and diminished opportunities render individual choice problematic for large populations in contemporary societies. They warn that life course scholars’ preoccupation with agency should not obscure severe restrictions on active volitional choice that exist in many circumstances, and which are faced particularly by disadvantaged youth during their transition to adulthood. As Marshall (2005:63) cogently states, “Agency can only manifest itself through choice, and choice is possible only if there are alternatives.”

Another critique arises from attempts to identify and measure dimensions of individual difference -- psychological resources that promote the effective exercise of agency (Marshall, 2005). While multiple such resources have been charted, they are often conceptually indistinct, making it difficult for scholars to differentiate them (Hitlin and Kwon, 2016). Moreover, they have generally been studied in isolation. Entirely separate literatures surround attributes such as mastery (Pearlin, et al, 1981), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), the academic self-concept (Chowdry, et al, 2011; Marsh and O’Mara, 2008; Mortimer et al, 2017), optimism (Hitlin and Johnson, 2015), aspirations, and plans (Andrew and Hauser, 2011). With notable exceptions (Grabowski et al, 2001; Hitlin and Johnson, 2015; Schoon and Lyons-Amos, 2017), such agentic psychological dimensions are rarely examined together and neither are their consequences for agentic behavior and success compared. Additionally (again with exceptions: Johnson, 2002; Pearlin et al, 2007), the development of agentic orientations is not examined across broad spans of the life course. Finally, their relative value, with respect to the effectiveness of agentic action, is rarely considered across historical time.

The extensive sociological literature on socioeconomic attainment is a case in point. The Wisconsin status attainment model is the dominant social psychological approach to the study of achievement and mobility in the United States (Sewell and Hauser, 1975, 1976, 1980). According to this model, adolescent aspirations and plans mediate the effects of socioeconomic origins on educational achievement and occupational and income attainments. The central psychological resource for agentic action in the attainment process is therefore thought to be lofty educational and occupational goals. Despite much change in educational and labor market structures since this model was first put forward, its validity has continued to be demonstrated in subsequent decades (Kerckhoff, 1995; Morgan, 2005; Reynolds and Johnson, 2011). Nonetheless, it has limitations that are apparent when one considers the multiple agentic resources that have been linked to success across a diverse range of action spheres. Further, the model does not address change in the macroeconomic context that may influence the relative value of such resources in the attainment process.

Our research responds to these critiques by empirically measuring what we call “agentic psychological resources.” We assess the predictive capacity of such resources in adolescence with respect to adult attainments, examine their development across stages of the life course in relation to “linked lives” (part of the “field of interaction,” Dannefer, et al, 2016), and assess their contribution to educational achievement across generations and historical time. We do not imply that structural advantage or disadvantage does not affect the exercise of agency or its outcomes; instead, we attempt to isolate the predictive power of agentic resources independent of socioeconomic background, family structure, gender, and race, while acknowledging that other restrictive structural circumstances may also be operating.

Drawing on data from the longitudinal three-generation Youth Development Study (YDS), we demonstrate that multiple agentic psychological resources predict socioeconomic attainment. We also provide empirical illustrations of the intersection of the three life course principles: agency, linked lives, and time and place. We show that the development of agentic resources involves the “linked lives” of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren over a long period of time, indicating the merit of considering the long-term biographies of multiple generations. Finally, we address the intersection of agency with “time and place” and show how the relative value of particular agentic resources differs across generations.

The Youth Development Study

The YDS began in the Fall of 1987 when 1,139 teenagers (who we refer to as the second generation or “G2”) were randomly selected from 9^th graders attending the St. Paul Public Schools in the Upper Midwest U.S. state of Minnesota (Mortimer, 2012). When the first survey was administered in the Spring of 1988, they were mostly 14 and 15 years old, Gen X’ers born in 1973–74. Information was obtained from these mid-adolescent G2 children via paper-and-pencil surveys administered in their school classrooms for the first four years of the study. Those who left school received and returned surveys by mail. Fifteen additional surveys were then conducted by mail yearly or every other year through 2011, covering respondents’ lives from late adolescence (ages 18–19) to adulthood (ages 37–38). Two-thirds of the original sample were retained through 2011. Retention was not associated with socioeconomic origin, agentic orientations, adolescent behavior problems, or mental health, but males and non-whites had more attrition. A final 20th survey was administered online in 2019 when most respondents were ages 45–46, and 53% of the original Wave 1 sample participated. Because at this writing these data are still being processed, the present article relies on G2 data collected through 2011.

