Parents' contributions to knowledge and attitudes regarding AIDS.

Examined, in a sample of 170 students in Grades 1-12, relationships between parental background and socialization variables and children's knowledge of AIDS risk factors and willingness to interact with people who have AIDS. Most parents had talked to their children about AIDS and supported early AIDS education, but were susceptible to common transmission myths. Age was the strongest predictor of a child's knowledge and attitudes, but parent ethnicity, education, and occupational status also contributed. Moreover, consistent with a "potentiation" model of socialization, parent knowledge of common transmission myths predicted child knowledge of those same myths only when parent-child communication about AIDS was relatively frequent.