Transmission of moral values between generations of families in conditions of social and economic vulnerability

Abstract

Introduction: this study analysed the transmission of values between generations in groups of people in unfavourable economic and social conditions. It was carried out with grandparents, their children, and their grandchildren who are residents of a peripheral neighbourhood of the capital of São Paulo and live in restricted economic conditions and under the daily impact of violence. The study sought to determine how the passage of values between generations is processed, in view of the exposure to conditions of deprivation to which these people are subjected, while they carry the obligation to ensure the minimum for their children but do not have the necessary resources. This raises the question of how it is possible to affirm a notion of right and wrong within this social framework. The theoretical basis of this study was psychoanalysis, using the concepts of Identification, Ego Ideal, Ideal Ego, Oedipus, and the dynamics underlying the insertion of the father in the Oedipal triad.

Methods: interviews were conducted through group meetings to discuss issues related to morals. These discussions involved the three generational components of three families. Different arrangements were made that involved the same generational group in an initial meeting and, in another meeting, the mixture of different generations and different families responding to pre-established themes that involved moral dilemmas focused on the daily cultural and social life of these families.

Results: the grandfathers were ambiguous because they have a reference to a law of morals transcending space and time. Parents, realising the ambiguity of these grandparents in relation to reality, reformulate these moral questions, basing their convictions on a law that is established within the contingencies of everyday life and, therefore, changeable. The adolescent grandchildren perceive this ambiguity in the parents and in their speech.

Conclusion: There is greater identification of moral standards among grandchildren and grandparents than between children and parents. The interviewed parents were ambiguous in the way they act and speak, with the transgenerational reproduction model being more guided between grandchildren and grandparents than in the sequential temporal generational sequence.