(When) Did Your Political Ideology Diverge From Your Parents'?

[Former Moderate]

My ideology began seriously diverging from that of my parents as a result of three key events in my life:

1. Coming out as gay
2. Moving to Boston
3. Moving to Los Angeles

Start associating with more liberal folks, and you'll find yourself agreeing with them more and more.

[anvi]

My parents were born in 1915 and 1924 respectively, and both lived through the Great Depression, WWII, and so on.  My dad passed away in 1990 and my mom is still alive.  My mom's political ideology is not that detailed, but in her sensibilities she is an FDR New Deal Democrat.  My dad was basically an Eisenhower Republican.  My first experience of political arguments in the household took place on convention night nomination acceptance speeches.  I started to diverge from my dad's thinking in some ways when I started going to college, before then I was more strongly influenced by him.

[Torie]

My ideology began seriously diverging from that of my parents as a result of three key events in my life:

1. Coming out as gay
2. Moving to Boston
3. Moving to Los Angeles

Start associating with more liberal folks, and you'll find yourself agreeing with them more and more.

I generally prefer associating with liberals I find, but I would like to think I influence them more politically than visa versa. Be strong Mr. Moderate! 

[後援会]

I don't really associate with many liberals, at least Wesern ones. The culture clash is simply insurmountable. Which is not to necessarily say I flock to those with similar views - most people I associate with tend to fall considerably to my right. I suspect there's not a lot of political influence flying in either direction.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

When I stopped attending church and lost my spiritual side, my social beliefs became very different from those of my parents very quickly. That doesn't mean that they're social conservatives by any means but that I became a caricature of an angry young liberal on them with a fierce libertarian streak. Now that I've matured, I've swung back to their views on a few issues and my only real ideological differences occur because of cultural differences (I'm an "intellectual hipster/alt/whatever" who attends a liberal arts college vs typical lower middle class/working class roots) As far as their values are concerned, they're social democrats with a big emphasis on, reducing poverty and protecting the environment. If they read the same literature that I did, they'd come to the same conclusions.

My parents have certainly been an incredibly major influence on my political development. They come from pretty different demographic backgrounds but at the end of the day their rearing taught me the basis that led me to my current path: income says nothing about about a person's worth, that everyone is entitled to the same basic existence and that we have a moral obligation to protect our planet.

I definitely disagree with my father's inherent dislike for the wealthy and my mom's distaste for gays. That's about it.

[Jayhawker]

While I'm a bit more moderate than my parents on social issues, particularly same-sex marriage, I haven't really differed from them too much, and I don't expect to.

[後援会]

I definitely disagree with my father's inherent dislike for the wealthy and my mom's distaste for gays. That's about it.

But gays are so tasty...

[The Mikado]

My dad's somewhat to my left, and also a real firebrand.  I think our differences are more stylistic than substantive, though.

He has an annoying habit nowadays of referring to people that believe in God as "the lesser-educated" or "the superstitious."

[Simfan34]

My dad's somewhat to my left, and also a real firebrand.  I think our differences are more stylistic than substantive, though.

He has an annoying habit nowadays of referring to people that believe in God as "the lesser-educated" or "the superstitious."

While I find the thought rather distressing, I'm pretty sure my father's an atheist. He only goes to church on Christmas and Easter and is constantly dismissive of the religious right. I recall being younger and my father defining heaven as a mental state and my mom telling him to stop. This was in the car.

Anyway, you know the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? And the accompanying silly lyrics? I.e.:

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
had a very shiny nose. (Like a lightbulb!)
And if you ever saw him,
you would even say it glows.

All of the other reindeer
used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Rudolph
join in any reindeer games. (Like a monopoly!)

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say: (In his underwear!)
"Rudolph with your nose so bright,
won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then all the reindeer loved him
as they shouted out with glee,
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,
you'll go down in history! (Like George Washington!)

I recall being in kindergarten and refusing to sing the part about Santa's underwear because I thought it obscene.

[Reagan and Thatcher's Long Lost Son]

Firstly, I will state that my parents are left of centre (if they were American, and would be quite solid Democrats, they would have voted for Mondale in '84.)

My earliest stance on political matters came when I was in third grade, when I expressed my love for guns and money. By eighth grade, I was a very vocal supporter of George W. Bush and the war on terror. In ninth grade, however, my science teacher, who I believed was like a god (I was agnostic and religiously apathetic back then), was a strong supporter of the global warming theory, evolution, green energy, and the bird flu threat, which I lapped up like a cat does milk.

I retained much of these views over the next two years, in part because whenever I brought up opinions like my support for gun rights for example, I was responded to with a strong counter argument from my parents, and I didn't know how to respond very well to these arguments back then. Also, being a typical teenager, I thought the current Prime Minister (J W Howard, who would be a moderate Republican in the US), had been in for too long, purely on the basis of being in office for 10+ years.

My real interest in politics, however, began when I was in twelfth grade and began to watch the famous 1970s sitcom All In The Family. Also in twelfth grade, my father came up to me one day and said "Son, you really DO like George Bush, don't you?", and I became more of a social conservative when I saw something so disgusting on TV, it basically crashed my brain and made me rethink my moral positions. I also started to believe in God and Christianity (I was baptized undefined Christian) around this time.

