Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson’s research while affiliated with Washington State University and other places

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Publications (63)


Yes, parents, it reflects on you: Norms and Metanorms regulating teen daughters and parents
  • Article
  • Full-text available

March 2025

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58 Reads

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson

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Christine Horne

Objective Examine normative expectations of teens and parents related to teen behaviors in multiple domains. Background Parenting expectations have strengthened in an increasingly evaluative context. Existing literature does not address whether parents are evaluated based on their teens’ actions. We argue that understanding the pressures parents face is facilitated by an understanding of norms, which regulate behavior, and metanorms, which regulate the sanctioning of norm violations. Method Using an online vignette experiment, we tested three hypotheses about norm expectations evaluating a 16‐year‐old female's behavior and metanorm expectations evaluating her parents based on the teens’ behavior. 786 US adults were randomly assigned to one of eight vignettes varying a teen daughter's behavior with respect to contraception, number of sexual partners, shoplifting, and academic performance. Results Participants expected negative reactions to the teen girl when she engaged in nonnormative behaviors. They also expected she was more likely to be pregnant, even when the nonnormative behavior was not sexual. They expected more negative reactions to her parents based on her nonnormative behavior, even when nothing was known about their parenting. In some cases, the effects were smaller for parents than for the girl but still notable. Conclusion Parents and teens are both held accountable for teens’ behavior. Implications The study extends the theoretical understanding of metanorms and has implications for understanding parental reactions to teens’ behaviors.

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The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting Class and Conformity

February 2025

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66 Reads

Social Forces

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Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson

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Xiaowen Han

In his path-breaking monograph, Class and Conformity, Melvin Kohn reasoned that parents prepare their children for the same conditions of work that they themselves experience. Kohn and his colleagues’ research focused on the influence of parental self-direction at work on parental child-rearing values and practices, as well as the self-directed values of children. The intergenerational transmission of occupational self-direction from parents to the succeeding generation of adult children, strongly implied by Kohn’s analysis, has not been empirically tested. Using two-generation longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (N = 1139), we estimate a structural equation model to assess the intergenerational continuity of occupational self-direction. We find evidence supporting a key inference of Kohn’s analysis: that self-direction at work, a primary feature of jobs of higher social class standing, is transmitted across generations via self-directed psychological orientations, operationalized here as intrinsic work values. Intrinsic values also significantly predicted second-generation educational attainment, contributing further to the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality. The findings enhance understanding of the intergenerational transmission of advantage.


Gender and Family Financial Support in the Transition to Adulthood 1

October 2023

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70 Reads

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2 Citations

Sociological Forum

This study examines gender differences in the financial support young adults receive from their families and in the associations between adult role occupancy and financial assistance. Drawing on data from the Transition to Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics between 2005 and 2015, this study analyzes patterns of receiving any family financial support among 17–27 year olds and explores the types of expenses for which young adults receive assistance (e.g., tuition). Findings indicate that young women are more likely to receive familial financial assistance in the young adult years, especially for tuition, and that associations between adult social role occupancy and assistance involve both similarities and differences for young men and women. Key differences include that young women are substantially less likely to receive assistance in the form of personal loans from family, and that their partnering and parenting roles are associated with assistance with rent or a mortgage in opposing ways compared to young men's. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the ways family relationships and young adult pathways to independence are gendered.


Becoming Independent and Responsible Adults: Does Parental Financial Help Interfere?

February 2023

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61 Reads

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2 Citations

Journal of Family Issues

The extension of parental financial support into young adulthood has fueled concerns in the U.S. about young people’s development of independence and responsibility—financial and otherwise. This study draws on data from the Transition to Adulthood Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine young people’s self-assessments of these qualities as well as their financial concerns. The findings indicate that receiving financial support from families was negatively associated with young adults’ assessments of their independence and how much financial responsibility they have for themselves. It was also associated with more frequent worrying about money. Panel models offered no support for the argument that such associations result from financial assistance undermining these accomplishments, instead indicating that financial assistance is in some cases beneficial. In contrast, earlier assessments of these qualities and concerns predicted later receipt of financial support, supporting more of a selection argument.


