The Science of Parenting
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The Science of Parenting
Financial Parenting | S.11 Ep.1
Did you know you are practicing “financial socialization” of your children – whether intentionally or unintentionally? In the season eleven open, Mackenzie and this season’s guest cohost, Dr. Suzanne Bartholomae, introduce the topics of how we teach our kids about money and related concepts.
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This institution is an equal opportunity provider. For the full non-discrimination statement or accommodation inquiries, go to www.extension.iastate.edu/diversity/ext
Hey, Mackenzie Johnson here, coming to you with a special opportunity that the Science of Parenting team has going on right now. We are collecting feedback from you, our listeners and viewers, all about last season where we were talking about kids and food. We have a short 10 minute survey that we are going to ask about what you thought about last season, what you learned the last season. You have a chance to kind of give us your thoughts on the overall podcast, as well as even an opportunity to submit a topic for us to consider in the future. So your feedback is going to help us make decisions about our podcasts and future content. If you are over the age of 18, if you are a parent or caregiver of a child, and if you've listened to any of the episodes from last season, that's right, even just one, one of those episodes where we are talking about kids and food, you can find the survey link in today's episode description. Or you can also find it on our social media on Facebook or Twitter at the Science of Parenting. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll participate and enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Science of Parenting podcast where we connect you with research based information that fits your family. We'll talk about the realities of being a parent, and how research can help guide our parenting decisions. I'm Mackenzie Johnson, parent of two littles with their own quirks and I'm a parenting educator. And I'm so excited to be back for season 11. I always feel like when we take these breaks, it's just like it's been too long. So excited to be back this season, had so much fun, remember in season 10 we were talking all about kids and food with Dr. Lyndi Buckingham-Schutt and had a blast. I learned so much. And I'm prepared to learn a lot this season, too. I feel like kind of a newbie on this topic, but that's okay. That's okay. As you maybe guessed from our episode title, we're going to be talking about finances. We're gonna talk about money, kids, family, how we teach these things. And so in order to provide some expertise and experience and all kinds of good stuff, we have a guest co-host this season, one of my wonderful colleagues at Iowa State. And so we have Dr. Suzanne Bartholomae.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Hello.
Mackenzie Johnson:Hey, I'm so glad to have you on this season, Suzanne. We're excited. I mean, you got a lot of stuff, you know stuff.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Oh, well, you know, you know how to get this stuff organized and outlined. So I'm really excited about it. Thank you so much for making money the topic for this season.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes. And it is, it's one of these things we maybe don't always think about as parents. I'll admit that, right? I think about the kindness and discipline. I think about the kids and food, right? It's easy to kind of forget this as an important topic to talk with our kids about.
Suzanne Bartholomae:You're absolutely right. Yes. Which is why lifting it up is just, you know, warming my heart, warming my heart.
Mackenzie Johnson:Oh, good, good. Well, and because I will say it, let me tell everybody your credentials, like some of the reasons, not all of them, some of the reasons we're so excited to have Suzanne on this season. So I know one of your roles is as a Human Sciences Extension and Outreach state specialist. In other words, Suzanne provides the leadership across the state for our organization related to family finance education. You're also an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies here at Iowa State. And you're a parent, right? And you're a parent yourself, like you got the credentials. We're excited you're here, but you can tell us what you actually do. Right? Those are fancy titles and things. But tell us about your work. Tell us about things you're passionate about.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Thank you. All right. Well, yes. So I'm an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, and I'm in the major financial counseling and planning. So I teach classes in that major to students who want to be financial planners or counselors. So that's what we're training them to be. And then I also do research on financial issues, financial behavior. And so that's one part of my, one of the hats to the three hats that I wear. And then the big, got a few yeah, I got a couple and so but the bigger hat is the extension and outreach, which is community work with a team of wonderful educators like yourself, who are across the state of Iowa trying to enhance the financial security and well being of Iowans. And so, I've been interested in the topic for several decades. I have experienced my own financial stress and, you know, mismanagement of money and hey, you know, so they say research is personal, and I'm just drawn to the topic to try and help people.
Mackenzie Johnson:Oh, awesome. Well, we're so excited to have you here to share some of that, you know, in a way that you're used to doing the education. You're used to helping make this kind of content that can feel out of reach for people literally. I guess I don't know. That you're here to help us make it consumable, right? Give us a little reality, a little dose of that along with what we're doing. I was like, and you're a parent to a high schooler, I believe, right?
