Transgenerational Transmission: An Investigation of Parents’ Achievement Motives, Achievement Imagery in Children’s Books and Children’s Academic Performance

• The study highlights transgenerational transmission of parental achievement motives on their children. • Parents’ implicit and explicit achievement motives are linked to children’s academic performance. • Parental educational expectations correlate with parents’ implicit achievement motives. • Achievement imagery in children’s books did not mediate parent–child achievement links. • Number of books at home partially mediates the effect of explicit achievement motives on grades. We investigated the relationship between parents’ implicit and explicit achievement motives and their children’s academic performance, examining whether achievement imagery in children’s books mediated this relationship. For N = 178 parents, we assessed achievement motives, prevalence of achievement imagery in children’s books at home, parental educational expectation, and children’s academic performance in Grade 4. The findings support a positive relationship between parents’ achievement motives and children’s performance, with some support for educational expectation. However, there was no evidence that achievement imagery mediated this relationship. Parents’ achievement motives did not correlate significantly with achievement imagery, nor did achievement imagery show expected positive relationships with grades. The implications for transgenerational transmission of achievement striving are discussed.