Parents' Religious Affiliation and Family Support for Student Activism

Abstract

The influence of the family on the protest-proneness of college youth has been a focus of concern of several observers (e.g., 2, 4 ) . The available data indicate that student leftpolitical activists are not rebelling against core family values; rather, through their attempts to effect social reform, these individuals seem to be living out the sociopolitical convictions of their parents or other family members (3, 5, 6, 7 ) . Another consistent finding in this regard is that persons indicating Jewish affiliation or coming from Jewish homes are disproportionately represented among activist-oriented youth (e.g., 1, 6, 7 ) . Together, these trends suggest that the families of Jewish students are more inclined to support, or less disposed to proscribe, left-political activism than the families of Christian students. As part of a larger scudy of student activism, 78 introductory psychology volunteers who had indicated either Christian ( N = 72, 51 Protestant and 21 Catholic) or Jewish ( N = 6 ) affiliation for both parents completed a measure of the degree of support for activism they perceived to exist in their immediate family climates? Since no difference was found between the family support for activism scores of the Protestant and Catholic Ss, their data were combined. Despite the small Jewish sample, those students' family support scores (M = 8.67, SD = 1.4) were significantly higher than the scores ( M = 7.08, SD = 1.8) of their counterparts of Christian background ( t = 2.13, d f = 76, p < .05, twotailed). This finding of a perceived relative absence of family disapproval for engaging in political activism among 6 Jewish students is congruent with Flacks ( I ) and Lipset's ( 4 ) bclicf that Jtwish homes are more permissive than Christian ones. In addition, the present results suygcst indirectly that student political activists are behaving in accordance with, rather rhan In opposition to, the expectations of family members.