Basically, I started the year supporting Obama, and by the election came around, I was the only person in my family who wanted McCain to win, even being shunned by a couple of family members. That was the year I began to think for myself, and my political views were more or less separated from my parents'. I realized I didn't have to agree with my parents on most things to be a good son.

Now, I identify with paleoconservatism more than neoconservatism, and I can't see my politics being similar to those of my parents any time soon.

[HockeyDude]

Actually, I line up with my mom's side of the family fairly well.  Generally liberal Democrats, almost all women, many who work for the USPS.  I've been what you would call a liberal since I was 12 or 13.  Strongly pro-union, pro-choice, strongly for separation of Church and State, and generally pacifist.  Only times we butt heads are on certain social issues (reverse racism was a point of contention between us in 2008, as they were claiming black people all voting for Obama was somehow racist, not to mention that they were pro-Clinton and I was pro-Obama), and I'm somewhat more pro-business than they are.   They also seem to treat my coming out as an atheist as an example of my "quirkiness" and "a phase", which can be irritating, but not tremendously so.

Mom is a registered Democrat, one of those who works for the postal service, and we mostly agree except for the fact that I tend to think she forms outlandish opinions at times out of emotion.  Like when she claimed that businesses have been purposely tanking for over a year to get Romney elected.  I got almost angry when I had to explain to her how absurd that was.  

I would diverge from my dad, though.  We match up identically on social issues, we're both agnostic/atheist, and he despises the anti-science and pro-religion aspects of the GOP, but he's more of an economic conservative.  Feels that Republicans tend to be in the pockets of big business and that they provide more economic certainty than Democrats.  Also, he's a very successful accountant/asset manager and is inclined towards a moderate GOP because it helps his investments.  I generally agree with this sentiment, but I'm not driven by the virtue of increased profits like he is.  Perfect example, he is annoyed with the stagnation of business due to the uncertainty regarding Obamacare.  I agree, but I told him that making sure people are covered is far more important to me, not to mention a much more pressing matter, than a relatively marginal difference in profits that businesses are seeing due to this uncertainty.  It's tough when you tell your dad that I don't care if he takes a hit in his bank account, but we can't have people dying due to lack of healthcare coverage.  

As for the rest of my dad's side of the family?  Staunch Republicans, nearly all of them.  We don't agree on anything and viciously disagree to an extent.  I suspect a strong racist streak from them and I refuse to even engage at times because I get very heated.  

[CountryRoads]

I'm more conservative then my Dad now on a decent number of issues (though we both are every conservative). My Mom is trending towards the right. She's Moderate with slight right wing leanings.

My Sister, since I've started college, has taken over my mantle of right wing nutjob She makes me proud   lol

[Progressive Realist]

My political views became somewhat more left-leaning than my parents about five years ago.

[Wonkish1]

Mom: A bit more socially conservative than anything else, but sees herself as a reliable Republican. She's the type that teaches a bible study, but you would never guess unless you started a conversation about religion with her.

Dad: He's the type of guy that started listening to Rush Limbaugh in his first month of national syndication back in the late 80s. Saw himself as a rags to riches story until the dot com bust almost cost him everything. Most of my life he was more professorial and after that crash he got way more emotional. Recently courtesy of a blow to the head and old age he's gotten extremely(almost unbearably) emotional about politics. He dances between Libertarian and Conservative.

My freshman year of high school I starting diverging on style(up until that point I was largely a mirror image of my dad). Basically, I became a lot more, well, wonkish than my parents. I started studying economics on my own instead of relying upon my father to 'teach'. I got 'into the weeds' when it came to policy.

My senior year of high school I starting diverging a bit on substance as well. This came from 2 places:
1) The first was in the priority of my goals. I honed in on conservative solutions for healthcare, education, social security, and poverty. My parents stayed with the more simplistic lower taxes and less government spending.

2) The fact that I always saw myself as person that always first dealt in reality. See something always bothered me about smart economic conservatives is that they would study up and could see the realities of the world, the marketplace, policy, etc., but that only resulted in them becoming more idealistic in their politics. For me to be a true realist you had acknowledge both the economic reality and the political reality. Through this I started focusing more on what compromises I could accept and which ones I couldn't; strategy; and what moves the ball forward policy-wise.

Today, a popular description surprisingly used by New Democrats to describe themselves is actually probably the best description of me: I "look to harness the power of markets to solve social problems"(the only difference is that I disagree that creating government owned, funded, and operated programs is the best way to do that) This I guess in a certain practical sense puts me to the left of my parents.

[Prez Duke]

It never has. My family is full of RINOs. Deal with it, Atlas.

[HockeyDude]

It never has. My family is full of RINOs. Deal with it, Atlas.

But I CAN'T deal with it!

[Torie]

I had more influence on my parents' views than visa versa actually, starting at around the age of 14. Yes, I was a weird kid. No doubt about it.    So there never really was much divergence. Later on, my brothers were annoyed (both Dems), that I was the one with the influence.