The G1 parents of this cohort, including both mothers and fathers, were surveyed twice: first in 1988, along with their G2 adolescent children, and again in 1991 when most children were in the final year of secondary school. G1 surveys gathered information that children would have been unlikely to accurately report, such as levels of parental income and education and family structure, as well as G1 work experiences, their occupational values, and other attitudes.

In 2009, the YDS began to gather information from the G3 children of the G2 cohort via three mailed surveys conducted in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Two-thirds of eligible G2 parents (defined as parents whose children were age 11 and older each year) consented to their children’s participation. Although the youngest children were 11 at each G3 survey wave, G3 child participants’ mean age was 15.8 (at the time of their most recent participation). Most were “Millennials,” with their range in age 11–23 at the last available measure. A final G3 survey was conducted in 2020. Again, because the 2020 G3 surveys were conducted quite recently (data are currently being documented), this article relies on data collected through 2011 from 420 G1-G2-G3 triads, including 354 G1 grandparents, 265 G2 parents, and 420 G3 children.

These three-generation longitudinal data enable us to examine the implications of multiple dimensions of adolescent agency for adult attainment, the impacts of “linked lives” on the development of G2 agentic psychological resources over a long formative period from mid-adolescence to adulthood in the contexts of G1 and G2 biographies, the influence of G1 grandparents on G3 grandchildren, and the intersection of agency with time and place –the changing value of particular agentic resources for G2 and G3 adolescents who came of age in distinct historical times.

Adolescent Agentic Resources and Adult Attainments

Whereas the status attainment model would lead one to expect that adolescent aspirations and plans are the major, or even exclusive psychological determinants of subsequent attainments, we find that a range of agentic orientations are predictive. For example, a dimension of adolescent agency that references the economic realm (belief in one’s ability to get a job that pays well and is satisfying, and to own a home) significantly predicted months of post-secondary education during the two years after high school (Grabowski et al, 2001); this agentic resource had greater predictive power than more general mastery (as indicated by the Pearlin Mastery scale, Pearlin, et al, 1981). Consistently, adolescents with stronger economic efficacy had higher educational attainment when they reached the ages of 35 and 36 (Burger, Mortimer, and Johnson, 2020). Adolescent economic efficacy also predicted financial independence from parents in early adulthood and the avoidance of early childbearing (Lee & Mortimer, 2009). In an assessment of the relative predictive power of educational plans and the academic self-concept (indicated by considering oneself a fast learner, good reader, and as having high ability in school) with respect to adult educational attainment, the self-image dimension came out well ahead (Mortimer, et al, 2017). Moreover, adolescent optimism (extending across multiple domains, including family, work, friendship, and health), as well as the more general control orientation or mastery, were found to be associated with multiple positive outcomes in life, including socioeconomic attainments, health, and well-being (Hitlin and Johnson, 2015).

Rather than investigating single dimensions of agentic psychological resources, or pitting them against one another, some of our work has operationalized agency as a latent construct, indicated by multiple dimensions. Recently, we defined a latent agency construct by four variables: academic self-concept, economic self-efficacy, educational plans, and mastery (Lee and Mortimer, 2021). This construct, measured in adolescence, predicted attainment of a four-year college degree among G2 children of G1 college graduates. It also fostered educational mobility among women, as it predicted attainment of a bachelor’s degree for those whose parent(s) had less formal education.

Despite continued preoccupation with adolescent aspirations and plans (Johnson and Reynolds, 2013; Schoon and Lyons-Amos, 2016), these studies indicate the merit of extending the purview of attainment research to encompass multiple agentic dimensions (see also Schoon and Lyons-Amos, 2017) and investigating their relative efficacy within and (as we will see) across generations.

The Intersections of Agency with Linked Lives

The principle of linked lives affirms that “lives are lived interdependently, and sociohistorical influences are expressed through this network of shared relationships” (Elder, Johnson, and Crosnoe, 2003). In elucidating this principle, Elder (1998) explains that transitions in life course trajectories, as well as other significant experiences, are felt not only by those who directly experience them, but also by those who are “linked” to them, especially through kinship, but also through broader “convoys of support” (Kahn and Antonucci, 1980). A large stratification literature documents the importance of the linked lives of parents and children. Socialization within the family has long been thought to contribute to the intergenerational persistence of inequality (Kohn, 1969), and there is substantial evidence that parental resources have major implications for children’s educational and occupational attainments (Bowles, et al, 2005; Conger and Dogan, 2007; Duncan and Murnane, 2011; Ermisch, et al, 2012; Gregg and Macmillan, 2010).

