Care, Fear, and Debt: An Affective Grammar of Family Financial Socialization in Chile

Families are central sites where the moral meanings of money are learned, yet we know little about how emotions translate family values into financial practices under structural scarcity. This article examines family financial socialization in Chile, a financialized and unequal context where households rely heavily on credit. Drawing on 40 life-history interviews with adult heads of household, we analyze how participants narrate the intergenerational transmission of financial values and how these values are enacted in everyday financial decisions. Building on Family Financial Socialization Theory, we develop the concept of an affective grammar of family finance: patterned ways in which care (obligation to protect and provide) and fear (anticipated harm from default, loss, or shame) organize talk about money, the ranking of obligations, and judgments about “good” and “bad” debt. We identify three narratives linking values to practices: debt aversion and prudence, education as mobility and reciprocity, and budgeting, frugality, and gendered domestic stewardship. Findings show that this affective grammar can partly compensate for weak or chaotic parental modeling by motivating disciplined budgeting and cautious credit use, while also justifying risky sacrifices for loved ones. The study extends financial socialization research by specifying how moral emotions mediate behavior in credit-dependent contexts.