socialization and participation in politics and the women's movement: a study of fathers,...

SOCIALIZATION AND PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS A N D THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT:

A STUDY OF FATHERS, MOTHERS, AND DAUGHTERS

Mark Stern Jeanne Martin

The popular conception may be that the younger generation is "different,:' but similarities rather than differences in politically related attitudes tend to predominate in comparisons of contemporary adoles- cents and their seni0rs.l The source of this continuity is a matter of extensive scholarly debate. While some researchers conclude that the family plays a major role in the political socialization process,2 others conclude that there is little evidence of family impact in the intergenerational transmission of specific political behaviors or attitudes other than party identification.3 Bandura suggests that the family is a source of observational learning as children model their parents' behavi01-s.~ But the within family conditions associated with the intergenerational transmission of political attitudes, behaviors, and values are becoming only slightly less contentious a matter as more research is pursued.

One common assumption has been that the father is the major transmitter of politically relevant attitudes to the children. Early evidence overwhelmingly indicated that males are consistently more politically aware and politically active than females5 Jennings and Niemi, among other con-

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temporary scholars, offer evidence that conrxdicts these earlier findings. When the mother is more active politically or more strongly partisan that the father, children, especially girls, are more similar to the mother than the father in their political attitudes and orientations. Their conclusion is t h a t "the more politicized parent is the one winning whatever implied or explicit contest ma be going on for the preferences of the child.T1g By implication, as the mother becomes more politicized and sensitized to a feminist role her influence on attitudes related to this domain should grow stronger.

Jennings and Niemi argue that when both parents exhibit similar attitudes and behaviors then the offspring are most likely to reflect t h e parental cues.? Consistent reinforcement and model similarity within and without t h e home, e.g., between parents. friends, teachers, clergy, are most likely to lead to successful transmission of attitudes and behaviors from the older to the younger generation.* The extent to which an issue is persistently visible or salient as well as concrete or specific is also related to the family's ability to transmit attitudes to the young.9 The more salient and specific the dimension is to the child, the more successful the family is likely to be in transmitting its view consistently to the young.1° Gender also appears to play a role in determining the success of family transmission of politically related attitudes and behaviors. Young girls are more likely to agree with their parents than are young boys;ll Gender likeness tends to also have a positive impact on attitude transmission within the family.12

This paper focuses on the extent to which intergenerational transmission of attitudes and behaviors occurs with respect to participation in partisan politics and the women's movement. Specifically we seek to assess for mothers, fathers, and daughters, the extent to which there are similarities in their

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overt partisan political behaviors and their behaviors or predispositions towards action in the women's movement. In addition, we assess the extent to which behavior between these two areas of activity is related. We also examine the relationship between parental attitudes towards the women's rights movement and the predisposition of daughters to participate actively in the movement.

Participation in the women's movement is a ses-linked, socio-political phenomenon of recent ori- gin.l3 There appears to be hesitance on t h e art of many females to embrace a new female role,f4 and the persistence of psychological attachments to traditional male-female sex roles is evident.15 Millet and Dixon suggest that it is among the younger. college educated females that a new feminist con- sciousness should occur, with an at tendant feminist activism.16 Indeed, the women's movement is dominated by relatively young, college educated, middle class white women. We assume that the women's movement is highly salient for the younger generation and the college environment is generally supportive of the movement. We hypothesize that mothers would be more likely to be predisposed towards activity in the movement than would fathers. We also hypothesize that college attending daughters would be even more activist oriented towards the women's movement than their mothers. Daughters of the more activist oriented mothers would be more likely to be predisposed towards feminist activiqrn than would d8ughters of less-activist mothers.

