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Sociologists have long been interested in the question of transmission, studying it in connection with quite diverse areas: social and occupational identity, economic concerns, religion, political opinions, lifestyles and culture. Those studies usually compare attitudes, possessions, or values of successive generations, either by comparing the generations or collecting “retrospective” information from adult respondents. They are less likely to examine paired parent-children populations, which is the method used here. Data on pre-adolescents and adolescents aged 10 to 14 and their parents were studied to identify modes of cultural transmission. Factors that work to transmit parents’ relation to cultural activities as a whole were then modeled to bring to light the cultural dynamics and stasis between generations and outline a few features characterizing the change in the role played by culture in defining the generations themselves.