Parents of higher socioeconomic status engage in child rearing-practices that promote agentic orientations and behavior, which enable children to succeed in educational contexts (e.g., Chowdry, et al, 2011; Eccles, 2007; Furstenberg, 2011; Georg, 2016; Lareau, 2003). Adolescents who have more highly educated and economically successful parents are more likely to receive parental encouragement to develop high educational aspirations than are their peers whose parents have lower SES. High-achieving parents provide positive role models at close hand, and invest time and other resources in their children (Furstenberg, et al, 1999; Lareau 2003; Reynolds and Johnson 2011; Sewell et al, 1969). However, parental problems can detract from offspring agency. Research using the YDS provides evidence that children’s observation of parental difficulties at work during the Great Recession, including losses of both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, dampened optimism about their own life chances and their corresponding occupational values (Mortimer, et al, 2014).

Almost all research on family socialization processes that address the development of children’s (usually adolescents’) agentic orientations and other attributes, occurs when children are minors and parents, of course, are adults. A life course perspective, however, draws attention to parents’ and children’s long-term biographies as well as to the influence of prior generations. Parental influences on the agentic development of their offspring may implicate parents’ orientations and attainments over a long period of time, as school children and adolescents have had the opportunity to observe their parents across multiple years. Moreover, intergenerational influence may occur through much of the offspring’s lifetime, well beyond the purview of most child and adolescent studies. To illustrate the intersection of the principles of agency and linked lives, we ask, how do grandparental, parental, and child biographies influence the development of agentic psychological resources? That is, to what extent do agentic development and achievement processes unfold dynamically over many years and across generations?

Developmental psychologists have studied “intergenerational development” or “the intergenerational transfer of risk,” which refer to the similarities of parents and children at the same life stage (Cairns et al, 1998; Serbin and Karp, 2004). For example, parallels between parents’ and children’s deviant, anti-social behavior, achievement, and personality during adolescence have been documented (Cairns et al, 1998; Duncan, et al, 2005; Serbin and Karp, 2004; Thorneberry, 2016). Though such parallels may be attributable, at least in part, to genetic inheritance (Burger and Mortimer, 2021), parents’ agentic orientations during adolescence could be instrumental in determining their own pathways from school to work and their adult attainments, and through these influences, their children’s orientations and achievements (Conger et al, 2010; Duncan et al, 2005; Martin et al, 2010; Mayer, 1997). By the time children are adolescents, they have had a chance to observe and to model their parents’ behaviors throughout their lifetimes. However, rarely is “intergenerational development,” or the processes that may underlie it, assessed empirically due to the absence of pre-adult data from parents. Thus, studies of socialization must rely on parental attributes that are measured in adulthood. Contemporaneous research can document parents’ socioeconomic positions, attitudes, and behaviors at the time the child is observed (usually during adolescence), but not before.

Although some studies have examined whether grandparents influence grandchildren’s achievement and attainment, over and above pathways mediated by parents (Chan and Boliver, 2013; Ferguson and Ready, 2011; Jaeger, 2012; Warren and Hauser, 1997), the role of grandparents in the attainment process is often overlooked. We consider the influence of grandparents on the agentic goals of parents for their children, as well as on the grandchildren’s own agentic orientations (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Simplified Conceptual Model of the Intergenerational Achievement Process

Source: Mortimer, J.T., et al. (2017) Familial Transmission of Educational Plans and the Academic Self-Concept: A Three-Generation Longitudinal Study. Social Psychology Quarterly 80:90. Figure 1 in Mortimer et al. 2017

In a recent analysis (Lee and Mortimer, 2021), we found that the level of G1’s educational expectations for G2, an indicator of agentic goals for the next generation, had a significant influence on G2 parents’ educational expectations for their own G3 children. Moreover, the G1 grandparents’ educational attainment was found to moderate the effect of the G2 parents’ educational attainment on the G2 parents’ educational expectations for G3. When G2’s were “first generation” college students with neither of their G1 parents having attended college themselves, their own educational achievement did not increase their educational expectations for G3. In contrast, post-secondary education increased G2 parental educational expectations for their offspring when their G1 parents had also attended college. Perhaps the difficulties of first-generation college students dampened enthusiasm for higher education for their own children.

