My mother is a very moderate Democrat. I think she could be easily persuaded to vote for a moderate Republican in the right circumstances. I don’t talk to my father much so couldn’t say where he lands.
I’m a more liberal Democrat (though still fairly moderate; Clinton over Sanders) but it would take extraordinary circumstances for me to vote for a GOP candidate in a general election.
My sister is closer to my mom, maybe even more so. I could see her voting for a moderate candidate either way without worrying much about party.
My father is the archetypal rightwing Christian conservative and generally very involved with religion and politics. Other than immediate family concerns and maybe a little football, especially now that he’s retired, that’s pretty much all he cares about. My mother, on the other hand, is moderately on the left, but fairly dispassionate about politics on the whole, certainly compared to my father. Thus, I think as a result of boys emulating their fathers and my dad’s outspoken and strong interest vs. my mother’s lack thereof, I was a strong Republican in my youth.
My first presidential election was 2000 and between my initial strong convictions, the contentious nature of the election, and the ultimate disastrous outcome, I was left jaded, and I noticed that particularly in my circle, it left a lot of us completely reevaluating both our core beliefs and the system itself. For some people, it polarized their perspectives and they just got more extreme, but for many, I think they just decided the entire system wasn’t even worth the effort. For me, it was around that time that I realized the basic premises of both parties were self-contradictory and started looking in other directions, generally more libertarian.
So, sure, my parents, particularly my father, heavily influenced my earlier political views but since I started from the ground up again as an adult and came to a different conclusion from both my parents, I don’t know how much, if any, their views still influence mine. Hell, if anything, I think I’ve influenced theirs, one positively the other negatively.
That may be the norm but my family never followed norms. Mother and Dad didn’t smoke; both my brother and I did. Neither drank very much and at times both of us seriously did to one degree or another. They were both basically centralists registered Republican and we have always been (for the most part) far left and registered Democrats.
Mom was a conservative Republican and Dad was a conservative Democrat. Political ‘discussions’ were as common as ants at a picnic in my house. I was encouraged early to have an opinion of my own, but had to be prepared to defend it against vigorous parental opposition.
I wound up resting somewhere between a Liberal Democrat and a mild Libertarian. And I still enjoy a vigorous political discussion wherein I have to be prepared to defend my position.
My parents are conservative Republicans, and all three of their children became liberal Democrats. I suspect my mom leans a little more moderate though - she regretted voting for Dubya, and says she will sit this election out if Trump is the nominee.
My mom is a lifelong Democrat. My dad was a Republican until the 2008 election. That’s when he began to support Obama and has hated the Republican party ever since. If there was a party/candidate who was a true fiscal conservative, but liberal on social issues, he would be for that.
I have pretty much always been a liberal, except for a regrettable high school phase of being anti women’s choice.
Pretty similar to my parents (both of whom are Democrats), with some allowances for generational differences – e.g., while they both support same-sex marriage now, it took them a while to come around to that position, whereas I never saw any reason whatsoever not to allow it.
My parents were gentle, inoffensive folks who had, as far as I could tell, absolutely no political or religious affiliations at all. (Well, they mostly voted Democratic because Dad was a public school teacher, and Democrats usually kept the money coming - and Dad frankly admitted that his voting was pragmatic rather than ideological.) They both did, however, have a keen eye for bullshit, hypocrisy, and general stupidity, and let my brother and sister and me know about it whenever they saw it, no matter where it came from. I’m mostly like that myself.
They were Dems, which just goes to show how much the Republican party alienates minorities (and has alienated us for a long time), because they hated black people, thought gays were amoral and disgusting, hated welfare, thought poor people complained too much, hated Hispanics - the list goes on.
My parents grew up during the Depression and were staunch New Deal Democrats. When the FDR-type Democrats gave way to the progressive wing in the 70’s my father went Republican. My older sisters (who had grown up and left home by then) also ended up Republican while I’ve settled into centrist/liberal.
My mother was mostly liberal when I was a kid, but she moved right over the years after getting mugged by reality. (She took a job as a Homebound teacher for the NYC public schools, and the resulting direct and extensive exposure to inner city lifestyles cost her some earlier naiveté about the causes of poverty.)
