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Title: Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Ojeda, Christopher
Hatemi, Peter K.
Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification
American Sociological Review 80,6 (December 2015): 1150-1174.
Also: http://asr.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/10/09/0003122415606101.full#sec-4
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): American National Election Studies (ANES); Attitudes; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Parental Influences; Political Attitudes/Behaviors/Efficacy; Voting Behavior

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The transmission of party identification from parent to child is one of the most important components of political socialization in the United States. Research shows that children learn their party identification from their parents, and parents drive the learning process. The vast majority of studies thus treats children as passive recipients of information and assumes that parent-child concordance equals transmission. Rather than relying on a single pathway by which parents teach children, we propose an alternative view by focusing on children as active agents in their socialization. In so doing, we introduce a two-step model of transmission: perception then adoption. Utilizing two unique family-based studies that contain self-reported measures of party identification for both parents and children, children's perceptions of their parents' party affiliations, and measures of the parent-child relationship, we find children differentially learn and then choose to affiliate, or not, with their parents. These findings challenge several core assumptions upon which the extant literature is built, namely that the majority of children both know and adopt their parents' party identification. We conclude that there is much to be learned by focusing on children as active agents in their political socialization.
Bibliography Citation
Ojeda, Christopher and Peter K. Hatemi. "Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification." American Sociological Review 80,6 (December 2015): 1150-1174.