How Parents Influence Their Children’s Goals

Goals are important for kids and adults alike because they’re motivational. If we know where we want to go, we can find a path. But not all goals have the same impact on our emotional health.

Intrinsic goals are distinct from extrinsic goals in that they directly satisfy our psychological needs for autonomy, competency, and relatedness. Intrinsic goals might include having meaningful and reciprocal relationships, striving for personal growth, and making time for community contributions. These are the types of goals that are more likely to foster well-being.

Extrinsic goals are those that center around external factors—for instance, wealth, fame, prestige, a thousand likes on social media. It’s almost impossible to accomplish these goals with a feeling of satisfaction. After all, there is always someone wealthier, more famous, more liked, or more followed; there is always the new shiny thing to chase after, each costing more than the next.

Is it possible to unlock more intrinsic motivation in kids? It turns out, we may be influencing our kids toward certain types of goals without even realizing it.

A recent review paper published in Psychological Bulletin suggests that the nature of children’s goals is often linked to their parents’ goals. But it also notes that, unlike many other behaviors, modeling the behavior may not be enough. Goals are tricky. How parents nurture their kids in the home can have a negative or positive effect, too—and not always how you’d expect.

“The transmission of goals between parent and child is complex,” says Ferber, a clinical psychologist and research fellow at Australian Catholic University and the University of Helsinki, and coauthor of the new study. “We still have so much to learn.”

What parents value

To find out how parents’ goals affect those of their kids, Ferber and her team analyzed 53 studies, most of which were conducted in North America, Asia, and Europe, but some in Africa and Australia or a mix of regions. Put together, the studies included children whose ages ranged from 11 to over 21, with the majority in the 15-to-17 age group.

While there were nuances and exceptions, the review found that children’s goal-setting ideals were indeed often associated with the types of goals parents valued. This is particularly true with extrinsic goals. If parents appear to place importance on, say, a bigger salary or a bigger house, then their children also tend to value goals that are more outwardly based—for instance, striving for straight A’s, winning a sports trophy, or getting accepted into a prestigious university. Ferber and her team found that the strongest correlation between extrinsic goals occurred in middle adolescence—between ages 15 and 17.

That suggests that kids take cues from the values that parents model (though, of course, it’s important to note that this correlation does not connote causation). This modeling can happen in many different ways: The parent might simply vocalize the importance of these goals or take visible action to achieve them. The parent might also directly put pressure on kids to achieve these goals (“If you don’t get at least a B, you’re grounded”) or promote them (“Sarah’s mom must be so proud that Sarah got into Harvard”).

With this in mind, you’d expect a similar parent-child correspondence for intrinsic goals. That is to say, if parents placed emphasis on finding a job that feels fulfilling, you’d expect the child to forge a more inward-looking path, too, whether it’s focusing on growing and learning from course content (as opposed to fixating on grades) or finding a career that feels like a good fit.

But, in fact, the connection here may not be so simple. While Ferber found evidence to support a parent-child link for extrinsic goals over time, the relationship with intrinsic goals turned out to be much more complex. In fact, Ferber even noticed (though the effect size was small) an association between a parent’s intrinsic aspirations and a child’s extrinsic aspirations: As the parents’ intrinsic aspirations increased, their children’s extrinsic aspirations increased.

That led her and her team to believe that something else must be at play besides behavioral modeling—and in fact, she says, these goal types may actually develop through different processes.

A nurturing environment

Goal-modeling aside, Ferber found that parenting style may also play an important part in a child’s approach to goals.

“While it is important to minimize messaging that overemphasizes material success or social prestige,” says Ferber, “a prominent focus should be on creating an environment that nurtures children’s sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness [social connection].”

When Ferber and her team analyzed the studies that measured the adult’s parenting approach while also measuring a child’s goal types, she found a link with a child’s intrinsic aspirations, but not their extrinsic aspirations.

That isn’t necessarily surprising, though, says Ferber: “Extrinsic goals rely on external contingencies, [so] they may be more likely to emerge via sources of direct external messaging, such as through parental role modeling—whereas intrinsic goals, which are inherently more aligned with basic psychological-needs satisfaction, require nurturing conditions to take root.” 

A need-supportive environment—where a child has a sense of volition, where they are supported to feel capable, and where they feel loved—fosters intrinsic goals that by definition “emerge naturally from within,” explains Ferber.

These are the goals that speak to a child’s personal values and authentic interests, which lead to better well-being and a feeling of fulfillment, whether it’s learning to play an instrument because they enjoy music, starting a project to learn more about a topic they love, or beginning a friendship in which they feel respected and valued, explains Ferber.

However, Ferber points out, the data failed to show an association between need-supportive parenting and a child’s extrinsic goals. This suggests that while a nurturing parenting style can foster intrinsic goals, it won’t necessarily prevent extrinsic goals.

In contrast, need-frustrating environments—where the parent is psychologically controlling, dismissive, or unsupportive—may push children to sacrifice their own goals in hopes of winning their mom’s or dad’s approval. “This dynamic might, therefore, hinder the development of intrinsic goals and reinforce externally driven goal-setting,” says Ferber.

As Ferber and her team launched their project, they suspected that a child’s goal type might correlate with hardships a parent might be experiencing. Sounds logical—if you’re having a hard time paying bills, it’s natural to focus on monetary goals, and kids may follow suit.

Yet Ferber’s team found no evidence of this. “The majority of the findings showed no meaningful link,” she notes in her paper, “and inconsistent findings remain in the literature.” Further research is needed, she notes, and exploring how different sources of stress could influence extrinsic goals in children may be particularly intriguing.