Development of close relationships in the transition from kindergarten to elementary school: An examination of the intergenerational transmission hypothesis

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Eighty-five children and their parents in Tokyo from middle-class families participated in this six-year longitudinal study. Every year, children and parents were individually interviewed, assessed and observed with a variety of assessment instruments. The findings, first, bore out the validity of the model in that the four basic natures of close relationships were clearly found. That is, (1) children had multiple significant others concurrently ; (2) each figure fulfilled certain psychological functions ; (3) while there were normative developmental changes in selections of significant others as the child grew less centered on the mother, there were individual differences in social relationships among them if we focused on who was predominantly important for each of the children ; and (4) almost half of the children transformed their relationships through the transition to school. Second, the findings indicated complex pathways of parental influence on child development. That is, (1) mothers and fathers have different effects on the development of children; (2) there were both direct and indirect effects of parents on children ; and (3) there was no strong evidence to support the intergenerational transmission hypothesis.