Children of War Resisters: Intergenerational Transmission of Activism, Political Orientation, Injustice Frames, and Law Resistance

Abstract

American Vietnam War resisters participated in one of the largest politically motivated emigrations in US history. John Hagan provided the most comprehensive study of American war resisters living in Canada in his award-winning book Northern Passage. Hagan documented how law resistance intersected with social movement participation and sustained activism. In this article, I extend Hagan’s life course analysis of law resistance by interviewing fifty-one adult children of the war resisters originally in Hagan’s sample, supplemented with eighteen surveys completed by the parents about their child, producing eighty-two distinct parent-child relationship pairs. This unique intergenerational study finds that American war resister parents radically influenced their offspring’s activism. The adult children of war resisters highly resemble their parents’ political views and activism. Further, I elaborate on the concept of a participation identity to suggest four fundamental mechanisms that facilitate activism of the offspring of war resisters: (1) resonates with their identities and life histories; (2) inspired by their parents’ activism; (3) adoption of an injustice frame; and (4) optimism that social movements are effective vehicles of social change. This research demonstrates that American war resister children in Canada are both attitudinally disposed to, and structurally available for, activism.

INTRODUCTION

American Vietnam War resisters participated in one of the largest politically motivated emigrations in US history. These war resisters¹ rejected the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War and military laws requiring American selective service. Their migration meant leaving behind their families, friends, and communities in the United States and risking permanent exile in Canada, a country many had never visited. John Hagan was one of the over fifty thousand American war resisters who migrated to Canada because they opposed the Vietnam War. After he exhausted occupational deferments in the United States, Hagan strategically applied to graduate school in Canada to resist the draft. Hagan received his doctorate degree from the University of Alberta and subsequently remained in Canada for decades and started his illustrious academic career at the University of Toronto. Hagan became one of the world’s most prominent scholars in law and society, criminology, and sociology. His research on war resisters is especially meaningful to him as it intersects with his personal biography. Hagan’s research consisted of interviews with one hundred US war resisters who remained in Canada decades after they migrated to another country. His award-winning book, Northern Passage, is based on these data, providing the most comprehensive study of American war resisters living in Canada (Hagan 2001b).²

Using this group as a case study, Hagan documented how law resistance intersected with social movement participation and longer-term social activism. He argues that the experience of law resistance shaped American war resisters’ subsequent life course and political activism in Canada (Hagan 2001b). The social movement was a turning point for Hagan and other war resisters who became committed to social and political activism. As a child of US war resisters that migrated to Canada, I was interested in how parents’ law resistance and activism affected their children. What is the impact of parents’ resistance to laws, social movement involvement, and political exile on their children in future generations? Did the parents’ law resistance influence the social and political dispositions of the next generation? Do the children resemble their war resister parents in political orientations and activism? To answer these questions, Hagan and I created a unique dataset to examine how activism is passed down through generations.

This study extends Hagan’s life course analysis of law resistance. Approximately thirty years after the war resisters migrated to Canada, I interviewed fifty-one adult children of the war resisters originally in Hagan’s (2001b) sample, supplemented with eighteen surveys parents completed about their children, producing eighty-two distinct parent-child relationship pairs. Examining the children of war resisters provides a rare opportunity to observe continuity and change from one generation to the next. Activism’s intergenerational transmission has been overlooked despite numerous studies on the transfer of parental characteristics. Although sparse, extant research suggests a transmission of activism from the parents to their children (see Quéniart, Charpentier, and Chanez 2008; Pagis 2014, 2018; Masclet 2016). Hagan’s (2001b, 123) research in Northern Passage touches on the influence of parental activism on war resisters. Examining activist families and the intergenerational transmission of social movement participation extends this literature. Furthermore, these data enable the investigation of social psychology theories related to social movement involvement beyond a purely structural network perspective.

Hagan (2001b) found that most war resisters continued to take part in social movements after they immigrated to Canada. Interviews with their adult children revealed that war resister parents continued participating in social movements long after Hagan interviewed them. Further, I establish that the parents’ activism was passed down generationally to their children. The adult children have similar political views to their parents and engage in social activism. However, perhaps the most important sociological question is how this occurs. What mechanisms mediate the relationship between parents’ and children’s participation in social movements (McAdam 2003)? This article finds that children of war resisters likely participate in social movements because it resonates with their identities and life histories. I argue that there is a significant linkage between social movement identity formation and the lived historical experience of growing up in an activist household. Participating in a social movement as an adult resonates with their sense of self, and this “participation identity” prospectively inclines these children of social movement activists toward mobilization. War resister children are thus attitudinally disposed and structurally available for activism. Attitudinally, participation in social movement activities as an adult resonates with their identities and life histories. In addition, the inspiration that children feel toward their parents’ decision to defy military law, inheritance of injustice frames (Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982), and optimism that social movements can be effective vehicles of social change are mechanisms that mediate intergenerational activism.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Activism as a Turning Point

