‘Do Not Vote for My Dad’: When Families Disagree on Politics – The New York Times

“Previously … parents were gatekeepers. Now they have much less control.”

— Chris Ojeda, assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, who studies children’s political beliefs.

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It wasn’t your typical pre-Election Day tweet: “If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. tell everyone.”

The author, Stephanie Regan, 23, wrote the message during her father’s Republican primary campaign for State Legislature, which he lost this month. She and her father, Robert Regan, do not always see eye to eye.

As for Mr. Regan, he was not entirely surprised by the tweet. His children have always believed in questioning sources of authority, he explained, something that he had encouraged at home since they were little. He said conflict with his daughter in recent weeks stemmed from disagreements over white privilege and the peacefulness of Black Lives Matter protests.

But he said he was proud of his daughter’s rebellious stance.

“I applaud her for what she did,” Mr. Regan said. “I think she’s wrong, but I’m happy that she’s willing to take a stand.”

In a year of protest and elections, Ms. Regan is far from the only politician’s daughter staging some form of political revolt against her own parents.

In May, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, 25, was arrested as part of a Black Lives Matter protest in New York City. The arrest came roughly an hour before her father said he respected the peaceful protests but it was “time for people to go home.”

Claudia Conway — the teenage daughter of Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Trump, and George Conway, a conservative, anti-Trump lawyer — said earlier this summer that her heroes included the Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with whom her mother has publicly sparred. (Back in July the younger Ms. Conway tweeted: “@AOC adopt me.”) She has also encouraged her Twitter followers to vote Mr. Trump out of office. Last month she briefly left social media, which, she wrote on Twitter, was because of pressure from her parents.

This week her parents announced they will step away from their jobs at the end of the month, Ms. Conway leaving her White House post and Mr. Conway his Lincoln Project role, both citing a need to focus on their four teenage children. Claudia Conway celebrated the announcements on TikTok, with the proud statement: “Look what I did.”

Conventional wisdom has long held that the most powerful political influence on any child are the parents. A 2018 study in The Journal of Politics found that more than three-quarters of children whose parents share the same party affiliation will adopt their family’s political views. Numerous American political dynasties seem to uphold this finding: Chelsea Clinton takes after her parents’ progressivism, and Meghan McCain’s conservatism follows in the late Senator John McCain’s tradition. The Kennedy family has produced several generations of Democratic lawmakers.

But more recent political and psychological research points to reasons that young people might stray from their families’ political traditions. In part, that’s thanks to the internet and social media.

“Previously, exposure to information about politics was contained to the family,” said Chris Ojeda, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee who studies children’s political beliefs. “Parents were gatekeepers. Now they have much less control. The internet has democratized learning about politics.”

Amy Gross, a child psychologist, agreed that while young people used to rebel against the family with ripped clothes and dyed hair, now their social media profiles play a larger role.

But public political rebellions have tended to be more common among young men, according to Dr. Ojeda — which makes it all the more striking to see young women like Ms. Conway and Ms. Regan in revolt. Women’s rebellion, he said, is “more noteworthy and less ‘acceptable’ when it occurs.”

Other political scientists and psychologists think parents have always held less sway over their children than they might believe. Jeff Lyons, an assistant professor at Boise State University, said that social factors like friend groups can help shape a young person’s political beliefs.

So does the national political climate during their period of adolescence.

People who were teenagers in the 1980s tend more toward the Republican voting bloc, Mr. Lyons said, because Republicans were in power during the years most formative to their personal and political identities. People who came of age during the Obama administration tend to espouse more progressive views.

“Even if children get a consistent political message at home, their social environments provide a counterbalance,” Mr. Lyons said.

Some political scientists have found that parents’ ability to pass on their political beliefs differs by party. One study, using data that followed a group of Americans who were high school seniors in 1965, found that the children of conservative families are more likely to change their political views after leaving the home than the children of progressives.

“Democratic families typically generate a more sustained inheritance of politics,” said Elias Dinas, a professor of political science at the European University Institute, who examined the data. He attributes this partly to liberal university environments that reinforce progressive views. “More Republican kids leave their parental homes and start changing their views.”

Dr. Dinas’s research found this to be particularly true for Republican children raised in households that frequently discussed and actively followed politics. He noted, too, that his data set tracked young people who came of age during the Vietnam War, and might have been more likely to adopt liberal views because of the social unrest of the late 1960s.

But political differentiation might also be tied to a more timeless aspect of adolescence: teenage rebellion. Carl Pickhardt, a child psychologist, said the phase of childhood when young people emulate their parents comes to an end around 9 years old. Around age 13 comes the phase of detachment, when children look to differentiate themselves and express an individual identity.

“At that point, you can get the kid who says, ‘I’m going to be of a different political persuasion from my parents to express my individuality,’” Dr. Pickhardt said. He noted that children tend to differentiate themselves first in cultural tastes, like musical preferences, and move on to politics closer to their 20s. “The kid is trying to figure out who they are and what’s the way they want to be.”

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