Suzanne Bartholomae:I am, yes. Thank you. We have, I have a single child, and so yep, all the mistakes are being made on
Mackenzie Johnson:No, I'll say we do have so many good things, her. of course. At the Science of Parenting, I believe there's more than one way. So we're doing great things across the board. So, so excited to have you here. And we are, we're going to be digging in for our listeners and viewers throughout the season about money. And so today, we're actually going to kind of talk about how we do that as parents. And so there's this term, right, Suzanne shared all this really great research and articles, and oh, just such good stuff that I learned a lot from. And one of the terms that really is what we're doing as parents is this idea of financial socialization, right? And our listeners know, I love to start with a definition. So will you give us a definition of this term?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yes, thank you for that opportunity. So financial socialization, and this is from Danes who's up in Minnesota, it is the process of acquiring and developing, there's gonna be a long list of terms here, values, attitudes, standards, norms, knowledge and behaviors, that contribute to financial viability and individual well being. So now that your listeners are ready to disconnect, I'm gonna tell you what it really means as a parent, and I call it financial socialization. And I also use the term like financial parenting, right? Okay. So there's three buckets where we're trying to get. We're trying to get our children to financial independence, so that when they leave the nest, they are financially secure, and they have freedom of their choices, that's financial well-being. So that's our end goal. Okay, so let's all start where we know what our end goal is, but in terms of being able to be a financial parent and engage in this process of financial socialization, think about it in three buckets. You're going to try and influence your child's knowledge and so what they know about the world and finances. You're going to think about their skills and their behaviors. So what are some of the skills that they need to exist in our economy and in, you know, interactives, and financial services, so things like numeracy and problem solving and that kind of thing. And then finally, last but not least, the attitude and confidence that you develop in your child, which is really a reflection, I think, of us as parents, what we model in the household, what we value, what we demonstrate to our children, is going to come through in our child's attitudes and their confidence. And so what, yeah, so what you want, how you want, we know is parenting, like, what you give is what you're gonna get, right?
Mackenzie Johnson:Right.
Suzanne Bartholomae:For better or for worse. When I see that same expression I used to give to my, you know, my little girl coming back, I mean, I'm like, Oh, why did I do that? Right?
Mackenzie Johnson:Good intention, right? Positive intent that we had. And I liked that breakdown of the three buckets, right? Like, I love a terminology, right, like an academic formal definition, because I think that's one way of looking at it that can add insight for us. But yeah, the other way is just like, okay, let's break this down. I like the idea of three buckets, like, okay, these are things when I'm talking with my child about money that I can think about. And I like the term financial parenting. I feel like that is like a little more transparent, like what we're doing. But this idea of socialization also resonated with me, because a lot of the parenting literature talks about how parents are socialization agents. In other words, we teach our kids how to exist in the world. We're socializing them, we're teaching them the social norms, acceptable behavior, manners, right? We're like, that's something that's a role of a parent. And so that made sense to me like, yeah, that's a thing. That's a parenting skill we already developed for lots of areas. We just want to apply it specifically to money and finances.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Right. And like you said, it's something that's often overlooked, right? So we teach our children about a lot of different subjects, you know, like you mentioned, and so this is just another one, which, unfortunately, yes, it's another one. And along with manners, along with manners, we do need to help them understand money, and financial decision making.
Mackenzie Johnson:There's a lot that goes into it. So I actually have a question for you. I love when we get the chance to share a little bit of our own reality. So by this definition, whether that's three buckets or the formal definition, what are some of the things that you reflect on that you currently do that's financial parenting or financial socialization in your own life? What are some things that each of us do?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Okay, well, you know, thanks for that question. So, in the knowledge bucket, we definitely at our household have a lot of discussions with our daughter, you know. This morning on the way to school, she's gonna be getting my 87 year old aunt's used, you know, 20 year old car and so she had questions about well, about insurance and also about ownership over, you know, whose name is it in? Is it going to be in your name? And so that was an opportunity for discussion about liability insurance and the difference between home insurance and auto insurance. So knowledge of what in terms of like, because of the work I'm in, you know, she may have an affinity to it as well. But we've talked about, like the difference between savings and investing. So for example, she's gotten, you know, a lot of our kids will get cash, right, for a holiday or birthday. And so she had accumulated it at five years old. And it's like, you know what, it's time to teach her about financial like about banking. And so I opened a savings account, got her a debit card, she gets a statement every month. So that's increasing her knowledge, but then also in the skills attitude, but then it also hits that the skills and the attitude, the attitude part, so she knows that banking and financial services and keeping our money safe is kind of a value that we have, and that we trust the institution. We're not going to keep it underneath our bed. Yeah, we're not gonna keep it on piggy bank. Yes, but only, you know, maybe for loose change.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes, well, and you're passing on, you know, a value, like so many other things we talk about in parenting. We all have values around money, like what it's meant to be used, or whether we save it, how we save it, where we save it, all those things.