John Hagan (2001b) and Doug McAdam (1988) demonstrated how joining an activist cause marked a turning point in one’s life trajectory that leads to future activism. Hagan’s (2001b) study on Vietnam War resisters in Canada records whether they participated in activism prior to immigrating to Canada, shortly after they arrived in Canada, or three decades after immigrating to Canada. About half had no prior involvement in civil rights, and deserters scored lower than dodgers did on a scale measuring activism. Besides having lower levels of activism prior to immigrating to Canada, there were statistically significant differences between dodgers and deserters on numerous measures, including education and fathers’ socioeconomic status. However, the groups became similar in activism after arriving in Canada. Three-fourths of early arrivers helped subsequent war resisters (Hagan 2001b, 115), two-thirds were actively involved in mobilization efforts of resistance organizations (116), and nearly 60 percent attended marches and demonstrations (116). Being a war resister profoundly affected future activism, with both groups remaining active for thirty years (117). McAdam (1988) similarly found that participation in a social movement significantly affected participants’ lifetime trajectory of activism. Like Hagan, McAdam categorized his sample into two groups to ascertain if joining a social movement was a turning point in their lifetime trajectory of activism. McAdam compared two groups for Freedom Summer: those who declined and those who accepted the invitation to participate. Both groups were initially similar in political orientation; however, those participating in Freedom Summer were significantly more likely to participate in activist causes decades later than those that declined.

Intergenerational Activism

Hagan’s (2001b) and McAdam’s (1988) research demonstrates the radicalizing effect participating in a social movement has on one’s lifetime likelihood of continued activism. What does research find if the timeline is extended even further than one’s lifetime to include the children of activists? Findings about what children inherit from their parents or, conversely, what parents transmit to their children are so pervasive in sociological research that the neglect of parents in social movement scholarship is striking. Research examining intergenerational parent and child relationships includes the transmission of wealth and social capital (Becker 1964; Bourdieu 1984; Coleman 1988; Lareau 2002, 2003), neighborhood economic status (Sharkey 2008), and partisan identification (Settle, Dawes, and Fowler 2009). Hagan and various co-authors have further advanced our understanding of intergenerational transmission with their research on the deleterious effects that parental incarceration has on children’s education, health, and well-being (Hagan and Dinovitzer 1999; Foster and Hagan 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015; Hagan and Foster 2012).

Scholarship on the transmission of parental voting and political party associations to their children are related to this analysis. However, most of these studies rely on a general sample of parents, leaving the activist’s children overlooked. The political socialization scholarship includes the possibility of being politically active and finds that parents are highly influential in transmitting voting and political party associations to their children (Beck and Jennings 1975, 1991; Jennings and Niemi 1981). While informative, there are significant distinctions between voting, political associations, and activism, with the latter being more behavioral than attitudinal.

Intergenerational transmission of activism has been largely overlooked. This is surprising given that a central tenant in social movement scholarship is that social movement recruitment occurs through social networks. However, researchers typically overlook parents as intergenerational network actors who might facilitate or impede their children’s activism.³ Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen’s (1993, 653, Table 2; 654, Table 3) earlier analyses provided unique indications that parental networks notably influence individuals’ decisions to participate in a social movement. They found that volunteers in Freedom Summer reported nearly double the level of support from parents than no-shows (McAdam and Paulsen 1993, 653). However, methodological considerations required them to omit parental networks from their final statistical models.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics: children of American war resisters

Notes:

* Following Doug McAdam’s (1989) lead, “leftist” was designated for those subjects who use the numbers 1, 2, or 3 to describe their political orientation on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 for “radical left” to 10 for “radical right.”

** 52.9 percent of children self-report their political orientation to be “leftist.” If the eighteen parent surveys are included, then the combination of self-report and parent-report on their child is 45.6 percent.

*** The total number of child/parent relationships in this data set is n = 82 because a child was duplicated if reported by both parents and a parent was duplicated if reported by siblings. Hence, there are eighty-two different parent-child dyads reflecting unique combinations of a child to a parent.

Table 2. Contemporary political activism and political stance among war resister parents compared to the full sample of war resisters

Notes:

* The American Vietnam War resisters were interviewed by John Hagan and the children of war resisters were interviewed by Wenona Rymond-Richmond.

** “Leftist” was designated for those subjects who use the numbers 1, 2, or 3 to describe their current “political stance” on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 for “radical left” to 10 for “radical right.”

Table 3. Children of American war resisters by ever and currently in a social movement

Notes:

* (1–5, with 1 = strongly agree).

