DO CONSERVATIVE PARENTS NURTURE CONSERVATIVE CHILDREN?

To test the notion (derived from early studies with the F-scale and the TFI scale) that conservative parents nurture conservative offspring (and that liberal parents nurture liberal offspring) the modified Conservatism scale was administered to a sample of New Zealand• schoolchildren and their parents. Conservatism/liberalism in parents is associated with the presence of similar attitudes in their children. The greatest attitudinal similarities were between fathers and their sons and mothers and their daughters. It is suggested that children identify with and introject the attitudes of the same sex-parent.