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

[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.