Continuities in Political Participation across Multiple Generations.

Although it is widely believed that participation runs in families, the empirical evidence is surprisingly thin and often based on retrospective accounts. We employ two gnerationally distinct sets of parent-child pairs to broaden our knowledge in this area. Three major conclusions emerge. First, there is clear evidence that learning and modeling processes during adolescence are at work in prompting the reproduction of participation tendencies across generations. Modeling of parental behavior increases when parent participation remains consistent over time and when, in the case of two parents, if parental participation harmony prevails. Second, and contrary to the findings regarding political attitudes, parental influence does not diminish over time. The interaction of the consistency and level of parental activity strongly affects the child's developmental trajectory. Third, voting turnout provides a special case of transmission likelihood. What best predicts offspring turnout is whether the parent voted during the child's adolescence, a time when receptivity to parental cue-giving of this sort is at its height. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]