It's All in the Family: Music Making Across Three Generations

• In Event: Cultural and Community Music-Making

Abstract

This study sought to examine the association between a parent’s participation in music courses in high school and their musical engagement with their own child twenty-four years later. I used data from the Longitudinal Study of American Life (1987-2011), a national longitudinal study of 5,945 public school students. Using logistic regression, I investigated the extent parental enrollment in at least one semester of a high school music course was related to the likelihood that they engage in music making with their oldest or only child. Results show that there is a significant increase in a parent making music with their child if the parent was enrolled in at least one semester of a high school music course.

Author

• Allison Reisinger Durbin, University of Maryland