Suzanne Bartholomae:And what we save for.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes, what we save for. And so there is, there's a lot of things that kind of go into that. Another, you used two terms earlier when we were kind of walking through this episode, you talked about explicit financial parenting versus implicit financial parenting. I saw that in some of the stuff that you sent, and I was like, that's important for us to understand and reflect on as parents, too. Can you tell us about that?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, sure. So explicit socialization or parenting versus implicit. So explicit is really that intentional, clear, obvious, whether it's a discussion or a teaching moment, that's how we engage in one type of socialization. And then the implicit is kind of the unspoken parenting that happens. So it might be you're modeling behavior, but you're not talking about the behavior. It could be based on a communication that you're having with somebody in your household, right, or your partner, and they're observing. You could be arguing about money. And so that's modeling but it's not like, oh, this is not a teachable moment, you don't think it's a teachable moment but it actually is.
Mackenzie Johnson:Because they're learning.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, because they're learning and so when we look at the research, the explicit financial socialization is really more significantly related or more important to financial outcomes that we're looking for. So like, are you engaging in healthy financial behaviors, like paying your credit card off in full, living within your means, you know, those types of things that we say, okay, good job. You're financially healthy, versus the implicit which isn't as strong. And you know, our family characteristics are going to make a big, also have an influence on the types of socialization that happens, right. So there's some literature that says that higher income families are more engaged, they engage in more explicit financial socialization than maybe lower income families. There's some gender differences so that boys are exposed to more explicit financial socialization than girls are. So things to be cognizant of when it comes to socialization.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes. And even yeah, like these little biases that we can have, like, oh, yeah, I've never thought about, do I like across my son or my daughter? Do I talk with one more about something or the other? And so that is, that's important for us to keep in mind. That may or may not be a bias that we have.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Mackenzie Johnson:So I can actually think of at first I was like, do I financially socialize my children? Hmm. But I do, and I actually have two examples I can share, and one is implicit, and one is explicit. So I think like one of the areas that I'm probably doing some implicit financial parenting is when my kids join me when we go to get our food. So we get our food at the grocery store locally, you know, whether you're going to like the food pantry, the gas station, right, wherever you're getting your food. But when my kids go with me how I talk about what we're choosing. How I talk about why we don't buy something, you know, and so thinking about that, I'm doing some implicit, like, oh, we're not gonna get that this time, or, oh, that's expensive, right? It might not be a conscious thing I'm doing, sometimes it is, but a lot of the times it's just like, yeah, we see that mom stops to get coffee. When she grabs us, right? That's implicit, that's modeling whether I mean to teach them about that or not.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, and then they're watching you, are you paying for it with cash? Or with a credit card? Are you going to the grocery store with a list? And are you sticking to the list? Are you using coupons? Are you checking flyers before you go shopping? These are all modeling behaviors, you know, are you comparison shopping? Like, you know, you stand for a minute and you look at the aisle of food, or you look at the shelves, and maybe you talk out loud and say, hey, you know what, the stuff on the top shelves is a little more expensive than the bottom shelf.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes.
Suzanne Bartholomae:You know, or, yeah, there's also unit pricing. I love unit pricing. That's a great lesson.
Mackenzie Johnson:I feel like we can dig into that in some of our episodes on like the ages they're in. Yeah, when we can teach our kids that skill.
Suzanne Bartholomae:And that's something my husband has done with my daughter, where they'll be standing the grocery store and he'd be like, tell me, which is the better deal between this big bag of this and this smaller bag of this? Yes. And she has to do the math. And so like numeracy is a big part of financial decisions. And so I know that sometimes as parents, we practice math with our kids. And of course, hopefully they're getting some good training in their schools, but that's numeracy skills, literacy skills. Also, it's built onto a lot of financial decisions. So just doing puzzles and math and a lot of the parenting that we do around other topics are transferable to financial socialization. So things like problem solving and critical thinking, teaching those executive function skills, teaching persistence. One thing that I do with my daughter, or that we have done, is this information literacy and kind of advocacy as a consumer. So she bought a frother because she was really into, you know, she wanted to get into coffee and wanted to froth it. And the frother did not work when we got it. And so we said, Okay, you got to contact the company, and you got to just see what they're gonna do for you. So we've done that a couple of times where we had her like, take a picture of a bad, like a phone case that she wasn't happy with and just see what see what the company is going to do for you.
Mackenzie Johnson:And that process, right, the knowledge and the skills and the confidence, right? You talked about attitudes, the confidence of like, yes, I've done that before successfully.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, exactly.
