The Perception and Adoption of Parental Political Orientations in the Dutch Multiparty Context

Most previous studies on parental political socialization interpret the similarity of parents and children in political orientations as evidence of direct intergenerational transmission from parents to their children. However, recent studies show that intergenerational similarity does not always indicate successful transmission and propose that the process of intergenerational transmission involves two distinct steps: perception and adoption (Ojeda & Hatemi, 2015; Hatemi & Ojeda, 2021). The perception-adoption approach posits that children have to first perceive the political orientations of their parents (correctly or incorrectly) before deciding (consciously or unconsciously) whether to adopt those perceived orientations. So far, the perception-adoption approach has been developed and tested in the context of a two-party system. The current paper will apply the model to examine the intergenerational transmission of political orientations (party preferences and left-right identification) in a multiparty context with original survey data of Dutch adolescents (14-20 years old) and their parents (N = 751 adolescent-parent pairs). Thus far, multiparty contexts have been thought to produce stringent tests of political socialization processes due to the relatively high fragmentation of party landscapes and electoral volatility. These characteristics may increase ambiguity and inconsistency in parental cue giving and increase the perceptual inaccuracy of children in multiparty contexts. I will test the latter assumption by examining Dutch adolescents’ perceptual accuracy in estimating their parents’ political attitudes. Moreover, I will test moderators of the perception and adoption stages of transmission (frequency of political discussions, political engagement, political knowledge, parental value strength).