FAMILY TRADITIONS, POLITICAL PERIODS, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARTISAN ORIENTATIONS

Two of the most important influences on adult political orientations are the political proclivities of their family of origin and the pressures of the times in which they first enter the electorate. Drawing upon a three-wave panel study of young Americans over the 1965–1982 time period and conceiving of parental orientations as producing a broad familial environment, this article traces the influence of parents on the partisanship and politicization of their children as the youth mature from adolescence to middle adulthood during a particularly turbulent period of American politics. The parental partisan legacy remained strong even though it was eroded by the antipartisan period pressures of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By contrast, family levels of politicization were reproduced only modestly throughout, leaving ample room for attentiveness to politics to develop outside of the family tradition. However, the interaction between the partisanship and the politicization of the family environment governs the dealignment of the youth generation after 1965. Youth from politicized Republican and Democratic families were affected most by the powerful antipartisan pressures of the post-1965 period. © 1991, Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.