Turns Out Your Kids Really Did Love That Music You Played

NPR:

Way back in the 1980s, were you the one playing “When Doves Cry” over and over? Well, don’t be surprised if your kids wind up doing the same thing.

Young adults have strong positive memories of the music their parents loved when they were the same age, a study finds. That flies in the face of the cultural stereotype that children reject their parents’ taste in music.

Participants in a study on musical memory didn’t just say they remembered and loved the music that was popular in the early ’80s, when their parents were young. They also loved the music of the ’60s, which their grandparents may have been blasting while changing Mom’s diapers. And the 20-year-olds of today liked the older songs as much as the new stuff they listen to with peers.

For real? “They would hear this music and say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my parents’ music,’ with obvious fondness,” says Carol Lynne Krumhansl, the psychology professor at Cornell University who led the study. The study was published online in the journal Psychological Science.

Read the whole story: NPR