Posted on 10/26/2012 1:04:00 AM PDT by thecodont
What leads a child to grow up and vote for a Republican candidate like Mitt Romney or a Democrat such as Barack Obama? Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that parenting style and childhood temperament plays a key role in determining a child’s future political mindset—as in, the bumper sticker your kid decides to slap on her car when she turns 18 might depend on how you reacted when she sneaked out of the house to meet her boyfriend.
The study found that children of strict parents were more likely to turn conservative while those of lenient parents were more likely to lean left. What’s more, children “with higher levels of fearfulness during young childhood” were more likely to have conservative values at age 18, while kids “with higher levels of attentional focusing and activity or restlessness” tended to be liberal, according to LiveScience.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.sfgate.com ...
http://www.livescience.com/24188-parenting-style-may-shape-political-views.html
We are fairly strict - but our kids are pretty spoiled compared to when I was a kid. My 15 year-old daughter just took some quiz to see where she was politcally (for school, mock election stuff). Ended up in the far right and down corner of the box for conservative-libertarian. The left side was for liberals, and the upper part was authoritarian or something.
My soon-to-be 18 year old son (but not in time to vote - dang!) took one and ended up in the 98% as being far right-wing conservative.
My other teen daughter hasn’t taken one - but she would probably outdo both of them!
With my son and one daughter I think they’ll be able to hold out through their college years. The other daughter may not. She has a huge heart, and those libs may be able to tug on that. Although at 15 she is quick to spot that the knee-jerk, feel-good actions aren’t the best ones, so I suppose she’ll be okay.
Or conversely, “The lack of responsible parenting makes kids grow up to be left-wingers.”
This is why we homeschool so that our children will benefit from God’s wisdom. And when hard times come, which they invariably do when men turn their backs on the Lord, my children will have the spiritual tools needed to ride out God’s judgement.
Be not deceived. God is not mocked. What a man sows, that he shall also reap.
Fearfulness in childhood? My kids are conservative adults now, but I cannot think they were particularly fearful as kids. They traveled around the world, negotiated their way through different countries’ customs and immigrations. My son, at the age of 10, traveled around a large foreign city with another friend age 10. My kids hiked through rugged jungle and mountainous terrain. I am definitely not a “smother mother.”
I think this study has more research to do.
Maybe strict parents are more likely to be conservative. It seems to be generally true that people initially tend to follow the political leanings of their family.
Of course there is the belief attributed to the Jesuits that a child's direction can be determined by the age of seven.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Kids who are taught responsibility and who are held to account for their actions are conservatives. Kids who always get their way when they scream to mommy and daddy are liberal.
I wasn’t raised in a particularly strict household, yet I still keyed into conservative/libertarian ideas starting around 11-12 as it became clear to me that the Left was sopping with illogic and emotional hyperbole.
These are far more determinative than the psychobabble we are reading in this and in a similar piece on a different thread. The pull of the cult, in its less malignant form it might be called peer influence, is more powerful than most people know. The job of the parent is to prepare the child to withstand the seductions of the cult, their peers, the University.
I knew it all along.
Yeah if you teach them discipline, take them to church and give them a solid moral foundation, make them groom, dress, and act respectfully, make them do chores and work for what they get so they have a sense of accomplishment and not entitlement, and make good grades they will probably turn out conservative. Instead of those leftist parents who give their kids Mohawks or let it grow out long and wear piercings and tattoos, don’t teach their kids morals or let them self-define it, dont teach their kids responsibility, give them whatever they want just to shut them up, and lead by example by acting like thugs by cursing and yelling and drinking alcohol and doing drugs a lot of the time right in front of their kids. Yeah I can tell who is going to turn left or right.
Duh!
I’m not so sure. My mother is as radical left as they come, and was not at all permissive. I thought I was liberal for a long time, until I realized that what I thought was “liberal” and the behavior/beliefs of liberals were not at all the same.
I fell for all that lib stuff in college. It’s not that important to be conservative in college. Sometimes it takes a bit of adult experience to get there.
Sad: our kids might not have a Rush Limbaugh to help. He probably can’t live forever.
Bingo.
Maybe she was too smart and had too much self-respect to do that in the first place.
I had a chaotic childhood, but arrived at the same conclusions in pretty much the same way.
I sure hope they didn’t spend much on this study because it’s as obvious as Obama’s religion. That a person is responsible for his/her actions, and there are consequences for one’s behavior, are conservative ideals. Sheesh.
So, when your daughter sneaks out to meet her girlfriend, and you don’t change the locks on the doors, then....... (sound of ominous drum beats ~ boom boom boom boom boom boom ~ echoes )
So,if we do not give our kids healthy boundaries while growing up (strict), then they grow up resenting any boundaries on their behavior? Imagine that.
I would say that my kids had a healthy dose of “fear of mom” when they were young. Similar to when I was growing up, the consequences my parents would dispense would far exceed what the school would give me for misbehaving, so I mostly behaved in school.
I really like Mark Steyn.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.