Mackenzie Johnson:Those experiences. Yeah, right. Well,
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, exactly. And they're all I think of some of the explicit things I do talk with my kids about when it comes to money, you know, like financial parenting. Actually, one last night, my daughter left important. But when we look at people who have high financial headphones, which she had recently gotten as a gift, she left her headphones on the floor in her room, and my son stepped on them and they broke. And right, so we did some problem solving around like, oh, man, I mean, the headphones shouldn't have been on the floor, right? And so we did some explicit kind well being, the knowledge piece is important, but really, people of conversations around, like, who's going to pay for these? Like, how are you going to replace these? Are you going to replace these? Do we have money to replace these? But also like caring for the items you have so that you don't have to spend money to replace them needlessly. And then even, my have reported that really, what's important is knowing how kids are currently three and six, but I was like, you know, are you guys, you're gonna have to problem solve. Are you both gonna have to come up with some money to pay for these? Are you just gonna pay for it? You know, I asked my daughter, like, I mean, they shouldn't be on the floor. That's not a good place to do things. Right. And so that's one piece and then the for them to be safe. But so we did have some explicit problem solving, how would we replace them kinds of things. And mostly because we've been talking about this podcast season, so it's on my brain. But even at a young age, there are opportunities to do some of that explicit teaching. And so we are, later other piece in terms of like, attitudes and confidence. People episodes this season, we'll talk about teaching these concepts at different ages. But there is, there's opportunities. And so I liked your three buckets of what we're teaching in financial parenting, and then also thinking about it, like, are we teaching these explicitly or some of them are implicitly? who are, there's been some studies that have been done that
Mackenzie Johnson:I wouldn't but okay.
Suzanne Bartholomae:We'll get you there. But so your have looked at objective financial knowledge. So if I confidence, that confidence measure is a stronger predictor give you a test on credit scores, let's say, or like, what was in the credit score and so that's an objective measure, than objective financial knowledge. And so even if you're right, of what you know about credit. So if we have that in a under and we had a student do a thesis here in the last couple of years under confidence and overconfidence. And so people who are under confident, they kind of freeze up and don't want to act, you know, basically because they're fearful of model predicting financial outcomes versus subjective making a bad decision, making a bad move, you know, in terms of their finances. And so that's equally detrimental as like being overconfident actually isn't good either. Because, you know, if we look at the research on investment behavior, if financial knowledge like Mackenzie, how much do you know you're going in and out of the market, you know, or if you think you know more than you do and you're trying to time the market, like the stock market, that can actually end up costing you a lot of money. And so there's a little bit of research on that, too. So building a confident child is what I would about credit? Tell me. You know, you're like on a scale of one to say. They feel again, you know, confidence, self efficacy is a financial self efficacy is something that is studied in my area, too. That is basically I can affect change in my finances. I don't have control...I have control. It doesn't have control over me. Yes, you know, so if you have ten, I'd give myself about a nine. that confidence and belief that you can make a change, that it's not hopeless, then you're in a good place.
Mackenzie Johnson:All right. That's good to know. So yeah, there's like the self efficacy piece. And yeah, you're talking about the confidence and the benefits of confidence. Just that belief, even if I maybe if you were quizzing me, and maybe I wouldn't score that high. But if I believed like, I am competent, and I am capable, and I can affect it, that there's positive just in that, like the belief that you can do that. As long as it's not inflated, right. As long as it's not like too much.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, you don't want to be overconfident.
Mackenzie Johnson:Okay, yeah. Oh, interesting.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yep. Out of the three buckets that last, attitudes and confidence, is almost as important, probably definitely more important than the knowledge, I would even say.
Mackenzie Johnson:All right. That's interesting.
Suzanne Bartholomae:You can find knowledge. Yeah, you can find the information.
Mackenzie Johnson:You can go get it, right? We're in the Information Age.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, exactly.
Mackenzie Johnson:Oh, well, I am so glad to just like have this conversation talking about, what are all these ideas that go into this? What are the things we are teaching? What are the things we maybe we should be teaching more? Yeah, like all these terms that can inform how we parent our kids related to money, and we're gonna dig into more of them, right, throughout this whole season. But I wanted to take pause in this first episode and be like, what's the research say? Like, why is this so important? You're like, okay, yes, financial socialization, financial parenting, sure, why not? But why? Like, what's the value? What are the benefits, or the reasons why it's worth doing? So I actually, you sent me so much good stuff, and so I'm reading through these articles. And I couldn't pick just one. I couldn't pick just one, like one study or one citation that I was like, that covers all of it. I was like, no, they're actually talking about a lot of different things, like a lot of different reasons and benefits. So we have a few little tidbits here. So we start off with the first one, like, what's one of the reasons?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Sure. Yeah, so this kind of gets into that implicit socialization, right. So it's a study by Shim, who's at Arizona, and colleagues, was at Arizona. When parents practice responsible financial behaviors, their children are more knowledgeable about money use and risk and they also demonstrate responsible financial behavior. So if you have responsible parents who are responsible about their finances, it's gonna stick with their kids, too.
