The influence of parent-child dynamics on cultural tensions: an identity perspective of conflicting values between traditional and consumerist cultures

Abstract

This study addresses a gap in literature by exploring how dynamic cultural forces between parents and children lead to paradoxical identity conflicts and related tensions among them as consumers in the marketplace. Using two distinct consumer categories, the results show that traditionally rooted parents consider dependent children to be an extension of their identity and experience greater, more intense tensions due to consumerist aspirations and traditional obligations toward the child. These parents are torn between aspiring for their child, a traditional ideal or ought self-guide, and a consumerist ideal self-guide, which also paradoxically doubles up as a feared self-guide from which they want to keep the child away. The child, in turn, feels obliged to comply with parents’ traditional expectations despite having a predominantly consumerist identity, and feels similar tensions between conflicting value systems. In contrast, the nontraditional parents who are more attuned to Western consumers, do not use children as identity extensions; hence, they find no need to transfer personally rooted values to children and thereby do not experience tensions. The findings contribute to the literature on how children as contemporary consumers influence parents’ consumption behavior and how the consumerist tendencies of children could have implications for the identity and tensions of parents and vice versa.