Fathers and Sons: Foundations of Political Belief

Abstract

After a brief examination of typical father-son relationships in several cultures, this study focuses on the youthful relationships with their fathers of fifteen normal working and lowermiddle class men, information derived from depth interviews. Expressing rebellious feelings in political terms is completely alien to this sample-even for the four whose relationships with their fathers were damaged. Such damaged relationships, however, are associated with (1) limited political information (because of the need to concentrate on the self in the absence of an appropriate model), (2) authoritarianism, (3) inability to criticize legitimate public figures (because of a need to stifle anti-authority feelings), and (4) a pessimistic view of social improvement. The opposite characteristics, revealed in the majority of the sample, are said to be expressed in American political life and policy in specified ways. LOOSELY speaking, there are three ways in which a father lays the foundations for his son's political beliefs. He may do this, first, through indoctrination, both overt and covert as a model for imitation, so that the son picks up the loyalties, beliefs, and values of the old man. Second, he places the child in a social context, giving him an ethnicity, class position, and community or regional environment. And, he helps to shape political beliefs by his personal relations with his son and by the way he molds the personality which must sustain and develop a social orientation. The combination of these three processes produces the Mendelian law of politics: the inheritance of political loyalties and beliefs. But while imitation and common social stakes tend to enforce this law, the socialization process may work to repeal it. It is the socialization process, the way in which fathers and sons get along with each other, that we examine in this paper. Some perspective is gained by noting a number of possible models of the way fathers through their rearing practices may affect their sons' social outlook. The German model of the stern father who emphasizes masculine hardness and fitness in the son, and