The contemporary cultural image emphasizes dependent and secondary partisan political roles for fernales.17 Yet, Pornper found that younger (under 35 years of age) non-southern women were more likely to vote in the 1972 presidential election, than were their male cohorts with similar backgrounds.18 Verba and Nie found that women were as likely to

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participate in voluntary groups or organizations ss were men, and more likely to bean active member of an organization.lg Verba and Nie find that most citizens are specialists as political participators, with only eleven percent of the population engaged es- tensively in both campaign activities and non-partisan voluntaristics organizational activities.20 W e would hypothesize that this kind of specialization also holds when specifically comparing individual activism in partisan politics and the women's rights movement. Extending our earlier discussion of political socialization within the family, w e suggest that cue-taking should be especially strong for daughters of activist mothers and we assess the extent to which daughters model their mother's behaviors as compared wi th their father's behaviors. We also examine the extent to which there is modeling of participative behavior across the partisan and feminist movement contests.

THE SAMPLE

Our sample is limited in size with only forty mot her-father-daughter triads and nine mother- daughter diads where the father was a non-respondent. A random sample of non-first-year female college students, i.e., with more than forty-five quarter hours of undergraduate college credits, was drawn from among the student body of a public university located in a metropolitan area of Florida. Of course, the sample is not representative of the national population of female college students and their parents, but is employed for suggestive and exploratory research. The respondents do, however. appear to be from "typical" families with children in college. The respondents are overwhelmingly white (95961, and Protestant (76%) with a majority of the students' mothers (56%) and fathers (76%) claiming to have at least some college education. The median family income, as reported by the parents, is $15,000 per year. Perhaps more typical of Florida than most

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other states, only eleven percent of these state university students claim to have been born i n Floridh, while another twenty-two percent claim to have been born in anolher Sctithern ste^L,?.

FINDINGS

Table 1 shows parent and daughter participation in partisan political activities. The parent generation participates in partisan politics more actively than the child generation, and the difference is part- icularly notable in,the area of voter registration. In the other areas of part.isan political activity--talking about how people should vote and wearing a campaign button or using a bumper sticker--the gap between the parents and daughters is smaller. The mothers work for a party, candidate or issue more often than the fathers, although in other respects the fathers and mothers are about equally active.21 As Table 1 also shows that the most common partisan political act for mothers and fathers is voting, while the most common partisan act for daughters is talking about politics. It seems likely that this difference is a reflection of the age gap between the groups. The pattern of adult partisan participation which we find is consistent with previous studies, as is the pattern of college student partisan participation.

As the figures in Table 2 indicate, actual participation in women's rights activities is at a substantially lower rate than participation in partisan politics. We will focus on potential participation in the women's movement rather than on actual participation.22 In contrast to the results concerning partisan political participation, the daughters are somewhat more likely than their parents to express a willingness to participate in women's rights activities: and as we expected, the gap between the proportion of daughters and the proportion of mothers who would join a wornen's rights organization is smaller than the gap between daughters and fathers.

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Table 1. - Partisan Political Activities of Daughters, Mothers and Fathers.

Daughters Mothers Fathers

Registered t o vote 27% (13)" 89% (42) 88% (35) Talk about politics 35 (14) 47 (22) 55 (22)

Belong to club 2 (1) 7 (3) 10 (4)

Work for party, etc. 10 (5) 23 (11) 10 (4)

Wear a button, etc. 24 (12) 30 (14) 28 (11)

Give money 6 (3) 23 (11) 30 (11)

"The percentages in this and following table are based on the number, of responses minus "don't knows" and other non-responses.

The figure in parentheses is the number of cases the percentage includes.

Table 2. - Participation and Willingness to Participate in Women's Rights Activities among Daughters, Mothers and Fathers.

Daughters Mothers Fat hers

Belong to org. 8% (4) 3% (1) 0% (0) Attend meeting 2 (1) 5 (2) 3 (1)

Pay dues 4 (2) 4 (2) 3 ( 1 )

Would.. . join org. 35 (16) 25 (11) 14 (5) attend meeting 69 (34) 42 (19) 41 (151

contribute money 38 (17) 35 (16) 33 (12)

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As in all cases where the subject of the analysis is potential rather than actual participation, we would expect some distortion of responses in the direction of socially desirable behavior, i.e. participation in widely approved organizations. Of course, not all political process (e.g. the American Nazi Party) and the fairly high level of projected participation w e find is a testament to the favorable light in which the women's ri hts movement is viewed among these respondents. 5 3

