Parents as "Middlepersons" in Political Socialization

Abstract

ALTHOUGH RECENT RESEARCH has challenged the simplistic views about the family's dominance in shaping the political character of the young, there is no doubt that the family remains an important agent of political socialization.' Most typically the family's influence is assessed by linking certain parental characteristics to certain observed outcomes in the offspring. These characteristics are usually taken as given: little attention is paid to how the parents came to be the way they are and how that might affect the socialization of their children. In the interest of parsimony, if nothing else, this emphasis is well placed. Yet socialization within the family is not simply a two-generation phenomenon, for the parents themselves were once the socializees instead of the socializers. Parents do not spring forth without a history, nor do they cease to have historical impact when they expire. They are the links to the past as well as to the future. Having received and often qualified the political legacy of their own par-