The structural equation model shown in Figure 2, based on 420 matched grandparent-parent-grandchild triads, provides evidence for both “intergenerational development” and grandparent influence on the agentic orientations of both G2 and G3. The academic self-concept, an indicator of agentic belief with consequences for agentic action, is measured in both generations. Adolescents who consider themselves intelligent, a good reader, and high in school ability will likely take on more difficult academic tasks, persevere more strongly in attempts to achieve them, and be more likely to succeed in attaining their goals than will students with less agentic beliefs.

Figure 2.

Transmission of Agentic Orientations. Structural Equation Model

Source: Mortimer, J.T., et al. (2017) Familial Transmission of Educational Plans and the Academic Self-Concept: A Three-Generation Longitudinal Study. Social Psychology Quarterly 80:96. Figure 2 in Mortimer et al. 2017.

The phenomenon of “intergenerational development” is clearly illustrated in Figure 2. Especially noteworthy is the significant path from the G2 adolescent academic self-concept to the G3 adolescent academic self-concept, the latter measured more than 20 years later, because this effect is net of the strong influence of G2 parental educational expectations for G3 on the latter’s self-assessment of educational capacity. In other analyses, we find evidence for “intergenerational development” in optimism (Burger and Mortimer, 2021; Johnson and Hitlin, 2017) and in economic self-efficacy (Burger, Mortimer, and Johnson, 2020).

Although status attainment theory exclusively emphasizes educational plans as mediating the influence of parents’ socioeconomic standing on children’s adult attainments, interestingly the effect of G2’s adolescent self-concept of ability on G2 educational attainment in adulthood is almost twice the magnitude of the effect of G2’s educational plans.

Our research also demonstrates that the grandparental biography influences the development of agentic resources for both G2 and G3 adolescents. Grandparent educational expectations for G2 have effects of relatively strong magnitude on both G2 educational plans and their academic self-concepts in adolescence. But we also find that grandparental educational attainment has a direct positive effect on G3 educational plans. A positive effect of G1’s income on G3 educational plans and G3 academic self-concept is mediated by G2 educational expectations for G3.

Analyses summarized up to this point have addressed the influence of grandparental and parental biographies on the development of children’s agentic orientations during adolescence (their academic self-concept and educational plans), and for the parent generation, the consequences of these psychological resources, as measured in adolescence, for adult socioeconomic attainment. We now shift our attention to the implications of agentic socialization via “linked lives” as the G2 children’s biographies unfold. Do the impacts of the “linked lives” of parents and children on agentic development change as the targets of socialization, the children, grow older? Here we consider another agentic psychological resource, occupational values. While not generally considered in the lexicon of agentic psychological dimensions, values concerning work are highly relevant to the exercise of agency in pursuit of occupational attainment. Recognition of one’s goals in any sphere is essential when planning for strategic action: if one does not clarify what one wants, how can one move forward?

Given the wide range of occupations in contemporary society that offer distinct experiences and rewards, occupational values provide criteria for occupational decision-making. They offer a yardstick for an individual to gauge the degree of “fit” between personal interests and priorities, and the experiences likely to be obtained at work. As a result, occupational values have long been of interest to social scientists studying vocational development -- well before the life course perspective was articulated. Considerable evidence shows that occupational values, usually classified as extrinsic or intrinsic, predict both occupational choices and attainments (Davis, 1964, 1965; Johnson and Mortimer, 2011; Lindsay and Knox, 1984; Mortimer and Lorence, 1979; Rosenberg, 1957). Extrinsic values signify rewards received for doing a job (income, advancement, prestige, security); intrinsic values designate rewards from work itself (use of skills and abilities, responsibility, autonomy, learning opportunities, chance to be helpful to others or useful to society, and work with people rather than things). We (Johnson and Mortimer, 2011) found that G2 intrinsic values at age 21, prioritized by parents of higher socioeconomic status, predicted more beneficial G2 work outcomes of both intrinsic and extrinsic character (intrinsic rewards and self-direction, as well as occupational status, wage rate, and job security) a decade later.