There is an exception to t h e observation made above and we feel it sheds some light on the nature of socially desirable behavior concerning women's rights. 6990 of the daughters say they would attend a meeting of women's rights organization, but this measure of potential participation is unrelated to their sympathy for the Equal Rights Amendment. This suggests that some of the daughters believe that even if one is unsympathetic to a position one should here out the proponents on an issue. This standard surfaces again when respondents are asked whether they have read any literature promoting the women's rights movement. 80% of the daughters, 59% of the mothers, and 5 3 O 6 of the fathers say yes, they have read such literature. Nevertheless, 18 of the 3 6 daughters who say they have read literature promoting the women's rights movement cannot identify a leading women's rights group; this is also the case for 3 out of 26 mothers and for 1 2 out of 2 1 fathers who say they have read women's rights literature. While it is possible that one could read feminist literature without learning the name of even one organization, it is implausible that it would happen this frequently. Far more plausible is the propositon that some respondents wish to express the idea that they have not made their judgments about women's rights on flimsy grounds.

We constructed two summary scores from the

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separate measures of participation and potential participation, each ranging from zero to three. The partisan participation score is t h e sum of the number of partisan activities in which a person has parti- cipated, wi th all those participating in three or more activities placed in the highest category. The women's rights activity score is the sum of the number of women's rights activities in which each respondent expresses a willingness to participate; in addition, those respondents who have actually joined an organization, attended a meeting, or paid dues are categorized with the most "active" group, whether or not they expressed a willingness to participate further, in order to reflect the importance of actual participetion compared to merely potential participation.

Table 3 shows the distribution of summary partisan activity and women's rights scores for daughters, mothers, and fathers. The daughters' score is much lower than the parents' for partisan activity. In the women's rights area, however, the daughters score higher than either the mothers or the fathers, and the daughters' distribution is more similar to the mothers' than the fathers'. About one-half of the fathers and mothers express no willingness to engage in the women's movement. On the other hand, half of the daughters are inactlve in the partisan political arena.

One of the issues we explore in this research is the extent to which a common orientation to parti- cipat e underlies both partisanship political activities and women's rights activines. 'lable 4 snows that the daughters who score in the highest two categories on the partisan activity score are almost all in the highest two categories of the women's rights scores. There is some degree of overlap between the two arenas then, although the relationship is modest (tau, = .25). The configuration of t h e cases suggests

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Table 3. - Index Scores for Daughters, Mothers and Fathers

Daughters Mothers Fa the rs

Partisan Political Activity Index:

0 24

1 10 2 6

3 9

4 5 14 9 15 12

14 14

Women's Rights Activity Index:

0 12 22 22

1 12 4 8

2 7 7 4

3 18 13 6

Table 4. - Partisan Political Activity Index by Potential Women's Rights Activity Index for Daughters

Women's Rights Activity Partisan Political 0 1 2 3 Activity

0 9 4 3 8 1 2 7 1 0 2 0' 0 1 5 3 1 1 2 5

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that willingness to participate in women's rights activities may be a necessary precondition for partisan participation among daughters. There is also a relationship between the participation in partisan politics and women's rights activity among parents: for mothers tau, = .34; for fathers tau, = .39.

Jennings and Niemi , looking a t the projected political behavior of high school seniors, found very low positive correlations between the level of parental participation and the projected participation of their o f f ~ p r i n g . ~ ~ Within the families we examined, there is no relationship between the mothers' and t h e daugthers' levels of partisan participation (tau, = -.02), although there is a relationship between the partism participation of fathers and daughters (tau, = .34). The difference between the apparent modeling cjf the mothers' and fathers' behavior is surprising since w e expected a stronger l ink between the child and the like-gender parsnt.

Although the numbers are small, there is some evidence that both mothers and fathers may contribute to the political activity of daughters. Five of the nine daughters in the highest category come from the 41% of the parent pairs who are in the highest two categories of the index. If even one of the parents is in the lower categories of partisan participation then the daughter is also in one of these two categories. The discrepancy between the daughter- mother and daughter-father relationships may be due to the active daughters of non-respondent fathers, several of whom have mothers who vote but participate no further in partisan politics.

