Parenting cultures: change and transmission between generations of African-Caribbean and white British mixed families in London

Social values such as attitudes to social respectability (including attitudes to religion, sexuality and marriage), education and social mobility, gender divisions of roles and attitude towards different ethnic groups are general attitudes which are often transmitted between generations within families. Social values often find their roots within the culture in which the individual was born and raised. These values are shaped and influenced by parents, grandparents and other members in the extended family networks including fictive kin members, and are further reinforced by the wider social structures. Factors such as changing political and social climate (for example exposure to global markets and global crises) can play significant roles in the transmission, or change of social values among individuals within families. Migration from one culture to another and mixed sociability are also key factors which alter the ways in which values are transmitted between generations within families. This paper is drawn from a qualitative study of 34 mixed Anglo African-Caribbean and white British extended families in London, across three to four generations from the 1950s to mid-2000s. It is a comparative paper that explores attitudes to social values among the Anglo African-Caribbean and the white British families, and their transmission between generations in each group. It informs of the family value systems from which the individuals in mixed-heritage families came, and shows how these values are adapted and negotiated within the mixed families. In other words, it shows what values the individuals in the mixed-heritage families brought with them from their families of origin and what values they have rejected, in the process of creating their own value systems which work for their unique situations as mixed families.