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

In the 1976 film Marathon Man, the lead character, Thomas Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, is a red diaper baby. Notable red diaper babies include journalist Carl Bernstein and rock singer Country Joe McDonald. The term Red Diaper Baby was used by Josh Kornbluth as the title of his 1996 autobiography and related one man show, and a 2004 performance documentary film of his show by Doug Pray. 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 phrase is sometimes used to refer to a child of any radical parent, regardless of that parent's past partisan affiliation or the affiliation of the child. Canadian political scientist James Laxer titled his 2005 memoir Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism.