Strong families, tidy houses, and children's values in adult life: Are "chaotic", "crowded" and "unstable" homes really so bad?

Chaotic home systems have been linked with children's adverse psychological and academic outcomes. But, as they represent a departure from the suburban ideal of space, order, and family cohesiveness and stability, they should also be linked with low support for survival values. Using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) this study tested this by examining long-term links between chaotic home systems (assessed when cohort members were aged 0-10 years), and support for survival values (racism and authoritarianism) at age 30. A chaotic home system was operationalized in this study as family disruption, low family cohesiveness, over crowding, untidiness, and residential mobility. The study showed that, after adjustment for controls (mother's liberalism, authoritarian parenting and educational attainment, family's social class and material disadvantage, and child's ethnicity, gender, general ability and adult educational attainment), residential mobility and untidiness were negatively related to authoritarianism and to support for racism, and family cohesiveness was positively and overcrowding negatively related to authoritarianism.