Parents can guide children’s agentic vocational exploration, occupational decision-making, and attainments by influencing their work values. Here we are particularly interested in the aspect of timing, in identifying the stage at which value similarity between parents and children is manifest (Johnson, Heckhausen, and Mortimer, 2020). It is perhaps most plausible to assume that this type of agentic socialization would occur during adolescence. Parents are initial occupational role models, and by adolescence the child has had a chance to observe parents for several years, including parents’ work satisfactions and stressors. Parents and teenagers are likely to talk about work, adolescents hear parents talking about work to one another, and they may also have had the opportunity to visit parents’ workplaces. All of this is likely to occur in adolescence (or earlier) when the youth is living at home.

Alternatively, value similarity could be postponed until the transition to adulthood approaches and work becomes more relevant to the young person. Youth may make occupational choices that align with parents’ values, e.g., through parental influence, the operation of family networks, or simply the likelihood that job opportunities will be open in parents’ lines of work, given co-residence in the same communities. These occupational choices may reinforce the same values as held by parents and lead to parent-child similarity after adolescence. Later on, parent and child occupational values may become more similar as the child gains more experience in adult work careers. Parents may plant “value seeds” that initially lie dormant, but later sprout and bloom as their children become actively involved in work and discover, through work experience, what parental values mean.

Interestingly, we find no significant association between parent and child values in mid-adolescence (ages 14–15), but an association begins to emerge during late adolescence (ages 17–18), and parents’ values continue to predict child values into adulthood (ages 37–38). The correlations between parents’ and children’s extrinsic and intrinsic values at the last observation are all statistically significant, even though the parents’ values were measured more than twenty years earlier (see Table 1). This pattern persisted when the child’s most recently measured prior values were controlled, suggesting that parents’ values continued to influence those of their children in the latter waves of the study. A multilevel analysis confirmed the increasing parent-child value similarity as the child’s biography unfolded.

Table 1.

Correlations between Parent’s and Children’s Work Values by Children’s Age (Year)

	14–15 (1988)	17–18 (1991)	21–22 (1995)	26–27 (2000)	31–32 (2005)	37–38 (2011)
	Children’s Intrinsic Work Values
Mothers’ Intrinsic Values	.03	.09*	.08+	.08+	.10*	.09*
Fathers’ Intrinsic Values	.04	.14**	.13**	.19***	.14**	.22***^
	Children’s Extrinsic Work Values
Mothers’ Extrinsic Values	.03	.14***	.15***	.15***	.19***	.20***^
Fathers’ Extrinsic Values	.00	.06	.09*	.15***	.13**	.23***^

N=796 for mothers; 628 for fathers

^***p<.001;

^**p<.01;

^*p<.05;

⁺p<.10

^{^}correlation is significantly stronger (p<.001) in 2011 compared to 1988.

As evidenced by these longitudinal investigations of linked lives, the biographies of both grandparents and parents influence the development of adolescents’ agentic orientations. Evidence for “intergenerational development,” grandparental influence, and the growing impacts of parents on occupational value development as the child matures could not be ascertained by contemporaneous studies of child socialization in the nuclear family.

Intersections of Agency with Time and Place

Building on C. Wright Mills (1959) dictum that understanding the linkages between history and biography is central to the sociological imagination, Elder, Johnson and Crosnoe (2003:12) define the life course principle of “time and place:” “the life course of individuals is embedded and shaped by the historical times and places they experience over their lifetime.” This principle directs analysts’ attention to monumental historical events and their sequelae, such as economic depressions, wars, revolutions, and environmental calamities. Agentic resources are especially important during such times. Elder’s classic Children in the Great Depression (1974) showed that the crystallization of career goals among deprived men fostered occupational achievement in the wake of the financial collapse. Elder’s research in California, as well as Conger and Elder’s subsequent study of Iowa families in the midst of rural hardship, Family in Troubled Times (1994), demonstrated parallels in the ways that families exercised agency in response to economic crisis. They reduced consumption, sent additional members into the workforce, and engaged in more intensive home production (of food, clothing, and other necessities).

Research using the YDS illustrates a similar nexus of the principles of agency and historical time as agentic resources were particularly important in enabling young people to weather the Great Recession of 2007–2009 (Vuolo, Staff and Mortimer, 2012). A multilevel latent class analysis revealed three agentic pathways of G2 transition to adulthood (between the ages of 18 and 30). The most agentic young people had consistently high educational aspirations along with continued certainty about occupational goals, and they also engaged in active, multi-method job searches. The least agentic exhibited declining educational aspirations over time, decreasing career certainty, and their attempts to find jobs likewise waned. Those displaying what we called “flexible agency” adjusted their goals in line with economic realities. They were likely to shift from aspiring to a four-year BA degree to a lesser, but still economically useful Associates or vocational certificate, while maintaining high certainty about their career goals and active searching for jobs. Importantly, these pathways predicted the capacity to “weather” the Great Recession when the youth reached their mid-thirties. With educational attainment and the level of career establishment prior to the Great Recession controlled, the most agentic and flexibly agentic were able to avoid unemployment and wage loss, while the least agentic did more poorly on both counts.

