Teaching Children About Money: Prospective Parenting Ideas From Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Many Millennials (aged 18–30 in 2016) are struggling with financial capability and independence. As efforts unfold to address this issue by improving financial education, Millennials themselves can offer helpful family-centered ideas for children’s financial learning. As part of the Whats and Hows of Family Financial $ocialization project, this qualitative study explored the ideas of 126 undergraduate students enrolled in family finance classes at three institutions from three regions of the United States about how and what they intend to teach their future children about finances. Thematic content analysis and coding of interviews revealed four core themes: (a) “Communicating Family Finances,” (b) “Opportunities for Responsibility,” (c) “The Value of Hard Work,” and (d) “The Process of Saving.” These findings have implications for parents, future parents, financial counselors, financial planners, family life educators, financial educators, therapists, and researchers in improving parental financial education for future generations.

Can We Talk About Money? Financial Socialization Through Parent–Child Financial Discussion

“…This data set and these general project procedures for coding and analysis have been used in several papers from the Whats and Hows of Family Financial $ocialization project (Jorgensen et al, 2019; LeBaron, 2019; LeBaron, Hill, Rosa, & Marks, 2018; LeBaron, Hill, Rosa, Spencer, et al, 2018; LeBaron, Rosa-Holyoak, et al, 2018; LeBaron et al, 2019; Rosa et al, 2018). The following procedures are specific to this article.…”

“…Calculations were made based on the 90 interviews that mentioned "formal instruction," not the 115 total interviews conducted in the larger study. Rosa-Holyoak, et al, 2018;LeBaron et al, 2019;Rosa et al, 2018). The following procedures are specific to this article.…”

Financial Socialization: A Decade in Review

“…The sample for the multigenerational project included 128 college-educated emerging adults, 17 parents, and eight grandparents ( N = 153; see Marks et al 2019 for a detailed description of the methods used). Participants also discussed what they wished their parents had taught them about money (and what parents/grandparents wished they had taught their children about money; LeBaron et al 2018b ) and, for emerging adult participants, how they wanted to teach their future children about money (LeBaron et al 2018c ). Although most of the project’s findings supported Gudmunson and Danes’s ( 2011 ) model, LeBaron et al ( 2019 ) proposed experiential learning (“the process of using life experience to internalize [financial] knowledge”; LeBaron et al 2019 , p. 437) as a third primary method of financial socialization based on participants’ reports.…”

Parental Financial Education During Childhood and Financial Behaviors of Emerging Adults

“…The dichotomous question used to explore overt financial education could not fully explore the nuanced differences parents may make in their financial socialization decisions with their children. It is possible that clearer, more nuanced measures would give valuable insights into potential gender moderation of not only overt financial teaching, but also other socialization methods such as modeling (Rosa et al, 2018) and experiential learning (LeBaron et al, 2019). Future measures should also examine financial teaching of specific financial concepts to further research on not just how but what parents should be teaching their children about finances (LeBaron et al, 2018a).…”