A few studies examined activist families (Whittier 2010), including Irene Bloemraad and Christine Trost’s (2008) study, which provided a unique twist on intergenerational mobilization. They found that younger family members can play a role in mobilizing parents. The effects of parental activism on children are generally overlooked. Activists’ children are nearly absent from political socialization and social movement research, though there are exceptions (Hagan 2001b; Quéeniart, Charpentier, and Chanez 2008; Pagis 2014, 2018; Masclet 2016). Although sparse, extant research suggests a transmission of activism from the parents to their children. Camille Masclet (2016) found that children of activist parents who participated in the French Women’s Liberation Movement resembled their parents’ political orientation, were highly politicized, and the majority participated in activist activities. Julie Pagis (2014) found that latent dispositions inherited mostly from parents involved in social movements in the 1960s influenced children’s activism. Anne Quéniart, Michèle Charpentier, and Amélie Chanez (2008) identified political discussions in the family as facilitating the transmission of activism from parents to children. While not a primary focus, Hagan (2001b, 123) found that “parental activism had a small and indirect influence on the resisters’ activism.” After arriving in Canada, the Vietnam War resisters who continued their resistance had parents who were activists (24). This article extends the literature on the intersection of law resistance, social movement participation, and the life course by examining parental activism’s role in their children’s activism.

Social Psychological Insights into Movement Activism

Social movement scholars have significantly advanced our understanding of why some people participate in social movements and others do not. A basic premise of most social movement theorists is that recruitment to activism follows from: (1) individual willingness to protest and (2) the conversion of that potential into actual participation (Klandermans and Oegema 1987; Oegema and Klandermans 1994; Klandermans 1997; Beyerlein and Hipp 2006). The tendency of structuralist social movement research is to concentrate on the second of these two factors—the conversion into participation—to the relative neglect of the first—the willingness, and, therefore, availability, of individuals to engage in protest (Beyerlein and Hipp 2006). In contrast to this rather exclusive concentration on network sources of the structural facilitation of social movement participation, the social psychological perspective adopted here highlights the background role of identity in shaping the willingness and availability for mobilization to occur.

Within the social psychological perspective, Sheldon Stryker’s (1968) theory of “identity salience” and the concept of a “participation identity” are useful for understanding why some people are more receptive to activism than others are. Identity salience theory suggests that the self comprises a hierarchy of identities, which can explain why and how some individuals become more mobilizable than others. Social ties alone do not lead to mobilization in a social movement. Instead, the strength, salience, and centrality of social ties must be examined. This theoretical perspective not only examines networks in a broader and more multidimensional way but also provides insight into identity’s central role in mobilization and advances our understanding of prior dispositions among individuals that facilitate activism. From this perspective, an individual must possess a “participation identity” that makes them inclined toward mobilization in the first place.

INTERGENERATIONAL DATA

Hagan and I developed a unique intergenerational dataset of activist parents and their children to examine their similarities and differences.⁴ Hagan surveyed and conducted one hundred semi-structured, taped, and transcribed interviews with American Vietnam War resisters living in Toronto in 1997–98. American Vietnam War resisters included young men who resisted the draft or service in the US military and women who joined in this migration during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hagan shared the resisters contact numbers and the survey information with me. The survey included questions about whether the war resister had children and the age of their children. I contacted resisters who reported in Hagan’s survey that they had one or more children over the age of eighteen to inquire whether their adult children were willing to participate in this intergenerational research. Of the one hundred war resisters who Hagan interviewed, fifty-two had at least one child over eighteen, with the total number of potential adult children interviewees totaling 103. Parents whom I successfully contacted either passed on my contact information to their child, provided me with their child’s phone number, or indicated that their child was not interested or unavailable to participate in this study.

Data were collected on sixty-nine of the 103 potential offspring. Most of the information came from the fifty-one interviews that I conducted with the children. Supplemental information on an additional eighteen children came from short surveys completed by the parents about their child’s political views and activism. Parents were given the opportunity to complete the survey when I could not interview a child because the child was traveling, estranged from a parent, too busy, or disinterested. The total number of children in this sample was sixty-nine, yielding a response rate of nearly 67 percent. The two-stage process of going through the parents for contact information about their children and the fact that parental contact information was more than seven years old likely lowered the response rate. In contrast, the offer of interview or survey response formats probably enhanced the response rate, resulting in an approximate two-thirds rate of response. This study consists of information on fifty-two parents (interviewed by Hagan) and sixty-nine children (fifty-one interviewed by Wenona Rymond-Richmond and eighteen surveys). Ultimately, the matched interviews in this sample comprise eighty-two distinct parent-child relationships (see Table 1). The analysis controlled the effects of some parents having more than one child and some children having more than one parent in the sample. The dataset uniquely includes variation among parents and children in social movement participation.

