Parents, Adolescence, and Attitudes Toward Democracy

This paper deals with East German youngsters’ attitudes toward democracy. The focus of the analyses will not be on the attitudes themselves, but rather on the paths of influences that parents have on their adolescent children’s political attitudes toward the democratic system. Parents’ political attitudes are generally seen as exercising great influence on the development of the political identity of their children; and indeed, surveys show a high congruence between the political attitudes of parents and those of their children (for reviews see Wasmund 1982; Geisler 1996). The main question, however, is how these congruences emerge, e.g., what causes these congruences. To deal with this question, this paper analyzes the paths of intergenerational transmission of political attitudes from parents to their children, using the longitudinal data set from the Brandenburg sample of adolescents, their fathers, and their mothers.