It is reasonable to suppose that the principle of time and place also applies to less dramatic or catastrophic societal changes, such as shifts in educational institutions, labor markets, technology, political climates, and values. Arguably, all studies involving multiple generations through time, except in the most static societies, would implicate this principle. Change in agentic goals and strategies will necessarily occur in response to changing circumstances.

For example, alterations in the institutional structures of education and work will affect the mix of opportunities and rewards available to individuals, and hence the parameters (goals and strategies) of agentic decision-making. Rapid expansion of higher education occurred in the last quarter of the twentieth century, largely in response to occupational upgrading and the reduction of employment opportunity for unskilled and semiskilled workers. U.S. national data show the dramatic rise in youth’s agentic educational goals that followed. In 1976, 34% of high school seniors planned to end their formal educations with a high school diploma; by 2000 only 9% did so (Reynolds et al, 2006). In 1976 only about one in four students planned to obtain a post-graduate or professional degree; by 2000 more than half of seniors held this high (and, for most, unrealistic) aspiration.

Using YDS data, we have addressed the following questions. How have agentic psychological resources changed across the generations of grandparents, G2 GenX children, and the mostly Millennial G3 grandchildren? Is there evidence that the impacts of specific agentic resources on educational achievement vary across generations and historical time? That is, has the predictive power of particular agentic resources changed as adolescents have come of age in historically specific macroeconomic contexts?

We recognize that historical changes that took place through the duration of this longitudinal study may have had countervailing influences on G2 and G3 agentic psychological resources, as well as their consequences. The G2 adolescent cohort approached adulthood in the late 1980s, a time of relative stability and prosperity. G3 adolescents were surveyed in 2009, 2010, and 2011, in the direct aftermath of the Great Recession. One might expect that agentic orientations would have been considerably dampened through the intervening three decades, given increasing difficulties in youth transition to work and other adult roles posed by manifold social changes, including slower economic growth, increasing occupational precarity, diminished economic security, surging inequality, collapse of the teenage job market, and heightened youth unemployment. G3 adolescents may have been aware of a continuous drumbeat of gloom and doom in the media, highlighting difficulties even well-educated young people faced in acquiring and maintaining stable full-time jobs, attaining financial independence from parents, purchasing their own homes, and acquiring other traditional markers of adulthood.

At the same time, other concomitant changes across cohorts might have had the opposite effect, raising agentic psychological resources, such as educational plans, self-concept of ability, optimism, etc. The decades between adolescent cohorts have seen great expansion of higher education and increasing educational attainment (especially for women), higher income returns to college degrees, expansion of women’s employment opportunities, the shattering of glass ceilings, and, one might argue, a cultural shift toward greater self-realization, self-esteem, and individualism (Twenge et al, 2012). Given these potentially countervailing influences on adolescent agentic resources, what differences do we observe in the agentic orientations of G2 and G3 adolescent cohorts? Do we find corresponding shifts in G1 and G2 parent cohorts? Here we find evidence of the nexus between the principles of agency, and time and place.

Again drawing on YDS three-generation data collected through 2011, including 420 G1-G2-G3 triads, we compare adolescents (G2 & G3) and parents (G1 and G2) in two historical contexts separated by more than two decades of social change. Our research suggests that the positive social and institutional changes listed above have had stronger impact than the negative ones (Burger and Mortimer, 2021; Mortimer, Mont’Alvao, and Aronson, 2020). Apparently, “downward” macro-economic trends have had little aggregate effect, given generally upward mean agentic orientations. For example, adolescents’ educational aspirations have risen. While only 18% of G2 adolescents planned to obtain post-graduate or professional degrees, almost half (45%) of G3 adolescents did so. Parents’ educational expectations for their children (comparing G1 and G2 parents) rose accordingly. Children’s occupational aspirations and optimism also increased across generations (including optimism about work, family, friendship, health, etc.).