In the area of women's rights participation, where we might expect that the example set by mothers for their daughters would be especially powerful, we find almost no relationship between the index scores of mothers and daughters (tau, = ,091. An examination of Table 5, however, reveals that

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Table 5.-Daughters' Women's Rights Activity Index by Mothers' Women's Rights Activity index.

Mother's Index Score Daughter's Index 0 1 2 3 Score:

. o 4 2 1 4 1 6 1 3 0 2 5 1 1 0 3 7 0 2 9

Table 6. - Daughter's Women's Rights Activity index by Father's Women's Rights Activity index.

Father's Index Score

0 1 2 3 Daughter's Index Score :

0 9 2 0 0 1 5 3 1 1

2 3 1 1 . o 3 5 2 2 5

nine of the thirteen mothers in the highest category have daughters who are likewise in the highest category on the women's rights activity index; mothers who fall in lower categories tend to be less likely to have daughters who are inclined to participate in the women's movement.

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The relationship bet ween the won1 en's rights activity index of fathers and daughters (tau, = . 3 S ) is much stronger than that between mothers and daughters. In Table 6 w e find that those fathers who are in the highest category on this measure contribute a small but noticeable cluster of daughters who are also in the highest category. Again, these findings supporting paternal modeling are surprising since we expected transmission of behavioral cues to be gender linked in the area of women's rights.

When w e look for evidence of cross-area modeling between parental willingness to participate in women's rights activities and daughters' partisan political activity, we find only a slight support for a behavioral link between the generations (mother- daughter tau, = .17; father-daughter tau, = .27). But, again, fathers seem to be more likely to provide the most influential cues. There is also only a slight relationship between mothers and daughters (tau, = .13) when parental participation in the partisan arena and the willingness of their daughter to participate in the women's rights movement is assessed.

We have found little evidence, then, to support the proposition that daughters model their mothers' political behavior in t h e partisan political arena or that mothers are a major role model for daughters' participation in women's rights activities. There is some support for the proposition that daughters model their fathers in the area of partisan political behavior. Furthermore, a willingness to participate in women's rights activities by fathers is linked to the daughters' levels of both partisan activity and willingness to become active in the women's rights movement.

Two questions directly tapped respondent attitudes towards women's rights: "DO you consider yourself to be sympathetic to the Equal Rights Amendment?" and "DO you generally favor the

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women's rights movement?" In general, the parents in these families were supportive of the ERA and almost equally supportive of the women's movement: 79% of the mothers and 71% of the fathers were sympathetic to the ERA: 76% of the mothers and 76% of the fathers generally favored the women's right5 move men t .

Parents who are sympathetic to the ERA are more likely to have daughters who. participate in partisan politics. In Table 7 almost all of the daughters who are in categories 2 and 3 on the partisan activity index are offspring of the mothers and fathers who are E R A supporters. But, Table 8 shows that there is no relationship between support for the women's rights movement by mothers and daughters' level of partisan activity (tau, = .03) , although daughters' partisan activity is positively related to support for the women's rights movement among fathers (tau, = .22). The configuration of data in these tables suggests that the partisan activity among college-aged female students takes place in an atmosphere of parental support for women's rights and the women's rights movement and a supportive atmosphere may be a necessary condition for such activity.

The data shown in Tables 9 and 1 0 appear to indicate that a similar pattern emerges between parental sympathy for the ERA attitude towards the women's movement and t h e daughters' partisan activity scores. Fathers appear to be more influential than mothers in relating ERA support and daughters' partisan activity (rnother-daughter tau, = .13; father- daughter tau, = -27). The fathers' support for the 'women's rights movement and the daughters' women's rights activity index are also related (tauc = .38); but there is little relationship between the mothers' support for the women's movement and the daughter's willingness to participate in it (tauc = .08). Again,

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Table 7. - Daughter's Partisan Political Activity by Attitude Towards the ERA of Mother and Father.