Mackenzie Johnson:Okay, great. Also I think it's really cool that like, I read these citations, I'm like, yes. so and so. And you're like, no, this is like a human person that you know. Really cool. Really cool.
Suzanne Bartholomae:He's now at Wisconsin, just so you know.
Mackenzie Johnson:Cool. Okay, so responsible financial behaviors can be passed from parent to child. That's one reason why it's important for us to do that socialization and parenting. Okay, here's another one. In a 2011 study with college students by Solheim and colleagues, they found that students with parents who had poor, that's hard for me to say, poor financial habits, often those students adopted those same poor habits. So the benefits of habits, right, with positive habits is what it sounds like Shim was finding and then Solheim kind of found the opposite with poor habits, those can also be passed on.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, yeah. So these are all quantitative studies. And you know, a lot of qualitative work and even just in my experience in small group work, when you ask somebody tell me something you learned during your childhood? Maybe something your parent or guardian taught you.
Mackenzie Johnson:About money.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, about money. Thank you. Yeah. So kind of, you know, those are just some of the richest conversations you know that people, it's just so fascinating to hear what sticks with someone from childhood that you know, they picked up on that either they decide, I really want to. Like I had someone telling me, oh, you know, my grandmother would write down absolutely everything in, you know, she was raised by her grandmother, absolutely everything in a book and then we would, you know, if we wanted to take anything out, we would have to write it and you know, borrow a little money out of this pot, then we would have to write that money down, you know, write that amount down. And then someone else who said that, oh, my, you know, parents were just really present oriented and they spent every dime they got as soon as they got it. And so there were negative consequences. So those are two cases where one person said, this was a really good habit that I'd like to adapt as an adult versus another one who said, gosh, I don't want to do that, you know, because they knew the consequences of kind of that irresponsible, I don't want to say irresponsible, but that money choice that they made for the present and not thinking about the future. But we know that future orientation is good for financial well being.
Mackenzie Johnson:So like when we can think about and like delay for the future benefit, right? That future orientation is that idea, right?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Being good to your future self.
Mackenzie Johnson:Okay.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah. So what we're doing sticks as, you know, as parents. That's the point that I'm trying to make. I hear it in stories and we hear it in qualitative research.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yeah. All right. So it's worth doing because those habits that we pass on are passed on, like our kids often will take them on. Okay, another tidbit and I liked this one, I felt like this was very strengths-based 2020 study by Stevenson and colleagues. So they were talking looking at family and finances and they found that feelings of family cohesion. So basically, like when kids feel like there are people who care about me, I belong here, there's like this level of togetherness in their family. So when there's feelings of family cohesion, that those positively influence someone's social support, and their overall well being, which ultimately has benefits for if they face financial challenges. So regardless of, right, like not even talking about money habits, and it's like the quality of the relationship that you have with your child has impact on their financial well being later. How well, resilience is a term I've heard you use, like financial resilience, how well they can handle challenges related to finances, like even that. So even if we don't have a lot of money, right, like a lot of money to pass down to our children, even if we can't buy a lot, right, a lot of like, luxury things, or whatever that is, whatever our financial income or status is. Even just the quality of our relationship can benefit our kids financially in the long term. And I just find that like, that gives me so much hope. Right? Like, I don't have to be getting everything right all the time. The relationship I'm building with them is gonna benefit them even in financial well being.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yes, because you're and doesn't it make sense? I mean, we're building a foundation, right? If we're warm for affection, that if we're supportive, if we're not overly harsh with our children, and we develop a warm, high quality, warm relationship with them. It's gonna spill over into every aspect of their life.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yeah, that's what we're shooting for.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, but the fact that you can link it, you know, you have studies that link it to finances. That's pretty cool.