Selection bias may exist in the small sample of participating parents and children compared to non-participating parents with younger children or no children over eighteen years old. As indicated in Table 2, parents of war resister children in this sample reported being more active in current social movements (57.7 percent versus 54.0 percent) and more leftist in current political stance (80.8 percent versus 70.0 percent) than the full sample of war resisters in Hagan’s original study. The implication is that the children interviewed in this study may also be more left leaning and engaged in social movements than the children of war resisters that did not participate in this study.

The qualitative data presented come from interviews with parents (conducted by Hagan) and their adult children (conducted by the author), with the latter being the emphasis of this article. The interviews included both closed and open-ended questions. Interviews were primarily conducted face to face, with telephone interviews used as a replacement if necessary. The interviews typically lasted an hour and a half and occurred in the interviewee’s home or a nearby coffee shop. The partial insider status of the author being a child of war resisters born in Canada likely facilitated data collection. Qualitative data were coded in Nvivo software. The codes and mechanisms identified in this article were arrived at inductively through the interviews rather than identified a priori in the literature or elsewhere.

A key contribution made in this article was to document the similarities and differences between parents and their children regarding their political views and activism and to describe the mechanisms involved in this association. To identify the mechanisms, I analyzed the differences between children participating in social movements and children not participating. I analyzed war resister children’s participation in social movements in two ways: whether they participated in a social movement in their lifetime and currently participate in a social movement. Lifetime social movement participation has the benefit of providing the most holistic representation of the activism of war resister children because it includes participants that may be, in McAdam’s (1989) terms, “biographically unavailable” for current activism for reasons such as having young children. However, a drawback to this measurement is that only approximately 10 percent of war resister children in the sample have never participated in a social movement in their lifetime. Further, the measurement of lifetime participation in social movements does not reveal whether they participated as a child or as an adult. Because this article is particularly interested in the intergenerational transmission of activism between war resister parents and their adult children, I include current social movement participation in the analysis to capture the participation of adult offspring. An additional benefit of analyzing current social movement participation is that the sample of individuals not participating increases from 10 percent in a lifetime to nearly 40 percent, providing a potentially more reliable sample. Both these measures have strengths and weaknesses; including both measurements of social movement participation (current and lifetime) provides the most holistic representation of the information collected.

The children of war resisters in this data range in age from eighteen to fifty-two, with an average age of thirty-one. I limited the analysis to children over the age of eighteen to allow for the emergence of adult identities, political orientations, and movement participation. A slight majority of war resister children are males. The adult children include several musicians, an individual living in an alternative housing community, a few Quakers, a performance artist, and a few college students. I present the descriptive statistics in Table 1.

RESULTS

Intergenerational Similarity of Political Views and Social Movement Participation

Is there an intergenerational transmission of political views and political activism from war resister parents to their children? As scholarship on partisan identification (Settle, Dawes, and Fowler 2009) and political socialization (Beck and Jennings 1975, 1991; Jennings and Niemi 1981) would predict, the answer is affirmative for political views, with nearly 97 percent of children in the sample report espousing similar political views to their parents (see Table 1). The parents and their offspring are politically left leaning. Children report that 90 percent of parents were “leftist” when they were growing up and that parents continued to espouse “leftist” political views into present times, with 80 percent being “leftist.” Their offspring follow the same pattern, with over half reporting being “leftist.”

We know less about the intergenerational transmission of activism than we do about intergenerational similarities of parental voting and political party associations, which is a key contribution of this research (Settle, Dawes, and Fowler 2009). The intergenerational data collected enabled us to examine whether parents’ activism was passed down to their children. Initial evidence of these influences is displayed in Table 1. First, war resisters not only participated in a social movement when they immigrated to Canada, but Hagan (2001b) also documented that the majority continued to be involved in social and political activism after entering Canada. The act of immigrating to Canada was a turning point to long-term commitment to activism (99). In fact, shortly after they immigrated, nearly 75 percent of war resisters provided support to resisters that arrived in Canada after them (115). Second, like their activist parents, the children are exceedingly active in political and social movements. Nearly 90 percent of war resister children have participated in a social or political movement in their lifetime, and nearly 60 percent are currently involved in at least one social or political movement. Respondents most frequently reported participation in anti-war movement activity, followed by environmental and anti-poverty movements. As a source of comparison, the General Social Survey 2002 reports that only approximately 20 percent of sampled Americans have attended political meetings or rallies in the past three or four years, and approximately 5 percent have taken part in an anti-war demonstration in their lifetime (Davis, Smith, and Marsden 2002). The children of war resisters resemble their parents in holding leftist beliefs and being highly engaged in social movement activities. However, perhaps the most important sociological question is how this occurs. The following section explores the mechanisms that mediate the relationship between parents’ and children’s participation in social movements.