Daughter's Partisan Mother Father Activity Index: Pos. Neg. Pos. Neg.

0 15 4 14 6

1 3 4 4 4

2 5 0 4 0

3 8 0 5 1

Table 8. - Daughter's Partisan Political Activity by Attitude Towards the Women's Movement of Mother and of Father.

Daughter's Partisan Activity Index:

Mother Father

Pos. Neg. Pos. Neg.

0 16 5 12 5

1 4 3 3 3

2 3 2 4 0

3 8 1 6 0

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then, there is evidence that daughters who are potential participators in the women's rights movement follow their father's rather than their mother's leads, although, like partisan participation, most of this willingness to participate occurs within a family context that includes a supportive mother and a supportive fat her.

Our findings provide no support for the hypo- thesis of like-gender modeling, and little support for significant parental role-modeling in either the partisan or women's rights arena. Perhaps, however, the daughters' perceptions of parental attitudes are related to their participation in partisan politics or their willin ness to participate in the women's rights movement. k

A relationship exists between parental support for the Equal Rights Amendment and daughters' perceptions of parental support for women's rights issues (mother-daughter tau, = .36; father-daughter tau, = -32). By contrast, when we look a t the relationship between actual parental support for the women's rights movement and the daughter's perceptions of parental support of wornen's rights issues, we find that daughters are less accurate in their perceptions of their mothers than their fathers (mother-daughter tau, = .26; father-daughter tau, = .53). In fact, with respect to both women's rights issues in general as well as the Equal Rights Amend- ment, the respondents in the younger generation as a group tend to overestimate the support of their mothers for these concerns. On the other hand. daughters are more likely to say they do not know the attitude of their fathers on women's rights issues.

Turning to the relationship between willingness to participate in women's rights movement among daughters and their perceptions of parental support for women's rights issues, daughters who perceive their mothers supportive of the movement are more

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Table 9. - Daughter's Potential Women's Rights Activity by Attitude Towards the ERA of Mother and of Father.

Daughter's Women's Rights Activity Index: Pos. Neg. Pos. Neg.

Mother Father

8 2 7 4

6 4 5 4 3 0 3 2

14 2 12 1

Table 10.-Daughter's Potential Women's Rights Activity by Attitude Towards the Women's Movement of Mother and of Father.

Mother Father Daughter's W ome n 's Rights Activity Index : Pos. Neg. Pos. Neg

0 8 3 5 5

1 7 3 6 2

2 3 2 3 0

3 13 3 1 1 1

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likely to participate in the movement (tau, = .35), as are daughters who perceive their fathers as supportive of the movement (tau, = .20). The potential for women's rights activity among daughters, is more closely linked to their perceptions of maternal support for women's rights issues, than their perceptions of paternal support for these issues.

CONCLUSION

We have utilized a homogeneous sample of female college students and their parents to examine several questions concerning intergenerational similarity of attitudes and behaviors related to participation in party politics and the women's movement. While the limitations of our sample are evident, many of the conditions associated with participation and the successful transmission of parental attitudes to the child are either assumed to be present or shown to be present for the sample. It is clearly from among upper status, white, college attending females that w e would expect to find the most likely segment of the population exposed to women's rights material and predisposed towards activism in the women's rights movement.26 Inter- generational changes in political or social attitudes, Prewitt suggests, may not indicate a breakdown in the family transmission of such attitudes, but may indicate a break away by "an entire younger generation experiencing a particular political event.1'27

We have a population of college students being exposed to the new feminism, and a population of students and parents being exposed, for four con- secutive years, to the controversy over the rati- fication of the Equal Rights Amendment by the Florida state legislature. We thus have a persistent, salient and concrete issue in the mainstream of the women's rights movement which has been widely discussed and reported in the immediate environment of these respondents. Our sense of these dimensions

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being present for this population is reinforced by the findings that 76% of the daughters. 74OO of the mothers, and 67% of the fathers correctly identified the substantive content of the Equal Rights Amend- ment in response to our open-ended query; 44O0 of the daughters, 38% of the mothers and 28?6 of fathers named a women's rights group.