Our analyses also assessed whether particular experiences within families could explain the intergenerational shifts in parents’ and children’s agentic orientations. Multi-level fixed effects regressions showed that rising parental educational attainments and rising adolescent grade point averages led to higher parental expectations for children across G1 and G2 generations. Turning to the G2 and G3 adolescents, rising parental expectations and adolescent grade point averages predicted higher G3 socioeconomic aspirations. Rising adolescent GPA’s also predicted increase in G3 optimism. Change in parents’ unemployment histories, income, and family structure had little impact on within-family parent or adolescent change.

We next examined whether the value of particular agentic psychological resources may have shifted across time. Did they have distinct impacts on achievement in the two historical eras? This line of analysis was inspired by Shanahan, Elder, and Miech’s now classic study (1997), which inquired whether planfulness would have the same predictive power with respect to educational enrollment and attainment under different labor market conditions. Using data from the Stanford-Terman Study of Gifted Children (803 high IQ men born between 1904 and 1917), they showed that for men poised to enter the labor force during the Great Depression (those born between 1904 and 1910), planful competence (Clausen, 1991) made little difference for educational enrollment. These men may have felt forced to extend their educations irrespective of their planfulness to avoid entry to a poor labor market. But for later birth cohorts (b. 1911–1917), who experienced labor market expansion after the Great Depression and wartime economic mobilization, planful competence fostered educational investment.

Turning to the YDS, we asked if structural changes in education and work (and other institutional changes) altered the power of particular agentic resources to predict adolescents’ educational achievement, as indicated by students’ grades, across successive recent generations. The link between educational plans and educational achievement has eroded nationally in the past several decades (Reynolds and Johnson, 2011). It may be that inflation of educational plans and a “college for all” mentality (Rosenbaum, 2001) encouraged many youth to harbor lofty educational expectations, irrespective of their interests, abilities, grades, and economic resources (Reynolds and Johnson, 2006). Comparing G2 GenX and G3 (mostly) Millennials in the YDS, we found (Burger and Mortimer, 2021) that educational plans predicted G2 grade point averages, but for G3, educational plans had no effect on educational achievement. In this third generation, optimism and control orientation were the two agentic resources that predicted grade point averages.

Consistently, we also found that a multi-dimensional latent agency construct was less strongly related to educational plans in the G3 generation than in the G2 generation (Mont’Alvao and Mortimer, 2021). Soaring educational plans and their increasing disconnection from other indicators of agency, might have led G3 youth to consider their educational plans unrealistic. If so, they might have had diminishing impact on the kinds of behaviors that would improve academic achievement (e.g., time spent studying, effort in the classroom, perseverance in the achievement of educational goals). Thus, over the past couple decades, optimism and control orientation may have taken over as the agentic resources more likely to impact classroom performance.

Given the lessened impact of educational plans on academic achievement across generations, and the diminishing impact of other agentic resources on educational plans, it may be reasonably concluded that educational plans are no longer as central in the attainment process as they were for prior generations of adolescents who participated in studies of status attainment. The status attainment literature is generally focused on demonstrating the continued viability of the Wisconsin model, not the possibility of historical variation in the social psychological dynamics underlying attainment processes. Our findings raise caution in assuming that psychological resources, reflective of agency, have uniform consequences for educational achievement, educational plans, and possibly, socioeconomic trajectories across historical time.

Implications for Future Study

The research summarized in this article draws attention to the multifaceted dimensions of agency and the intersections of agency with linked lives. It also raises the possibility that there are historically specific consequences of agentic psychological resources. Our findings imply that more attention should be directed to the multiple psychological resources that promote agentic action as there is reason to believe that they tap into distinct dimensions that define the basic elements of agency. We have addressed this possibility by estimating latent constructs in some studies. In other instances, separating specific agentic resources may be advisable. Contrasting the two approaches will enable discovery, for example, of whether a more general agentic construct may be more predictive of success for some outcomes, whereas specific dimensions of agency (e.g., economic efficacy) may be more impactful for others. Both strategies mitigate against the tendency for research to focus exclusively on single agentic dimensions, preventing investigations of their relative value or joint operation with other manifestations of agency. YDS research points to the conclusion that multiple agentic psychological resources promote educational achievement and socioeconomic attainment.