My father is an interesting case. He is the ultimate One-Percenter - in that (in the past couple of decades) he’s made an obscene amount of money investing on the stock market - but when he talks economic and tax policy he sounds like an OWS member. He is “viscerally opposed to the Republican Party economic platform”, which is “designed to enrich the richest people and squeeze everyone else”, and he vehemently opposes things like special treatment of capital gains which are exactly the things that he benefits from the most. I suspect he may have voted for Obama, but the question never came up in conversation.
[When I was growing up we had a lot of animated conversations about political-related matters, but much more focused on individual issues than on candidates or political parties, and I’ve encouraged the same with my children.]
When I was a kid my parents were truly middle of the road independents. But, I knew they voted for Reagan twice and my dad had positive things to say about him so I guess that made an impression on me at the time because I’m fairly conservative. I believe they then voted for GHWB, Perot, Clinton, GWB, Kerry, and Obama x2. And by now they are not middle of the road, but pretty damn far left.
I don’t talk politics with my dad. But he does and I just listen and nod. Oh, he knows my opinions and maybe he even feels responsible.
Definitely not. My father was a middle-of-the-road Nixon Republican, my mother was a middle-of-the-road Democrat, I’m a flaming liberal. My sister who is four years younger than me is a raging Tea Partyista. My sister who is eleven years younger than me is a middling Democrat.
It’s true in my experience. My parents were both Democrats, and so are my brother and I. In fact, my dad, brother, and I recently took this political ideology test, and my brother and I had identical results (right square in the middle of Anarcho-Socialism, near the bottom left corner) and my father was only slightly to the right and slightly more authoritarian.
My parents termed themselves “Rockefeller Republican” which these days, is likely called the more derisive term “RINO.” After President Reagan took office they became Democrats.
Both are registered Democrats, both vote for the candidate rather than the party, and have been known to vote either way.
Mom is all over the place: she supports gay marriage, socialized health care, and an absolute, across-the-board ban on private ownership of firearms (even hunting rifles and whatnot). She also thinks Donald Trump’s idea to put special identification on Muslims is a great idea, lest they institute Sharia Law in Sangamon County, Illinois and her granddaughters are forced to wear burqas to school :smack:, and that whenever anyone gets killed by a cop, well, they had it coming.
Dad I would describe as a “Reagan Democrat” - that is, he supports a strong military, but he is also socially liberal.
I take after neither of my parents politically. I am a Libertarian/minarchist.
My mother (72) is a Democrat; my father (80) is a Republican. I don’t think my mother has ever voted R, but Dad did vote for Kerry in 2004. I’d say my father’s Republicanism leans toward the fiscal conservative–he basically doesn’t really think about social issues.
I’m a socially liberal, fiscal moderate (in the sense that I believe we should pay for a robust social safety net with enough taxes to actually cover the cost) Democrat. I’d say my social-issue stands were profoundly influenced by my mother’s attitudes, my dislike of excessive debt from Dad. I think Dad might actually be a (present day) Democrat in spirit, but he’s tribally attached to the Republicans for no reason that I can determine. He loathes Trump, but he doesn’t like Clinton much, either. Maybe he’ll vote for Gary Johnson this year.
My parents are registered Republicans, and their beliefs are pretty middle-of-the-road. They feel like neither party fits them these days - the Republicans have gone off the deep end (we’re from KS), and they still just can’t trust the bad ol’ liberal Democrats. Except on rare occasions - they voted for my old boss for the state Senate, since they were both teachers and he’s big on education issues, and they were very proud of themselves when they called to tell me they DIDN’T vote for Brownshirt…er, Brownback.
I’m a Sanders-style Democratic Socialist. I’m the outlier in the family. Most of them range from moderate-right to flame-throwing Tea Partier. I can think of four others who consider themselves liberals, and that’s mostly in my mom’s family of 9 siblings among the I-don’t-even-know-how-many cousins. I have high hopes for my nephew, though…
My parents (78 and 80) are conservative christian 24/7 Fox News viewers.
All 3 of us kids (in our 50’s) are left of center. My older sister and I are fairly outspoken about it, my younger sister… Hell, I had no idea she was a registered Democrat until my mother complained about that last fall. I thought she was a Republican.
One of my earliest memories was riding in the car with my parents on their way to the polls. My mother supported Truman and my father Dewey, but I don’t recall any arguing between them.
That would have been November 1948, just a week or so before my sixth birthday.