Red diaper baby
A red diaper baby is a child of parents who were members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) or the Communist Party of Canada, or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims.
History
Gary Younge points out that the term "red diaper baby" originated in the 1920s as an insult. It was "aimed at the Communist party's internal aristocracy, which ensured that those with parents in the party would find themselves promoted rapidly through the party ranks". During the 1960s Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the right-wing John Birch Society published a list of Berkeley student leaders, such as Bettina Aptheker, who were "red diaper babies". Instead of stigmatizing the named students, the disclosures had the opposite effect by helping them find one another and build a support network. In the years that followed, the term began appearing in popular culture without a pejorative connotation, e.g., in the 1976 film Marathon Man, the audience learns that the protagonist, Thomas Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, is a red diaper baby.
In their 1998 book Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left, Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro define red diaper babies as "children of CPUSA members, children of former CPUSA members, and children whose parents never became members of the CPUSA but were involved in political, cultural, or educational activities led or supported by the Party". More generally, the term is sometimes used to refer to a child of any radical parent, regardless of that parent's party affiliations. Shapiro writes that red diaper babies commonly reported "growing up with a sense of difference, both specialness and fear; feeling part of an international community and yet isolated from the mainstream of their own country." She adds that as adults, they "may or may not be political activists. Within families, siblings often differ in type and degree of activism and impact of the 'red diaper' experience on their lives."
In the U.S. and Canada, notable red diaper babies have included journalists Carl Bernstein and David Maraniss, rock singer Country Joe McDonald, poet Allen Ginsberg, playwright David Mamet, essayist Vivian Gornick, historians Linda Gordon, Rosalyn Baxandall and Ronald Radosh, philosopher G. A. Cohen, conservative activist David Horowitz, politician Roland Penner, scientist Richard Levins, and Michael and Robert Meeropol, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Josh Kornbluth titled his 1996 autobiography and its related one-man show, Red Diaper Baby. Kornbluth's show was filmed by Doug Pray for the 2004 documentary film Red Diaper Baby. Canadian political scientist James Laxer called his 2004 memoir, Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism.
References
- ↑ "Mill Valley "red diaper daughter" documents her radical roots". Marin Independent Journal. June 18, 2017. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
- ↑ Hall, Tom (March 14, 2020). "Today's Red-Diaper Baby Dilemma". LA Progressive.
- ↑ Gates, Anita (January 22, 2014). "Traveling Back in Time From the Left, With Context". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
- 1 2 3 Younge, Gary (June 6, 2003). "Born in the eye of the FBI". The Guardian.
- ↑ Kaplan & Shapiro 1998, p. 3: "The effort at intimidation backfired; students found each other through the list, which helped their organizing efforts immeasurably."
- ↑ Radosh, Ronald; Radosh, Aliss. "Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left". p. 246. Retrieved May 17, 2023.
- ↑ Kaplan, Judy & Shapiro, Linn, eds. (1998). Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 2. ISBN 0252021614.
In this anthology, we define red diaper babies as children of CP members, children of former CP members, and children whose parents never became members of ...
- ↑ Dohrn, Zayd Ayers (March 28, 2026). "My Childhood in the Weather Underground". The New Yorker. In this memoir of early childhood "on the run" with his radical fugitive parents Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, Zayd Ayers Dohrn uses the terms "Panther cubs" and "Weather kids" to describe the children of Black Panther and Weather Underground parents, whose experiences were similar to red diaper babies.
- 1 2 Shapiro, Linn (1998). "Red Diaper Baby". In Buhle, Mari Jo; Buhle, Paul; Georgakas, Dan (eds.). Encyclopedia of the American Left (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 690. ISBN 978-0195120882.
- ↑ Bernstein, Carl (1989). Loyalties: A Son's Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 156. ISBN 978-0671649425.
- ↑ Maraniss, David; Gonyea, Don (June 1, 2019). "Book: A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father". All Things Considered. NPR.
- ↑ Sauer, Patrick (October 10, 2017). "Country Joe's Obscene Truths". The New York Times.
- ↑ Gornick, Vivian (April 3, 2020). "What Endures of the Romance of American Communism". New York Review of Books.
- ↑ Grimes, William (October 14, 2015). "Rosalyn Baxandall, Feminist Historian and Activist, Dies at 76". The New York Times.
- ↑ Cohen, G. A. (2001). "Politics and Religion in a Montreal Communist Jewish Childhood". If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?. Harvard University Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0674006935.
- ↑ "David Horowitz, 1939–2025". The New Criterion. Vol. 43, no. 10. June 2025. p. 1.
- ↑ Penner, Roland (September 6, 2007). "Red in Winnipeg's North End". Canadian Dimension.
- ↑ Kaplan & Shapiro 1998, pp. 257–265.
- ↑ "Red Diaper Babies". AP News. Archived from the original on July 12, 2023. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
- ↑ Kornbluth, Josh (1996). Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues (With Mathematics of Change and Haiku Tunnel). Mercury House. ISBN 1562790870.
- ↑ "Red Diaper Baby (2004)". IMDb.
- ↑ Libin, Nicole (January 2004). "View of Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism". Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes: 127–130. doi:10.25071/1916-0925.22634. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
Further reading
- Aptheker, Bettina (2006). Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel. Seal Press. ISBN 158005160X.
- Bernstein, Carl (1989). Loyalties: A Son's Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671649425.
- Bock, Laura (2017). Red Diaper Daughter: Three Generations of Rebels and Revolutionaries. Laura Bock. ISBN 978-0998161600.
- Chernin, Kim (2019) [1983]. In My Mother's House. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1557538710.
- Christie, Chris (2010). This American Family: Growing Up as a Red Diaper Baby - A Memoir. Booklocker. ISBN 978-1609105808.
- Flacks, Mickey; Flacks, Dick (2018). Making History / Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813589220.
- Horowitz, David (1997). Radical Son: A Journey Through Our Times from Left to Right. Free Press. ISBN 978-0684827933.
- Kimmage, Ann (1998). An Un-American Childhood. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820320786.
- Laxer, James (2004). Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 1553650735.
- Maraniss, David (2019). A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1501178375.
- Meeropol, Robert; Meeropol, Michael (1986). We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (2nd ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252012631.
- Mishler, Paul C. (1999). Raising Reds. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231110456.
- Radosh, Ronald (2001). Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left. Encounter Books. ISBN 1893554058.
- Rosenberg, Daniel (2008). Underground Communists in the McCarthy Period: A Family Memoir. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 978-0773448421.