The life course perspective fosters a quintessentially holistic view of human lives, with each stage of life seen as connected to those preceding and following. We have noted benefits of taking a long view in studying the development of agency through linked lives. We provide evidence for “intergenerational development:” parallels between agentic orientations (e.g., the academic self-concept, optimism, and economic self-efficacy) between parents and children, each observed during adolescence, with measurements more than twenty years apart. Understanding mechanisms contributing to such parallels awaits further study. We have thus far only scratched the surface of such underlying dynamics by investigating plausible mediators (e.g., parental income and unemployment trajectories). Children may observe parents’ occupational advancement (or lack thereof), success in family roles and in achieving work-family balance, or many other instances of parental agentic behavior and its outcomes. When compared with less agentic parents, more agentic parents may more actively encourage their children to take on challenging projects, persist in the face of obstacles, and relish their accomplishments---all of which could enhance or detract from agency within families through generations.

Findings from our research also highlight the merit of further study of agency and linked lives across multiple generations. We have observed how grandparents’ education and their expectations for their G2 children influenced the G2 parents’ own expectations for their G3 children, the grandchildren. Clearly, by affecting the transmission of agency, these relationships could contribute to the maintenance of inequality across generations. Future research might fruitfully examine other routes of grandparent influence---how do grandparental career trajectories influence the developmental trajectories of both children and grandchildren? Recently collected G2 and G3 data may help us to further understand grandparental influence on the agentic development of grandchildren by considering their geographic proximity, their frequency of interaction (in person or virtual), and the content of grandparent-grandchild communication and shared activities.

Understanding of agency and linked lives would also be strengthened by supplementing contemporaneous studies of parents and adolescents with research that follows adolescents as their biographies unfold. If our research on occupational value transmission only surveyed mid-adolescents (age 14–15), we would have concluded that parents’ values were not transmitted to children. Only by following the offspring over time---through their mid-thirties, could we discover that parents’ values were increasingly reflected in the next generation’s occupational reward preferences as they grew older.

There are relatively few studies of the variable impacts of agentic resources across contexts of time and place. Scholars often universalize findings although they may be historically specific, even, as we have seen, across successive generations. Our analyses suggest that particular agentic psychological resources may be more or less effective in realizing positive outcomes in distinct historical eras. Specifically, we find that educational plans were more consequential for educational achievement for G2, who came of age in a more stable social and economic time, while optimism and control orientation were more predictive of grade point average for G3. For G2, educational goals may have better reflected other individual agentic resources relevant to achievement. When agentic goals become universal, they may no longer be as successful in differentiating those who succeed from those who do not. Our research suggests that a more general optimism and sense of control over one’s life came to have more value in stimulating the kinds of behaviors that promote educational achievement in recent generations.

Dannefer (2003) argues that much of what we know about human development derives from research conducted in relatively stable societal conditions. Rapidly changing times may give rise to new possibilities for agentic action, circumstances that make distinct agentic psychological resources more or less useful (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). Accordingly, we might ask, would the changing impacts of agentic dimensions observed thus far in the Youth Development Study be confirmed, or even heightened, in times of even greater upheaval than that experienced in the two decades between our 1988 and 2011 surveys? The analyses described in this article were based on data collected through 2011 when the G2 cohort were in their mid-thirties (37–38) and their children were, for the most part, teenagers. Since then, we have witnessed continued economic instability, worldwide pandemic, and repeated environmental catastrophes.

The most recent data obtained in the YDS were collected in 2019 for G2, and in 2020, for G3. These data, presently being documented in preparation for analysis, will allow YDS investigators to continue to assess the impacts of multiple agentic psychological resources for the socioeconomic trajectories of G2, now entering midlife, and we will extend these studies to G2 health outcomes. We will continue to monitor the impacts of the linked lives of grandparents, parents, and children on agentic development. We will also examine differences in the experience of adolescence and young adulthood for G2, in relatively good and more stable times, and for G3, who experienced, amid the last wave of data collection, the pandemic shutdown. G3 youth may now be aware of increasing difficulties in achieving historically recognized “markers” of adulthood (leaving home, finishing school, economic independence, marriage, and parenthood), and may even be questioning whether such markers are still relevant and worth achieving. All these changes might profoundly affect agentic resources and action. As the “goalposts” change, distinct agentic resources may become more important to the achievement of positive outcomes, and others less consequential. As the new YDS data will soon be publicly available¹, I invite all readers to join with us in investigating the continuing and perhaps changing intersections of the multiple dimensions of agency, linked lives, and time and place.