Mackenzie Johnson:Right? Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. And then one more, I thought this one was cool, too. So not just financial well being. A study, a 2021, study by LeBaron and Kelly says, financial parenting may also contribute to physical, academic and relational health. So even beyond, like, when we can help our kids be financially well, maybe that's not like a huge value for you. But likely one of those is, right, we want our kids to be physically well, or to do well academically or to have positive relationships. I mean, hopefully, financially, you know, as well, but it's going to benefit those other areas, which makes sense, right? Like, where we spend our time can affect our relationships. And that can be related to money, even like activities we can engage in for our physical health. There's some physical like hobby, like I think of hiking, that might be expensive to some people, or like joining a gym may be expensive, or even like the education we have access to, or the support for that education. Those things can be related to money so it makes sense that the well being can be
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, yeah. So all of those outcomes health, beneficial there, too. physical, academic, when you're reading that, what it really makes me think of is that, you know, as parents, again, those general skills that we're teaching them, things like problem solving, critical thinking, literacy, numeracy, that is going to be transferable to areas of health, right, because financial and health behaviors, there's a lot of similarities there. And then and then academic outcomes, right? So persistence was something I mentioned earlier. And so a student who's able to persist, persist and gets through maybe two years of college or four years of college, whatever their goal is, versus, but persistence is a skill, right? That you have to build and we know that you have to build, right, to be able to follow through on things and to finish something and have closure. Yeah.
Mackenzie Johnson:So transferable skills.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yes, transferable skills. Yeah, that you're teaching when you're doing some financial socialization strategies in terms of skill building, know that it's gonna pay off in other areas. Yes.
Mackenzie Johnson:I love that. Yeah.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Okay, so we get a lot of bang for our buck here.
Mackenzie Johnson:Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Okay. In our last season on food, we had a food counter pun. I bet we could get to that. Like bang for buck. I bet we could do it. Get some good financial puns in here. Funny. Okay, so this season, we're talking all about financial parenting, financial socialization. I love hearing just like all the tidbits here there's literature on. I love all that. So glad you're here to share them. One of the things we like to do in our episodes is to kind of come around to this idea of like, okay, you shared some research, shared some examples of your own reality, but like, how is this going to apply to our listeners' reality? And so one of the things in one of the articles you shared from Sirito in 2016, talks about the three aspects of financial parenting. And so basically, like, what do we teach? And so they broke it down into content, access, and style. And so I wanted to kind of hear your thoughts, and have you explain to listeners, what these are. And so we can kind of keep them in the back of our minds here. So let's start with that idea of content we teach.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, so the content is kind of a parallel to the bucket that is knowledge. What are we teaching? What information are we providing them? What are we teaching? So for example, how to budget would be an example. Right? And so teaching them about money, they learn about what currency is but then maybe bringing them to a more abstract level of what credit is, and then maybe the difference between savings and investing. You talked about the headphones, right? That's kind of property ownership and treating property, something that you own, with respect because you paid, you know, a lot of hard work went into probably, you know, paying for that and making the money to get it, right? Having a lemonade stand, you know, there's entrepreneurship messages, right, in a lemonade stand. So anyway, so how to run that. So that's content, right? Okay. And then.
Mackenzie Johnson:It's like the what, it sounds like. The content is like the what you teach. Like, it's the topic basically.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yes. Exactly. What do you want your child to know so they can function in the world? Right. So, and it's about, again, any variety of topics related to money. The second piece is access. And so that really reflects the types of opportunities that you're giving your child. And so it could be based on what you can offer, but then you can be very intentional as well. So, but when we talk about access and inclusion in general, like the general field of financial well being, we're really talking about a person's ability to access credit to have access to financial markets, a lot of barriers that exist, that are structural barriers and system barriers for people. So a lot of people are blocked out of the credit system, because maybe they've had some previous, you know, unfortunate management of their credit, or maybe they don't have steady income, you know, so there's certain things that they don't have enough money to put into a deposit to start an account. So there could be a variety of barriers. But so access, I think, is a really important piece. But when I think about it in terms of financial socialization, you know, the example that I gave for my daughter that, okay, I taught her how to open a bank account, right? And so I have access to a financial bank account. There are some neighborhoods that don't have banks and financial services there because of safety issues, you know, so not everybody has that opportunity, unfortunately. And they may be using different types of financial sectors. So the alternative financial sector would be those things like payday lenders, payday loans and pawn shops. And that's a viable form of financial service for some communities because there's not like a traditional institution.
