Still Bringing the Vietnam War Home: Sources of Contemporary Student Activism

Abstract

This study examined student activism concerning the Persian Gulf War. Results showed that students' reports of their parents' activities during the Vietnam War were strongly associated with students' Gulf War-related activism. Other correlates of activism included attitudes toward war, political consciousness, authoritarianism, and gender-role ideology. After the authors controlled for student attitudes, path analyses confirmed the direct role of parental modeling for children's activism in opposition to and in support of the Gulf War. In addition, parents' antiwar activism indirectly influenced students' antiwar activism through authoritarianism scores and antiwar attitudes. Parents' war-support activism had no such indirect effect on students' war-support activism; however, gender-role ideology, authoritarianism, and prowar attitudes influenced students' war-support activism. The findings support the frequently hypothesized but seldom-studied link between parents' activism and children's later activism.