Children don't necessarily follow in their parents' political footsteps

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/ps-cdn111915.php

Public Release: 19-Nov-2015
Children don't necessarily follow in their parents' political footsteps
Penn State

More than half of all children in the U.S. either misperceive or reject their parents' political party affiliations, according to researchers.

"This finding turns the conventional wisdom, as well as years of political socialization research, on its head," said Christopher Ojeda, a former doctoral student in political science at Penn State and currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Center for American Democracy at Stanford University. "The public, the media and the academic world have long believed that children learn their political values, such as which party to support or which policy positions to endorse, from their parents. In this view, learning occurs mostly because parents impose their values on their children. This belief depends on the assumption that children know and choose to adopt their parents' values."

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The researchers also found that more discussion about politics in the home increases the probability that children correctly identify their parents' party affiliations, but does not increase the likelihood that they will adopt those affiliations.

"We were not surprised by this finding," Ojeda said. "Parent-child communication is a vehicle for delivering information, but it does not always deliver agreement. As we all know, political discussions can sometimes lead to consensus and they can sometimes lead to conflict."

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