Rationales and Support for Norms in the Context of Covid-19

July 2022

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8 Reads

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4 Citations

Social Psychology Quarterly

This study empirically tests whether people invoke moral and prudential rationales when evaluating behavior in a novel context—the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States—and whether those rationales are associated with their support for a norm. We use data from two online vignette experiments that describe key health behaviors—staying home and masking—and find substantial support. Given the politicization of these behaviors in the U.S. context, we also explore the role of political orientation and find that liberal participants react more strongly to the behaviors.


Testing an Integrated Theory: Distancing Norms in the Early Months of Covid-19

April 2021

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22 Reads

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6 Citations

Sociological Perspectives

We draw on norms theory to develop hypotheses about norms regulating social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. We identify two theoretical approaches—the consequentialist and social cues approach—and argue that understanding norms will be enhanced by integrating these two approaches. We apply these general theoretical approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic to suggest concrete hypotheses regarding distancing norms. We test our hypotheses using two vignette experiments. We find that when the consequences of behavior are clear, both behavior consequences and social cues independently affect norms. But when the consequences of a behavior are ambiguous, behaviors and social cues interact to affect norms. Theoretically, our results provide the first empirical test of an integrated theory of norms, showing that in ambiguous situations an integrated approach produces more accurate predictions than either the behavior consequences or social cues approach alone. Substantively, our paper helps to explain Covid-19 distancing norms and variation in those norms across political orientation. Our findings have implications for understanding support for and compliance with public health directives.


Examining the Effect of Adolescent Sport Participation on Civic Engagement and Orientation in Early Adulthood

February 2020

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28 Reads

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16 Citations

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

In the United States, athletics is a major part of adolescents’ lives during high school. Using longitudinal data on 703 respondents from the Youth Development Study, we examine whether sports participation in adolescence predicts a diverse array of civic behaviors and orientations as young adults. Our study centers on a test of two theories. Socialization theory suggests that sports participation, like other youth activities, will increase the likelihood of prosocial outcomes. In contrast, selection theory predicts that once background factors are considered, the significant effects of youth athletics on civic outcomes will be eliminated. Bivariate models indicate small, statistically significant effects of participation on most outcomes. Multivariate analyses incorporating a range of factors prior to athletic participation tend to support selection theory. The results suggest that most of the bivariate associations are attributable to other factors that influence who participates in athletics during adolescence.


Descriptive statistics
Zero-order correlations
Zero-order correlations (continued)
Standardized path coefficients from the fully recursive structural equation model
Latent constructs and residual correlations
Self-esteem and self-efficacy in the status attainment process and the multigenerational transmission of advantage

February 2020

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756 Reads

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42 Citations

Social Science Research

Despite considerable evidence of the importance of self-esteem and self-efficacy for agentic, goal-oriented behavior, little attention has been directed to these psychological dimensions in the status attainment literature. The present research uses data from the longitudinal, three-generation Youth Development Study (N = 422 three-generation triads) to examine the extent to which adolescent self-esteem and economic self-efficacy affect adult educational and income attainment, and whether these psychological resources are transmitted from one generation to the next, accumulating advantage across generations. We present evidence indicating that both self-esteem and economic self-efficacy are implicated in the attainment process. Adolescent economic self-efficacy had a direct positive effect on adult educational attainment and an indirect effect through educational plans. The influence of self-esteem on adult educational attainment was entirely indirect, through school achievement. We also find evidence that economic self-efficacy was transmitted from parents to children. We conclude that future research should more broadly consider psychological resources in attainment processes from a longitudinal multigenerational perspective.