Our evidence supports the idea that fathers rather than mothers are the more influential parents. However, the daughters' predisposition towards activism in the women's rights movement is linked more strongly to their perception of their mothers' favoring the movement rather than their fathers' favoring the movement. The daughters who participate in partisan politics come from among parents who participate in some active fashion in partisan politics.

There is widespread support for women's rights among the parents of our sample, and most of the younger generation who are more inclined towards partisan activity or who express a willingness to participate in the women's movement come from within family contexts where there is parental support for women's issues. Perceived support within the family for such activism appears to be important. No daughter falls in the higher two categories of our partisan activity scores in t h e face of maternal opposition to women's rights issues, and no daughter is in the higher two categories on the potential women's rights participation score in the face of perceived maternal opposition to the movement. Few of the daughters are partisan participants or potential feminist activists in t h e face of perceived paternal opposition to the women's movement.

Eleanor Maccoby suggests that parents themselves may be a source of intergenerational dis- continuities. The parents internalize values from one era, yet transmit to their children values more

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appro riate and consistent with the needs of a later era. 2f In the case of the women's movement, we may have parents who have internalized the more traditional attitudes and values of an earlier era, yet they recognize the positive aspects of female partisan activity and women's movement activity and have successfully transmitted this recognition to their offspring. The offspring, in turn, not only place a positive value on these behaviors but are also more predisposed towards action than is the parental genera tion.29

We are surprised a t the lack of direct gender- related modeling in the specific area of potential feminist activism. We suggest one reason for this is the fact that only potential behavior is examined as opposed to actual behavior. Perhaps, specific behavior in this area would be more likely to be modeled than would supportive, but non-behavioral pat terns.

In sum, we suggest that in the feminist domain, the source of the discontinuity w e find between the generations, stems, in part, from the attitudes of the parents, themselves, as well as in the more persistent visibility and saliency of feminist related cues for the daughters. Participation in partisan politics does not appear to be associated strongly with the potential for participation in the women's movement, but a supportive family atmosphere towards partisan activities or women's activities does appear to be an important element in generating participation or the potential for participation among the young.

lJames W. Lamare, "Inter - or Intragener- ational Cleavage? American Youth in Political Science

The Political Orientations of 1968," American Journal of 19 (February 1975) :81-89;

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Richard E. Dawson, Public Opinion and Contemp- orary Dissaarray (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 124-130; Donald J. Devine, The Pol- itical Culture of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969) pp. 32-35; M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, "Continuity and Change in Political Orientations: A Longitudinal Study of Two Generations," American Political Science Re- view 69 (December 1975):1316-1335.

2Robert Hess and Judith Torney, The Develop- ment of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Andron, 1967), p. 113; Dean Jaros, Socialization to Politics (New York: Praeger, 1973), p. 86; Herbert Hyman, Political Socialization (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 76; Richard E. Dawson and Kenneth Prewitt, Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969). See also: Roberta Sigel (ed.) Learning About Politics (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 104; Richard Connell, "Political Socialization in The American Family: The Evidence Reexamined," Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (Fall 1972) :323-33; David Searing, et al., "Political Socialization and Political Belief System, '' American Political Science Review 68 (June 1973) :415-432.

3See, for example, the limitations on ef- fective parental impact and the range of impact by the domain set out in the conclusions of M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 319-335. See also Stanley Allen Renshon, "The Schwartz and Sandra Kenyon Schwartz (eds.), New Directions in Pol- itical Socialization (New York: The Free Press, 1975), pp. 50-55; Kent L. Tedin, "The Influence of Parents on the Political Attitudes of Adoles- cents," American Political Science Review 68 (December 1974) :1579-1592. Additional work which is characteristic of attempts to assess inter-

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generational relationships in this domain includes, among a vast and quickly growing literature, M. Kent Jenning and Kenneth P. Langton, "Mothers versus Fathers: The Formation of political Orientations Among Young Amer icans , '' Journal of Politics 31 (May 1969):329-358; L. E. Silvern and C. Y. Nakamura, "Analysis of the Relationship Between Students' Political PosF- tions and the Extent to Which They Deviate From Parents and Position, Journal of Social Issues 29 (Winter 1973):lll-132; Neal E. Cutler, "Toward a Generational Concept ion of Political Social i- zation," in Schwartz and Schwartz (eds.), pp. 254- 257.

