Family environment and cognitive correlates of young adults' social status attainment: ethnic group differences.

A longitudinal sample of 21-year-old Australians from Anglo-Australian, Greek and Southern Italian families was used to examine relationships of children's cognitive performance, family learning environments, adolescents' perceptions of family learning contexts, and measures of young adults' social status attainment. Generally, the findings using a regression approach indicated that there were ethnic group differences in the relations between parents' academic socialisation, children's cognitive performance, and measures of young adults' social status attainment. The results also showed that in each ethnic group, adolescents' perceptions of parents' support for learning had strong associations with young adults' status attainment.