Work Value Transmission From Parents to Children: Early Socialization and Delayed Activation

September 2019

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55 Reads

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22 Citations

Work and Occupations

This study examines the transmission of work values from parents to children between mid-adolescence and early midlife. The authors propose that work-related values are transmitted from parents to children in two sequential and complementary processes stretched across adolescence and early adulthood. The first process of work value exposure and reception in the family context is captured by the socialization model. The second process is one of delayed value activation, long after initial socialization, when the young adult offspring engages with the demands and vicissitudes of their own emerging careers. The authors find evidence for family socialization in adolescence and also support for the delayed activation model during adulthood. Although parental values were measured more than two decades earlier, the authors find the strongest associations of parent and child values when the offspring were in their late 30s. In addition, parent–child value similarity is heightened when adult children navigate career uncertainty and change, consistent with a delayed activation process.


Conceptual model
Conditional influence of parent GLE in adolescence by current household income
Adolescent Agentic Orientations: Contemporaneous Family Influence, Parental Biography and Intergenerational Development

October 2017

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51 Reads

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28 Citations

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Agentic orientations developed in adolescence have been linked to better health, well-being, and achievements in the years following. This study examines longitudinal parental influences on the development of adolescent children's agentic orientations, captured by the core constructs of mastery beliefs and generalized life expectations. Drawing on multigenerational panel data from the United States (1991-2011), the study examines contemporaneous family factors, but also how parental biographies (their own transition to adulthood) and parents' own adolescent agentic orientations influence their adolescent children. Study adolescents were 46% male, 52% white, and 15.6 years old on average. The findings indicate that parents' early orientations and experiences in the transition to adulthood have little effect on their children's mastery beliefs, but that parents' generalized life expectations (in adolescence) and having married before having the child were associated with their children's more optimistic life expectations. Contemporaneous family income and optimistic expectations among parents-as-adolescents were somewhat substitutable as positive influences on adolescents' optimistic life expectations. The findings contribute to our understanding of intergenerational and over-time influences on these key adolescent orientations.


Citations (58)


... Role expectations vary across cultural contexts (Holdsworth 2004;Newman 2012) and over the life course as individuals transition through life stages (Elder 1994;Min et al. 2022;Settersten 1998). Illustrating this, rates of coresidence with parents and financial support from parents in the United States decline as children grow older (Hartnett et al. 2013;Johnson and Ridgeway 2023;South and Lei 2015;U.S. Census Bureau 2022) and enter cohabitation or marriage (Kuperberg 2023;Siennick 2011;Swartz et al. 2011). Yet college is a transitional period that can generate ambiguity regarding parental responsibilities, particularly for nontraditional undergraduates who may have already assumed other adult social roles. ...

Reference:

Activating Family Safety Nets: Understanding Undergraduates’ Pandemic Housing Transitions
Gender and Family Financial Support in the Transition to Adulthood 1
  • Citing Article
  • October 2023

Sociological Forum

... Recent generations of emerging adults living in industrialized societies make more extensive investments in education and spend more time establishing stable careers (e.g., Fussell & Furstenberg, 2013). To assist during these extended transitions, many parents continue to provide financial support to their emerging adult children (Fingerman et al., 2009;Johnson & Ridgeway, 2024). In light of these societal changes, the path toward financial self-sufficiency for many emerging adults has also become increasingly prolonged (Fingerman et al., 2009(Fingerman et al., , 2016 and diversified. ...

Becoming Independent and Responsible Adults: Does Parental Financial Help Interfere?
  • Citing Article
  • February 2023

Journal of Family Issues

... Compliance with preventative measures was highest when individuals were encouraged by descriptive and injunctive norms (Akfirat et al., 2023). People assessed emergent COVID-19 health behaviors through moral and prudential rationales, and these assessments explained how much someone disapproved of those behaviors (Horne and Johnson, 2022). Our findings add to existing norms research by revealing specific social processes that facilitate rapid group adjustment to new norms, along with how norms are used to justify existing inequalities and strengthen group boundaries during times of social change. ...