Mackenzie Johnson:Hmm. Well, that makes sense. And I think, yeah, I think, you know, like thinking about access from both of those perspectives too of the opportunities we can create, but also that some people are gonna have more barriers, right? Some people are gonna have more barriers to the access to create those opportunities for their kids. I even think of like, my friends. And yes, I was fortunate that I was able to go to like a four year college and those things, even that, like I had access to that, but even with some my friends, like the access that they had, like their parents maybe gave them more access to opportunities that I had. I had some friends that had less access to those opportunities. And so that is something we do as parents, again, whether it's explicit or implicit, we do create opportunities for them to learn, so content, and then access. Those are two things we teach in financial parenting, and the last one is style.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Style, yes. So that is how we as parents communicate financial information with our children and in our family, right. So think about friendship, and like disclosure, right? And so your closeness with your friend
Mackenzie Johnson:Okay. increases with the amount of disclosure, right, and so same thing with parent child information and financial information. Right? Well, okay, let me back up a little bit. Can be. Can be. Can be. Yeah. So disclosure of like, what kind of information you share and why is kind of one style. But it does foster trust, you know, and it can influence your parent child relationship if you do disclose a little bit of financial information, if you are open, transparent and honest, to whatever degree you're comfortable, right? But everybody has a different level of comfort with how much they're going to disclose and how much they want to share. And so, you know, some people may be avoidant, some people may have been, you know, their socialization was that we don't talk about money, which you hear that phrase a lot, you know, right. Yeah. So that style of parenting which is related to financial parenting is yeah, how are you communicating about money? You know? Or are you arguing about money? Are you expressing stress about money? Are you highlighting the fact that you're working hard for your money? I know, you know, when my daughter was younger, you know, I work because I get a paycheck, and the paycheck goes to spending money on bills, right. And so, ideally, we have a little bit left over from our needs, so that we can go and pay for some wants. Right? Yeah. So these are all conversations that ideally happen in the household, but it just depends on the parent and the level of communication that they want to share, you know. Yes. And so a few things that I kind of hear you, like, I feel like I hear you're getting at is this idea, yeah, of how much transparency you have about money things. It's part of your style. But I also kind of hear this idea of intent with how you communicate, right? So your intent when you communicate about financial topics, you know, because your intent might be to teach your child, right, to help build their knowledge. Your intent, I mean it could be to control a financial behavior, right? Like, don't spend that. It could be even to guilt our child or communicating a value might be our intent, right? Like in order to have enough for what we want or in order to provide for our family or in order to save for the future, right, whatever your financial values are, there's a lot of reasons, a lot of different kinds of intent that could be a part of it, but that that would also fit into style.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, it would. And so I would urge parents to kind of do this, you know, listen to themselves as they talk to their kids about money. And when children ask about money, or even if they ask about buying something, which is what we all get driven crazy by as parents. When you go to a grocery store, it's like, you know you're gonna end up spending more money when you bring your child to the grocery store, because there's all this stuff, right? And so how do you say no? Right? And how do you say, when do you say yes? And so that's a way you're communicating all the time. You know, if you just say no, because I said so well, why don't you explain? It's not on the grocery list. But we do. And I think you used a great example in an earlier conversation about, we had this on the list as a snack. We already got it. We were not gonna buy an additional snack.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes, we chose to put something on the list. Yeah, I think yeah, literally in the last week, we are buying crackers as a snack our family can enjoy this week. We're not also going to buy like cookies or pretzels. We chose something.
Suzanne Bartholomae:You're showing discipline. So influencing that bucket that's called attitudes, right, and confidence that you're showing. Discipline is something you can exercise as a skill, and you can teach discipline, but you're also demonstrating it and modeling it, right? You're saying no, we're sticking to the list.
Mackenzie Johnson:Yes. Okay. So we have content, right, three aspects of financial parenting, the content, the what we teach, the access, the opportunities we create, and then the style that how we communicate about money are all things that we teach to our kids, some of the ways we do financial parenting or financial socialization. So a lot of good stuff here. And we're gonna just kind of get like, more and more information throughout the season of how we teach our kids. Why, what, how, I mean, who, I guess. But this brings us to our first Stop, Breathe, Talk. of the season here, Suzanne. So right, we bring our producer, Mackenzie DeJong, in and she asks us an off the cuff question. So what does she got to ask us about financial?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Uh oh, I'm nervous. Are you ready? I should have asked Are you ready?
Mackenzie Johnson:Are you ready? I should have asked. Are you ready?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, I'm ready.
Mackenzie DeJong:Welcome, first of all, Suzanne, to Science of Parenting and welcome to the oh, what's the word I want to I want to use, I probably should be nice, but you have this, you get to do it.
Mackenzie Johnson:Like required, mandatory.
Mackenzie DeJong:I kinda feel mean sometimes when I just ask like random questions, but I actually have a question from Barb today. And she is wondering as a parent which of the points of knowledge, access, or style should you focus on first? Or which one is most important to start early for that long term benefit? So with access, knowledge, or style, which one should we start first?
