My Mom’s a moderate. Every father-like person I’ve had in my life was pretty staunchly conservative, including my bio-Dad. I was more influenced by my Mom and my very liberal Aunt than anyone else, and I am in fact very liberal myself.
Neither of my parents were very political. They voted for the guy they liked the best, based on looks, charisma, and (I think) centrism.
Dad is gone; Mom voted McCain in 2008 but happily celebrated Obama’s election as a historical milestone.
I voted “more liberal”
Voted midway:
My dad’s except for his race indistinguishable from the average Tea Partier, he listens to talk radio quite often and reads/watched Fox News and Drudge Report online.
My mom was a liberal in Korea (for example she protested against the military junta in the 1980s) but regarding American politics is rather more conservative due to the influence of my dad.
As for me I suppose my views average out to be centre-right albeit ranging over a wide area:
Foreign Policy: Moderately hawkish, more or identical with Obama’s actual foreign policy
Economic Policy: Pro free-trade, free market neoliberal but I recognize the necessity of (reformed) entitlements and universal health care
Social Issues: Highly variable, pro-life on abortion and traditionalist on divorce to being a libertarian on drug issues and media censorship (except regarding military secrets)
Theology: Conservative, five-point Calvinist (probably stricter than my dad’s although I think people evolved while he does not)
I grew up in a fairly conservative, catholic family with parents who both still vote for the right side of Australian politics. I’ve slowly moved from slightly right to centrist to slightly left over the years since I left home.
Maybe a shade more liberal than my quite bleeding heart liberal mom. Definitely more liberal than my smack-dab-in-the-middle dad. He dislikes Fox News as much as I do, but we once had a huge fight in college over marriage rights. I think his view’s evolved since then, though.
My dad’s a birther, so what do you think?
My mother is a moderate–social liberal, fiscal conservative. My stepfather is a Fox News addict and is getting crazier as time goes on. I’m pretty much a socialist.
I’m more conservative. My parents used to be right down the middle, but W pushed them pretty far left.
Midway
Dad is a blue-collar catholic from New England and fairly fits the stereotype. Mom is a Cotton Palace pentacostal from rural Texas and her politics are what you imagine. Both have moved toward the center over the years, but dad voted ClintonGoreKerryObama and mom voted DoleBushBushMccain. I’m a moderate conservative; I’m in agreement with one parent or the other depending on the specific issue discussed. My voting pattern is mixed. I tend to end up going R for national offices and more D for local and state. Though I usually try and vote out incumbents in presidential races, only Clinton got a second vote from me.
Actually, my parents were both Roosevelt New Deal Democrats, and they were wildly liberal in the old school style. My mother may have been ardently pro-life and my father big on national security, but they were enthusiastic supporters of social welfare programs, regularly voted to increase their own taxes, and were two of only a handful of whites in their suburb who didn’t panic and move out when Blacks integrated the neighborhood.
I think if you compared us on some thousand-question checklist, either one of my parents would score more liberal than any of their children.
I read the Herald from back-to-front. (IOW more liberal)
I’m still pretty conservative (mostly fiscally, but somewhat socially conservative as well), but I’m still the black sheep of the family when it comes to politics. I’m the only one not party affiliated, and I’ve often sided with GASP democrats on issues and voted democratic about 3-1 over republican (though that’s changed over the last 2 elections and there’s no way in HELL I’m voting dem this time. I would vote democrat if they gave us something besides what’s in the White House now, but not this time I won’t).
So I’m definitely more liberal, (though not A liberal) than my parents, and also more liberal than my younger sister. And…I’m more conservative than when I was younger.
More liberal, though the size of the gap (which isn’t huge, but is sizable) is more because they’ve taken a rightward turn than because I went far afield from how they raised me.
I had to reject your labels; it just ain’t that black and white. AFAIK my father never had a particular political idealogy. If he were alive today I believe he’d be a Democrat and lean pretty liberal. My mother is an extremely liberal feminist and pacifist, but she is also religious and sometimes struggles with the resulting cognitive dissonance. I’m more conservative than my mother on fiscal issues but my liberal social views are much less conflicted and more whole-hearted than hers.
Eh…maybe a hair more liberal, but we’re a pretty centrist-ish family to begin with, so there’s not much of a difference. My Dad’s gotten a bit more conservative over the years, though.
My father was to the right of John Birch and my mother volunteered for Orrin Hatch.
When I started school, I voted for Reagan, and was still to the left of my parents.
As a fiscally conservative but socially liberal, I’m in a different universe.
More liberal. Both parents conservative, but what would be called “moderate conservatives”.
My parents are more liberal than most people their age, being Indian, but they’re also, well, old people. They’re basically centrists. I am certainly more socially liberal than they.
I voted more liberal, but I am not really sure. It was my mother who said that Nixon should not have been allowed out on the street unless he was ringing a bell and saying, “Unclean, unclean”. She threatened to leave my stepfather when was mulling over voting for Reagan. Still I think I am to the left of her. My father was certainly liberal, but didn’t talk much about it (or much of anything else come to think). It was he who told the story about his father who had once made the mistake of voting Democratic in a city election and for a couple weeks, his trash wasn’t collected, garbage was strewn all over his lawn, etc., until he apologized to his local Republican committeeman and promised never to do it again. This was in Philadelphia that had a Republican machine fully as powerful as the worst of the Democratic machines in most big cities. Incidentally, they didn’t care how you voted in state and national elections (my parents and grandparents all surely voted for Roosevelt and my paternal grandmother had a framed photo of Roosevelt hanging on her kitchen wall). This Republican machine was replaced in the late 40s by a Democratic machine that has not, I think, lost an election since then.
My dad is an idealist. I’'m less so.
My mom was also left-leaning when I was a kid, but with her it was mostly because those ideals were in fashion at the time.
Me? On most issues, I’m “post opinionated”. Meaning that I have found that most opinions don’t do justice to the complexity of reality. And that I’m glad to leave the policy making decisions on those subjects to people who are in a better position to think about what works and what doesn’t.
On the few matters where I do have an informed opinion, I’m usually centrist on economic issues and leftist on ethical ones. Which translates as right wing in the Netherlands and Democrat in the US.