Rationales and Support for Norms in the Context of Covid-19
  • Citing Article
  • July 2022

Social Psychology Quarterly

... Because employment patterns-including both the temporal character and quality of work-are not randomly distributed, our models take into account known bases of selection to work. Controlling such selection factors, as well as lagged outcome variables (that is, the dependent variables measured in the ninth grade), we found no evidence that more intensive work reduced grade point average or educational aspirations and plans nor did it affect key indicators of mental health, such as depressed mood or selfesteem (Mortimer et al. 1996;Mortimer and Johnson 1998). Shanahan and Flaherty (2001) also found that employment did not typically cramp adolescents' "well-rounded" life styles. ...

Chapter IX: Adolescents’ Part-Time Work and Educational Achievement
  • Citing Article
  • April 1998

Teachers College Record

... Most research seems to be directed at traditional persuasive communication, where the authorities tell the citizenry what to do and expect them to do it. However, our studies show that constitutive rhetoric may be a powerful force when combined with traditional persuasion (Horne & Johnson, 2021;Nivette et al., 2021). The four strategies that we have described for the phase of crisis and full alarm work together to reinforce each other. ...

Testing an Integrated Theory: Distancing Norms in the Early Months of Covid-19
  • Citing Article
  • April 2021

Sociological Perspectives

... For this reason, this study highlights the importance of citizenship education in the formation of new generations. Citizenship education is shown not only as a valuable resource for building a conscious, participatory and democratic society, but it should also inspect the current challenges brought about by the globalized world, characterized by technological transformations and social trends (Rotolo et al., 2020). Thus, teaching children and adolescents knowledge, skills and values such as justice, equity, respect, empathy and tolerance are a necessity to certify that they understand their position in the world and act as responsible citizens (Scott et al., 2020). ...

Examining the Effect of Adolescent Sport Participation on Civic Engagement and Orientation in Early Adulthood
  • Citing Article
  • February 2020

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

... Taking additional results into consideration, the findings on non-response in calendar instruments do not allow a definite conclusion (see e.g. Mortimer & Johnson, 1999;Yoshihama et al., 2005;Martyn et al., 2006;Cotugno, 2009). ...

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition Pathways in the United States
  • Citing Chapter
  • February 1999

... We also note that the finding that work is not associated with greater overweight/obesity risk when combined with school enrollment aligns with prior work on the benefits of combining work with school. For example, attending school while working is associated with improved academic performance in the United States (Mortimer and Johnson 1998;Staff et al. 2010) and increased adult earnings in Brazil (Emerson and Souza 2011). We speculate that combining school and work might be a way to gain skills that promote healthy eating habits. ...

New perspectives on adolescent work and the transition to adulthood
  • Citing Chapter
  • September 1998

... Students with low self-confidence have been shown to have poor performance on tasks and were unwilling to participate in all academic activities (Bailey & Phillips, 2016;Melo et al., 2022;Michie et al., 2001;Peixoto & Almeida, 2010). When self-esteem and selfefficacy intersect, they form the foundation of self-confidence in academic settings (Burger et al., 2020;Lane et al., 2004). In this regard, examining the results indicated in table 2 that the median of students' exploring the degree of confidence students have in their own abilities. ...

Self-esteem and self-efficacy in the status attainment process and the multigenerational transmission of advantage

Social Science Research

... Joining a long tradition of social science theorizing and research, from Bengtson's classic (1975) work on the transmission of religious values across multiple generations, to more recent research on the transmission of work values (Cemalcilar, Jensen, and Tosun 2019;Johnson and Mortimer 2015;Johnson, et al. 2020;Kraaykamp, Cemalcilar, and Tosun 2019) and political orientations (Jennings et al. 2009), Kohn (1983) developed a theoretical model of value transmission in the family. It included parents' occupational position, occupational self-direction and education, values when children are older, child-rearing practices and relationships with the child, and children's perceptions of parental values. ...

Work Value Transmission From Parents to Children: Early Socialization and Delayed Activation
  • Citing Article
  • September 2019

Work and Occupations