Attitudinally Disposed to Activism

As noted, prior research has focused primarily on structural network determinants of social movement participation. However, not all individuals with ties to social movement participants join these movements, suggesting that individuals vary in their receptiveness to recruitment. For example, gender, age, or parental status may influence whether one is biographically available for activism (McAdam 1989). A “participation identity” might also make an individual attitudinally disposed to mobilization. In this sample, most war resister children participate in social movements. Could a “participant identity” account for what contributes to some of the offspring of war resisters to grow up to be involved in social movements like their parents? The remaining findings examine the differences between adult children participating in social movements and those that do not. The concept of a participation identity adapted to this research suggests four fundamental mechanisms that may have facilitated activism of the children of war resisters: (1) resonates with their identities and life histories; (2) inspired by parents’ activism; (3) adoption of an injustice frame; and (4) optimism that social movements are effective vehicles of social change. Each of these mechanisms is elaborated upon in the following sections.

Resonates with Their Identities and Life Histories

Hagan found that war resisters’ activism continued decades after they immigrated to Canada. Interviews with their children document that 75 percent of the war resisters continued to participate in a social movement while they raised their children, thereby extending Hagan’s (2001b) finding that, decades later, war resisters continued activist activities. For the children, growing up with a parent engaged in activism affected whether they would also participate in social movement activities. Table 3 separates children that have participated in a social movement in their lifetime and currently from the children that have not participated in activism in their lifetime or currently. Children were three times more likely to engage in at least one social movement in their lifetime if their parents had been active in a social movement (75.5 percent) compared to those without a parent involved in a social movement (24.5 percent) (see Table 3). Children with parents with a history of social movement activism were also twice as likely to be involved in current social movements (67.5 percent) compared to children without parental involvement in social activism (32.5 percent). These numbers support the qualitative data in Table 3, demonstrating that adult children of war resisters participate in social movements because it resonates with their identities and life histories.

Lenny is nineteen years old and connects his activism to growing up with a father highly committed to activism. Lenny asserts that his father’s activism “really influenced what I do. And it’s, and it’s one of the things always in the background. And I know that I’m pretty much following in my parents’ footsteps, [that] is what I’m doing. I’m comfortable with that because I’ve made my own identity through it.” Similarly, Megan believes that her parents’ activism “just made me realize that I have, I have a voice and I have an opinion, and it doesn’t even have to jive with theirs, but I think, I think what it taught me was that I could stand up for what I believe. And I can follow my own, my own path in a sense. So my parents definitely showed me that.” The children who grew up in activists’ households described politics being frequently discussed at the dinner table and that activities such as recycling were a natural part of daily routines. Alison is one of the nearly 76 percent of children who were involved in a social movement in their lifetime and grew up with a parent involved in it. Alison grew up in a household where political campaign posters decorated the front lawn and “politics and social movements and just general talking actually in our household was so prevalent that I would show up at school and, you know, talk to people about what mom had told me about when she went to school.” The lawn posters in the front of the house reflected information about politics and social movements transmitted to Alison from her mother inside the home. As an adult, Alison continues to participate in social movements such as the women’s movement, the environmental movement, and anti-war activities that she originally learned about at home.

Nearly 67 percent of the adult children not only witnessed their parents’ activism while they were young, but they were also included in their parents’ social movement activities (see Table 1). Being taken to a social movement activity by a parent when they were young significantly affected the likelihood that they would grow up and be involved in activist causes. Approximately 70 percent of children taken to an activist event by their parent currently participate in a social movement. If the parent did not take them to a social movement event when they were young, the percentage participating in a social movement currently as an adult decreases from nearly 70 percent to approximately 31 percent. Laura acknowledges her war resister parents’ influence on her activism and asserts that she carved out her identity. Her parents brought her to activist events as a youth, and she continues to engage in activism as an adult. Laura described a lifetime of activism that started with her father being a war resister and her mother taking her to activist marches in a stroller and that this influenced her current activism as an adult: “The very fact that my father is a war resister, I just think that the very fact of that spurned a genuine curiosity in resisting war and in resisting systems of mass oppression. … From the time I was in a stroller, I was going to international woman’s day marches. … And I think that really influenced me in exploring my own beliefs.” Growing up in a household with a parent participating in a social movement significantly increased the likelihood that the child would participate in activist activities as an adult. When a parent participated in a social movement and took their child with them, it furthered the likelihood that the youth would grow up and continue to be involved in activist causes as an adult.

Inspired by Parents’ Activism

Interviewees expressed that they not only supported their parents’ decision to not participate in the Vietnam War but also felt that their parents’ activism profoundly affected their lives. With only a few exceptions, the children in the sample were not yet born during their parents’ political exodus from the United States. Instead, most children were born in Canada and therefore did not have their own experience of migrating to another country, often by an underground network (see Hagan 2001b). Nevertheless, nearly all war resister children (94 percent) asserted that their parents’ decision to resist the war had powerful effects on their lives (see Table 1). Resisting the war and migrating to Canada marked a turning point in the war resister’s life trajectory and had profound intergenerational effects. Indeed, one interviewee characterized her parents’ migration to Canada as one of the most notable events in her life, even though she was not even born when her parents made this journey.