Mackenzie Johnson:I can tell you which one I feel like I'm doing first since my kids are young. If you're going first by age, like, okay, well, you would go by age. I mean, since I have littles, I feel like the thing I communicate more often is kind of the style, right? Like, how I talk about it, when I talk about it. Yeah, I don't feel like I'm just always teaching a lot of content yet, though. You're already teaching me, Suzanne, that I do it more than I think I do. Like I am sharing those values and things more than I think, but I feel like I kind of am. Which of those am i doing first when they're youngest? It's how I, right, it's the choices that I make and the way they observe it. I feel like, what do you act like? You have a more informed opinion than I do? Right? What's your take?
Suzanne Bartholomae:So the three, rather than content, access, and style, can I back it up to other buckets of knowledge, skills, and attitudes?
Mackenzie DeJong:I mean, you can. I still might ask that.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Can I not answer your question? And can I change the question?
Mackenzie DeJong:To be fair it is your first time. Yeah.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Okay, so what you should be, okay, I'll stick to your between, I would say between style, access, and content, I would think that style is going to be the thing that you should think about, because your communication is foundational, right? Because you're either implicitly or explicitly communicating about money. And so it could be because the style impacts the content, right? And the style impacts the access in a way, like, I'm open about money, and so yeah, I'm gonna let you have a lemonade stand. I'm gonna let you have a part time summer job. So I would say style, because we can have knowledge and skills, but it's that openness, you know, if you've learned from your family, from your parents to be open, to be comfortable with money, there's no shame around money, not taboo, then you will face the world with more of an open, you'll face a financial decision more openly, in a way, right? Like I can acquire skills, I can acquire knowledge, but that attitude is a little bit harder to influence once you kind of establish it. So that's kind of my off the cuff thinking.
Mackenzie Johnson:I liked it.
Mackenzie DeJong:But now I want to know what you were gonna say about the buckets?
Suzanne Bartholomae:Well, the buckets are kind of the same thing. It's, it's the, I kind of wiggled my way into answering it the way I wanted to. Because it's knowledge and skills you can learn. But it's that added to...as humans, we pretty much have a tendency to, we have a hard time with decisions. We have a hard time being motivated. You know, let's face it, managing money is not fun and glamorous. There are that small population of people that really dig it. And most people don't, you know, and so if you're gonna influence, it's that attitude towards it, that I think is so important. That if you don't have the motivation to act on your knowledge and skills because you're paralyzed, because you don't want to make the decision, because you're afraid, you're under confident. That's going to be pretty detrimental. So I would say, yeah, again, more and more the research is showing, it's personal traits that are more important than even things like income, you know, I mean.
Mackenzie Johnson:Okay, you're gonna have so much, like I'm already ready, like okay, tell me other things throughout the season. Tell us all the things.
Mackenzie DeJong:That's not the easiest question and you nailed it.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Wow. So the breathing comes after I answer the question.
Mackenzie Johnson:It's kinda supposed to come before.
Suzanne Bartholomae:No, for me it was stop, can no longer breathe. Okay.
Mackenzie Johnson:Awesome. Well, thanks for that question, Kenz. I know you'll have a lot through, a lot of good ones throughout the season. So we kind of look forward to those, kind of live in fear of those, but that's okay. So thanks, everybody, for listening in today. We are just getting started on this idea of financial parenting, financial socialization, thinking about those three buckets, thinking about that we are socialization agents, that we are teaching our kids about money whether it's implicit on accident or on purpose with intention. And so we do and there's a lot of benefits to why and how that happens. Thinking about the things that we pass on whether we need to or not, right? And so a lot of good stuff to dig into. And I loved this model of like, what are the three aspects of what we teach? Okay? Just like Suzanne's three buckets. It's like this idea, content, access, and style. So you're gonna get even more ways to think about it throughout the season. So we're just starting here, but a lot more good stuff to come, right, Suzanne? Will you tell us what's next episode.
Suzanne Bartholomae:I will. In our next episode, we're going to dig a little deeper into the idea of reflecting about what influences our money, habits, and beliefs. So that's what we're going to hopefully reflect on as parents.
Mackenzie Johnson:A little research in there and a little reality of what influences our money. So awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Science of Parenting podcast. A friendly reminder that you can follow along, or subscribe to our weekly audio podcasts on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss anything that's coming out the rest of this season.
Suzanne Bartholomae:Yeah, so come along as we tackle the ups and downs, the ins and outs, and the research and reality all around the Science of Parenting.
Anthony Santiago:The Science of Parenting is hosted by Mackenzie Johnson, produced by Mackenzie DeJong, with research and writing by Barbara Dunn Swanson. Send in questions and comments to parenting@iastate.edu and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. This institution is an equal opportunity provider. For the full non-discrimination statement or accommodation inquiries go to www.extension.iastate.edu/diversity/ext