My parents were Republican for the sole reason that Republicans were elemental opponents of the Soviet occupation of the country they came from. My parents’ loyalty was based entirely on this opposition, and I never heard them yammer about smaller government or gun rights, etc.
That problem went away (more or less) in 1991. Today, my mother doesn’t trumpet her beliefs, but it would seem that she has become somewhat more liberal. Even at 82, she’s a bit of a hippie. My dad died in 2003, and I got the feeling he might have had a similar transformation.
My dad apparently used to be liberal but all my life he has been very conservative and much of my introduction to politics came from listening to right-wing talk radio he played when driving. Excepting his ethnicity, he’s more or less your run of the mill Tea Partier.
My mom was a liberal in a Korean context, having marched as a student against the military government ruling the country in the 1980s. However, since then in the US she’s moved to the right under the influence of my dad and become pretty conservative if not as ideologically so as my dad.
My political trajectory excepting my initial kneejerk conservatism has been relatively independent of my parents.
No idea. We never really talked politics in our house. Plus back then the differences between parties didn’t seem so marked, just alternative points of view. Money wasn’t important in our house, we didn’t have much but we ambled along okay, so the issues tended to come down to trustworthy personalities more than policies.