Children of war resisters reported that one way in which their parents affected their lives is that they felt inspired by their parents’ activism to engage in social movements as adults. Nearly 90 percent of adult children reported that their parents’ participation in social and political movements affected their involvement in social movements. While child interviewees were not explicitly asked if their parents’ activism inspired them, many made this connection. Insights can be gained by comparing war resisters in social movements and those who do not. Children that participated in a social movement in their lifetime or are currently participating in a social movement more often reported that their parents’ involvement in social movements affected their life (see Table 3). One way in which parental activism affected their children’s lives is by inspiring them to engage in activism.

Child interviewees were asked if they approved of their parents’ decision to migrate to Canada and not to participate in the Vietnam War. Nearly all of the children (98.1 percent) approved of their parents’ decision to migrate from the United States to Canada, and the vast majority of children of war resister parents (94.1 percent) indicated that they derived indirect inspiration from this decision. While approval between the two groups is similar, a noticeable difference exists between their levels of approval. As displayed in Table 3, adult children who had ever been involved in a social movement were more likely to approve strongly rather than approve of their parents’ decision to resist the war (62.7 percent versus 42.9 percent) and migrate to Canada (85.4 percent versus 42.9 percent) than those who had not participated in a social movement.

Cass, a college student, “completely and utterly respects” that her “father was so passionate for what he believed in and was willing to give up his life as he knew it for his political views.” She respected his decision to be a war resister and was inspired to “do something along those same lines. Hopefully, it will work out as well for me as it did for him. Just the fact that he believed in it so strongly that it didn’t matter what happened. I think that’s such a great message and I think that it has really, really affected me.” As an adult, Cass had participated in numerous social movements and organizations, including Amnesty International, Pro-Cuban rights, and anti-Iraq War. Tiffany used “hero” to describe her inspiration and respect for her father’s decision to defy US selective service and military law. Jane admired her father and others who opposed the Vietnam War. She hoped that if she were in a similar situation as her father, she would have the strength to make the same choice. Sarah grew up knowing her father deserted the military because he vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. She supported his decision to immigrate to Canada as a form of law resistance. However, it was not until she was an adult and traveled to Vietnam three years before our interview that she described having “a true understanding” of the strong moral stance her dad took by deserting the military. The more she learned about the Vietnam War, the greater the respect, pride, and amazement she felt about her father’s law resistance.

Overall, children who had participated in a social movement in their lifetime and those that were currently active in a social movement more often reported that their parents’ activism affected their lives and their participation in social movement activities, that they more strongly approved of their parents’ decision to migrate to Canada, and that they more strongly approved of their parents’ decision not to participate in the Vietnam War than children who had never participated in a social movement in their lifetime or currently (see Table 3).

Injustice Frame

In addition to being inspired by their parents’ activism, a recurrent theme in the interviews was that war resister children had a politicized worldview or an injustice frame inherited from their parents’ experience of being a political refugee (Gamson 1992). The concept of a frame is defined as “an interpretive [schema] that simplifies and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of action within one’s present or past environment” is instrumental to understanding the politicized worldview of war resister children (Snow and Benford 1992, 137, drawing on Goffman 1974). William Gamson (1992, 32) argues that injustice frames are “the righteous anger that puts fire in the belly and iron in the souls.”

Sarah, introduced earlier, used the same term “fire” as Gamson (1992) to describe the anger associated with injustice frames. After traveling to Vietnam, she “started to sort of understand the fuel of my dad’s fire against the United States government towards those types of engagements and actions I guess in other countries in hostile situations and sort of start to form my own beliefs and feelings about it as well.” Sarah not only understood her father’s injustice frame, but this frame was also passed on to her. Like Sarah, Larry was proud of his father’s decision to refuse to fight in the Vietnam War and “of not wanting to go and kill people who had never done anything wrong to him.” As an adult, Larry was extremely active in social movements and believed that his parents’ activism “probably made me cynical in a way to the world we live in. … And it’s created, I think, a sort of healthy amount of cynicism within me. And, I mean, I think in general, the effects of my, my sort of, my outlook on how I live my day-to-day life, I guess.” Larry’s injustice frame is rooted in his father’s activism, and this worldview characterized other war resister children, including Sky and Ellen. Sky asserted that “knowing that my parents did something that was against their family’s wishes and against the government’s wishes, where it was actually illegal. And knowing the reasons they did it, they didn’t just do it for personal reasons, though there were personal reasons that my father did not go to war. It helps you to realize that you have to question things.” Ellen described her general worldview as “definitely an awareness, a conscientiousness that a lot of people just don’t have, not for any fault of their own, but just because they weren’t taught to see the world in that way. Things aren’t as they seemed and to really look at what’s going on and put everything in context.”

