Parenting Styles, Socialization, and the Transmission of Political Ideology and Partisanship

While research has long shown that parents are first and foremost among the agents of political socialization, substantial evidence suggests there is a great deal of variation in the transmission of political values from parents to their children. This article attempts to explain some of this variation by examining how parenting style-as represented by the parent-child relational context in terms of dimensions of parental control and affect-affects the intergenerational transmission of political attributes. In particular, it evaluates how differences in parenting style influence the intergenerational transmission of political ideology and partisan identification. Findings based on original data collected from a sample of mother-offspring dyads show that differences in parenting styles play an important moderating role in the variable transmission of parental political values. Further, these results add a new dimension to the study of political socialization by demonstrating the role of parenting styles in the transmission of political values.