Every Christmas, a father takes his children to see the neighborhood lights because his father did the same with him. A mother makes the same birthday breakfast her mother prepared when she was little. Another parent reads a particular bedtime story, follows an old holiday ritual or takes the children to the same vacation spot they visited decades earlier. These behaviors can look like nostalgia, but psychology suggests something deeper can be happening. Research on intergenerational transmission, Social Learning Theory, family rituals and family identity shows how behaviors and meanings can travel from one generation to another. When parents recreate traditions from their own childhood, they may be doing more than repeating an activity. They can be turning personal memories into a continuing family story.