4Albert Bandura, "Social-Learning Theory of Identif icatory Processes , I' in David A. Goslin (ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory Research (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), p . 220.

5Angus Campbell, et al., The Voter Decides (Evanston, Illinois: ROW, Peterson, 1954), p. 206; Bernard Berelson, et al., Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p . 9; Fred I. Greenstein, "Sex Related Political Differences in Childhood," Journal of Politics 23 (May 1961) :357-371. See also the review article by Susan C. Bourque and Jean Grossholtz, "Politics and Un- natural Practice: Political Science Looks at Female Participation," Politics and Society (Win- ter 1974):225-264.

6See for example, Jennnings and Niemi, p. 171; David Butler and Donald E. Stokes, Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), pp. 47-51; Paul A. Back and M. Kent Jennings, "Parents as 'Middle-Persons' in Pol- itical Socialization," Journal of Politics 37 (February 1975) :95.

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'IJennings and Niemi, p . 17.

*Jennings and Niemi, p. 323.

9James S. Coleman, Transition to Attitude (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19741, p. 2.

IOJennings and Niemi, pp. 321-322; Tedin, p. 1579; Connell, p. 334.

llJennings and Niemi, p. 326.

12Tedin, p. 1592.

13The revival of a women's movement in recent years is discussed in M. B. Morris, "Public Definition of a Social Movement: Women Liber- ation," Sociology and Social Research 57 (Fall 1973) : 526-543.

14Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 19631, p. 65.

15David C. McClelland, "Wanted: A New Self- Image for Women," in Jay Lifton (ed.), Women in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 173; see also the special issue of The Journal of Social Issues 28 (No. 2, 1972), "New Perspective on Women. I'

I6Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1970), p. 474; Marlene Dixon, "The Rise of Women's Liberation," in Judith Bard- wick (ed.), Readings in the Psychology of Women (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 151-161.

17Bourque and Grossholtz, p. 237; Robert Weissberg, Political Learning, Political Choice, and Democratic Citizenship (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974).

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18Geral R. Pomper, Voters' Choice (New York: Dodd, Mead, 19751, p . 71.

19Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Parti- cipation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 181.

2OVerba and Nie, pp. 56-81.

21We asked questions drawn from the work of Survey Research Center, University of Michigan related to: voting, talking about politics, working in partisan politics, belonging to a political party organization or club, wearing a button or displaying a bumper sticker, or giving money to a political party or candidate.

22The questions we asked concerning actual and potential participation in the women's rights movement concerned: paying dues to a women's rights group, attending a meeting of a women's group and joining a women's rights group. For potential activity we asked. if the respondent would do any of the above of directly asked to do so. See the discussion of "Projected Political Participation" utilized in Jennings and Niemi, P. 133.

23Cf. Jennings and Nierni, 120 ff.

24Jennings and Niemi, p . 133.

z5This is analagous to the agreement of Con- gressmen's perceptions of constituency attitude being more closely associated with congressional voting patterns than is the actual constituency attitude. See: Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, "Constituency Influence in Congress, 'I American Political Science Review 57 (March 1963) :45-56.

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260f Verba and Nie, p. 336.

27Kenneth Prewitt, Review of M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence, in American Journal of Sociology (May 1975) : 1473.

28Eleanor Maccoby, "Moral Values and Behavior in Childhood," in John A. Clausen (ed.), Social- ization and Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 19681, esp. pp. 263-267.

29Kenneth Keniston in his Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth (New York: Harcourt,' Brace & World, 1968), Chapter 2, "Personal Roots: Struggle and Specialness," points out that activist Vietnam War protestors were dispro- portionately drawn from homes of supportive liberal parents who did not act out their own liberalism.

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