Numerous interviewees also commented that they grew up feeling “different” from their friends. This feeling did not simply involve their parents being immigrants in Canada. They perceived being in an activist household as the more notable reason for the difference. Children of war resisters articulated an injustice frame of heightened critical thinking and increased sensitivity about issues of oppression. Many were keenly aware that their critical framing of the world differed from their peers. For example, Ellen grew up with left-leaning, activist parents in a communal living arrangement. She recognized that she differed from her peers at an early age because she “thought about stuff more than anybody else did, like my friends. I was being opened. That world was opened to me and it wasn’t opened to my friends. I don’t think they were aware of it and stuff. But when I was in about Grade 6, which is ten maybe, that’s when I started realizing that I was a little bit different and was concerned about things that other people might not be concerned about.” As an adult, Ellen continued describing herself as more “open” and “critical” than her peers.

I expected how parents left the US—either as deserters from military service or as draft dodgers who avoided military service—to have implications for their children’s injustice frames and activism. Deserters from the military could be described as being involved in “higher-risk activism” (see McAdam 1986). Deserters’ risk of immigrating to Canada was permanent exile. Deserters never expected and never experienced the open-ended pardon that draft resisters received when Jimmy Carter became president. US law was more punitive toward deserters than it was toward dodgers. For some deserters, it meant missing family events, including their parents’ funerals because they were unable to cross the US border. McAdam (1986) predicted that the enduring intergenerational effect of behavioral high-risk activism of the parent is a radicalization of their child’s activism. In other words, the greater the legal injustice that the parents experienced (measured here as being a deserter), the more likely the child would participate in social movement activities and possess an injustice frame. The findings were more nuanced than expected. The quantitative data supports rejecting the expectation of a difference between the social movement participation of children of draft dodgers and deserters, while the qualitative data supports the expectation of a difference in the framing of injustice. Regarding participation in social movements, quantitative data show that children who participated in their lifetime were more likely to have parents who were draft dodgers (83.1 percent) rather than deserters (16.9 percent). However, this difference was slightly smaller for children currently participating in social movements (77.5 percent for draft dodger parents versus 22.5 percent for deserter parents).⁵

The qualitative data, on the other hand, reveal a difference in the framing of injustice between children of draft dodgers and deserters with the expectation upheld that children of deserters would hold a strong injustice frame. The texture in the quotes below could not be readily captured in the quantitative data, demonstrating the value of a multi-method approach. Take, for example, Tiffany, whose father was an Eagle Scout who loved his country but deeply objected to US engagement in the Vietnam War. More than twenty years later, accusations of “unpatriotic” desertion still hurt him. While living in Canada, his mother passed away, and his status as a US military deserter prevented him from attending his mother’s funeral. Tiffany described her once patriotic father as “anti-American.”⁶ She found “everything he hates about the States has been sort of, I guess I have ingested that, and I can’t help it. It’s more like a worldview. … And his rejection of it has certainly colored my politics and how I react to news.” Melissa’s mother made what she described as a terrifying decision to move to Canada with her husband, a military deserter. On a visit home to the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation tracked Melissa and her mom down and aggressively demanded to know where her husband was. This experience angered her mother and had long-lasting effects on both women, intensifying Melissa’s activism. According to Melissa, her mother’s “dislike of the US and of what she went through was filtered down to me.”

In addition to the interviews with war resister children, they completed a survey that included questions that could approximate an injustice frame (see Table 3). On average, children who were currently involved in a social movement more strongly agreed that the tax structure should be modified to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor (M = 1.58) and that governments should ensure that all who wanted jobs have them as well as a decent standard of living (M = 1.77). Similarly, children who were had been involved in a social movement more strongly agreed that government should ensure jobs and a standard of living (M = 1.79) but more strongly disagreed that the tax structure should be modified (M = 1.64), compared to their socially inactive counterparts. This finding fits the pattern of children engaged in activism possessing a stronger injustice frame than children who have not participated in social movement activities. The three questions about the Iraq War do not clearly fit the pattern that children involved in social movements would have a stronger frame of injustice.

As one may have predicted on questions about the Iraq War, children currently active in social movements more strongly supported American soldiers that deserted the US Army (M = 1.52) and more strongly disagreed that military force should be used in Iraq (M = 4.19) than the children of war resisters that were not currently active in a social movement. This pattern unexpectedly shifted when the children who had and had not participated in a social movement in their lifetime were compared. Here, we found that children who had never been in a social movement responded more critically that military force should be used in Iraq (M = 4.67 versus M = 4.21) and more strongly supported soldiers that deserted the US military because they refused to fight in the Vietnam War (M = 1.33 versus M = 1.81) than the children who had participated in a social movement in their lifetime (see Table 3). Since war resister children had primarily participated in social movements, analyzing the variation between those currently involved and those who are not may yield better results. According to Gamson (1992, 7), an “injustice component” that is defined as “moral indignation expressed in the form of political consciousness” is a necessary part of a collective action frame.

