Raising a Politically Engaged Generation: When Parental Influence Matters Most

Abstract

At what ages are young people most open to political influence? We test the “formative years” model that underscores the importance of childhood experiences for political development against the “impressionable years” model that asserts the primacy of lessons learned during adolescence. To assess the relative merits of these competing models, we develop a new analytical strategy: the Retrospective Family Context approach. We estimate the political engagement levels of 18-year-olds as a function of annual measures of their parents’ political engagement levels over the course of the prior decade. German household panel data analysis shows that parental cues sink in quite effectively during late childhood, ages 9 to 11, and during the late teens. These results illuminate an essential dimension of political development, and they can inform efforts to encourage young people’s political participation.

Young Citizens’ Party Support: The “When” and “Who” of Political Influence within Families

“…3 The parents of our research subjects have been surveyed individually for many past years, providing insight into the dynamics of household partisanship surrounding each young person while they were growing up. In a recent publication, we refer to this mode of analysis as the “retrospective family context” approach (Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021). It allows researchers to peer backward in time in a granular way to view the history of parental partisanship in a youth’s household.…”

“…Although not without its challengers (see, e.g. Dinas, 2014), a wealth of research points to the profound effects of parental household factors on the formation of people’s basic orientations toward political parties in many country contexts (Abendschön and Tausendpfund, 2017; Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021; Beck and Jennings, 1982; Converse, 1969; Davies, 1965; Easton and Dennis, 1967; Jennings and Niemi, 1968; Jennings et al, 2009; Ventura, 2001).…”

“…This provides contemporary influence measures and household partisan history dating back over a decade to offer insight into the impressionable years in comparison to the formative years. By leveraging the data in this manner, we are able to look back into an individual's upbringing in an uncommonly detailed way, establish how deep the partisan roots run, and how they are best nurtured (see Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021 for a similar approach). 2 Through our analysis, we find evidence in support of both formative years and impressionable years theories of political socialization.…”

“… 2. For this article, we utilize the term “childhood” to denote preteen years, and the term “adolescence” to denote the teen years (Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021: 3). Specifically, and per the developmental psychology literature, childhood is the period between ages 2 and 11 (Burman, 2016: 69); late childhood spans ages 9 through 11 (Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021; Goetzmann, 2017). …”

Political Disengagement Among Youth: A Comparison Between 2011 and 2020

“…Political socialization emphasizes the factors that influence the development of one’s political attitudes, knowledge, and identity in one’s formative years. Works on political socialization often focus on the role of family communication patterns, specifically, how parents’ political predispositions are transmitted to their children ( Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021 ; Siegel-Stechler, 2021 ). Political socialization is also expanded to other interpersonal communication such as that between children/adolescents and their friends, peer groups, etc.…”