Faculty Sponsor: Manolis Kaparakis
Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Maya Nelson
Abstract:
From previous research conducted, it is unclear if the gender of the parent that the child is closer to has a significant impact on the child’s political socialization process. Although it is known that mothers have an advantage over fathers in communicating center-left party preferences (Fitzgerald & Bacobsky 2022), the research on right wing preferences is significantly more ambiguous. Additionally, similar questions, regarding parent-child closeness and its association with politics, have not been asked in the context of a nationally representative sample. The goals of the present analysis include 1) establishing a relationship between the major parental influences in a child’s life and their political beliefs as adults and 2) looking at whether the relationship differs depending on which parent the child is closer to. That is, the study will investigate whether parental closeness is correlated with political ideology and which parent is more likely to influence political ideology across the spectrum of liberal to conservative. It became clear that politics was a good predictor of an individuals closeness to their father, but wealth is a confounding variable in the relationship.
Final-Poster-QAC201-1