Optimism

Another component of a collective action frame is an optimistic disposition toward the effectiveness of social movements. Prior research in political science and psychology has found that individuals with high levels of political self-efficacy are more likely to participate in activism than those who are not. Perhaps the children of war resisters have high levels of optimism regarding the potential for social movement participation to be an effective vehicle for social change. Whether the war resister children were optimistic about the ability of social movements to impact the culture or politics in their parents’ time and currently was assessed by asking the adult children to agree or disagree with two statements. The first statement was “1960s social movements were very effective vehicles of social change” and the second was “social movements are potentially effective vehicles of social change.” As Table 1 demonstrates, 90 percent of the children of war resisters believed that the social movements of the 1960s were very effective vehicles of social change. They are in nearly total agreement that social movements could effectively drive social change. Table 3 demonstrates the differences between the children that had and had not participated in a social movement in their lifetime or currently, which is represented by the mean score. Children who had participated in social movements in their lifetime and currently responded more optimistically that social movements were effective vehicles of social change in the 1960s (M = 1.57 and M = 1.52, respectively) and that social movements were potentially effective vehicles of social change (M = 1.31 and M = 1.29) than the children who had never been and were not currently involved in social movement activities.

Many war resister children believed that their parent’s activism influenced their belief in the effectiveness of social movements to make social changes. Jasmine was an example of a war resister child who was optimistic about the ability of social movements to make social changes. She had been and currently was participating in a social movement. She attended demonstrations with her parents before she could walk. Her mother was active in the women’s movement, and Jasmine grew up feeling she reaped the benefits of the feminist movement. As an adult, she believed that participating in demonstrations was “important as a citizen” and “really an important part of being involved in your community.” Jasmine explained that her optimism that activism can lead to social changes was “something that they [my parents] shared with me and I am not cynical that demonstrations don’t mean anything and that governments don’t care. I do think that they do factor in; it’s hard to know how exactly they’re registered. But I also do think it’s moral and personally important sometimes.”

John participated in activist causes and said that his parent’s activism influenced his belief in the importance of “putting your energy into something that you’re passionate about.” He strongly believed that social movements were effective vehicles of social change and that the movements his parents were involved in helped make positive social change. His parents showed that social change was not the result of simply sympathizing with a cause. Social change came from turning feelings of support for a cause into action by participating in a social movement. The “free rider problem”—a term used to refer to individuals who are sympathetic to particular causes but do not convert their support into participating in a social movement or participate minimally—can be a source of frustration to activists wanting to increase movement membership. This free rider concept is also a way for academics to understand issues of differential participation (see also Olson 1965; Walsh and Warland 1983). The belief that social movements can be effective vehicles of social change may lay the groundwork for converting sympathy for a particular cause into participating in a social movement. Findings suggest that the high percentage of war resister children participating in a social movement corresponds to their collective optimism regarding the effectiveness of social movements to facilitate social change, coupled with an injustice frame inherited from their parents’ political marginalization.

CONCLUSION: TAKING THEM TO THE STREETS

Research shows that the biographical consequences of activism did not confirm the common media stereotype that 1960s radicals became socially inactive and politically conservative conformists in their later lives (see especially McAdam 1989; Hagan 2001b; see also Demerath, Marwell, and Aiken 1971; Fendrich and Tarleau 1973; Jennings and Niemi 1981; Marwell, Aiken, and Demerath 1987; Fendrich and Lovoy 1988). In this article, the stereotype of children rebelling against their activist “hippie” parents by becoming conservative, socially and politically uninvolved adults is countered. The adult children of war resisters highly resemble their parents’ leftist political views and engagement in activism.

This unique intergenerational study found that American war resister parents radically influenced their adult offspring’s activism. Children of law resisters in this sample likely participated in social movements because their identities were rooted in exposure to activism during their upbringings. War resisters who continued participating in social movements when they had children and brought their children to activist events were more likely to have activist-orientated adult children than parents that did not participate in social movements. The findings suggest that the high percentage of war resister children participating in social movements corresponds to their collective optimism regarding the effectiveness of social movements in facilitating social change, coupled with an injustice frame inherited from their parents’ political marginalization (Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982). This research demonstrates that American war resister children in Canada are both attitudinally disposed to, and structurally available for, activism. The socialization impact of activist parents is evident in the sample of American Vietnam era war resisters and their adult children.