Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Exploring the Links Between Parenting Styles, Parental Aspirations, and Socioeconomic Status, and Young People's Post‐School Aspirations in Scotland

There is limited population level empirical evidence examining the relationship between social class and post-school aspirations in Scotland, and previous research elsewhere finds conflicting results. Without knowledge of the relationship between social class and post-school aspirations, it is difficult to confirm whether social stratification in post-school destinations is a result of structural barriers, or the dubious prospect that disadvantaged young people simply lack education or career ambitions. To address this gap, this study explores how parenting styles, parental aspirations for their child's education, and parental socioeconomic status are correlated with young people's post-school aspirations in Scotland, using Growing Up in Scotland, a nationally representative longitudinal Scottish birth cohort study. We use three related multinomial logistic regression models to examine whether and how parenting styles, parental aspirations, and parental social class variables explain young people's post-school aspirations. We find that parenting styles are not associated with young people's post-school aspirations when controlling for confounders. Parental aspirations are, however, strongly associated with children's own post-school aspirations when controlling for confounders, and measures of social class are only associated with young people's aspirations when not controlling for these parental aspirations. While young people from all social classes and their parents hold similar aspirations-most commonly to attend university-analysis by the Scottish Government of their administrative statistics reveals that university access is very much socially stratified. This social stratification in outcomes-but not in aspirations-highlights the need to address structural barriers that impede working-class young people from achieving their goals, and the need to shift away from policy solutions that aim to solely raise the ambitions of disadvantaged youths. This study highlights the importance of productively involving parents in career guidance and calls for further research to understand the dynamics of parental and child aspirations better.