Seven Tips for Talking With Kids About Politics

American children have never been more exposed to politics. 

One in five TikTok users are children, and TikTok ranks as the most popular platform where users feel free to talk politics. Politicians inspiring viral cat memes makes politics even stronger fodder for children.

But how should parents talk to their children about politics—beyond spectacle, perhaps toward future participation?

Since 1964, American voters in the 18-to-24 age bracket have traditionally had the lowest turnout rates. How will these early social media exposures affect the participation of kids as they grow older? “Understanding how young people become predisposed towards democratic participation I think is one of the most important political questions of our time,” says civic engagement researcher Christopher M. Wegemer.

The nonprofit More in Common asked 60 American parents across the political spectrum how they talk to their children about politics. Most parents shared that they do not talk to their children under seven about political or social issues, because they feel their children are too young to understand. For parents with children older than seven, about half reported talking to their children about politics. This holds across political lines—Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to talk or not talk to their children about political and social issues.

The parents stressed that teaching their children strong moral values—particularly to treat others with respect—is more important than teaching them a particular political viewpoint. This finding mirrors the 2022 Pew Research Center survey, which found that only 16% of U.S. parents say it’s important that their children share their political beliefs.

“I simply try to slowly teach (my son) the importance of respecting others and being a good person,” said a Democrat and Black father of a three year old in the More in Common study. A Republican father to a 10 year old said, “I will discuss certain current events or topics with my child, but I will focus on teaching basic values such as kindness, respect, and fairness.” 

While most parents may not overtly be teaching their politics to their children, the research is resoundingly clear: Parenting has enduring effects on a child’s future politics and participation. Studies suggest that children primarily turn to their parents for guidance on how to assess news; volatile politics, as we are experiencing now, is an opportunity to enhance youth political participation; and early childhood attachment can be a strong predictor of a child’s political orientation at age 26. Here’s a breakdown of the research—and seven tips for discussing politics with your kids.

Parenting attachment style as political predictor

“Parents should be aware that their actions can have long-term political ramifications, even if they are not talking about politics,” says Wegemer. “The ways they interact with their kids, the types of contexts they are in, can fundamentally have political implications.”

Wegemer is just wrapping up a six-month study with high school students and their political conversations with different groups. He found that of the four types of people—teachers, peers, parents, and classmates—studied, “only discussions with parents predicted their later political motivation.”

In 2020, Wegemer and developmental psychologist Deborah Lowe Vandell investigated early childhood antecedents of adult political orientation. They conducted a survey with 814 adult participants of a longitudinal study by the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. The study picked mothers while they were pregnant with their kids and followed them from 1991 to 2018, with home visits to see how parents interacted with kids. The cohort was from Little Rock, AR; Irvine, CA; Lawrence, KS; Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Charlottesville, VA; Seattle, WA; Morganton, NC; and Madison, WI.

The data set was unique because of its extensive investigation of early childhood and its span of more than two and a half decades—and the study was the first to establish associations between attachment security in early childhood and adult political orientation.

“We found that young children who had authoritarian parents, a fearful temperament, or an anxious attachment were more likely to have conservative political orientation at age 26,” said Wegemer.

Attachment security–seeking strategies in childhood include verbal and non-verbal displays of emotion, exploration, and searching for the attachment figure. For example, avoidant children’s apparent indifference toward caregivers may manifest in adulthood as disregard toward authority or tradition as sources of security.

The results suggest that early childhood attachment security shapes how we process fear and security, which can in turn affect our politics in adulthood. Specifically, Wegemer found that childhood antecedents were differentially related to three aspects of political orientation: ideological conservatism, Republican Party affiliation, and Democratic Party affiliation.

Fearful temperament was associated with ideological conservatism, but not necessarily Republican Party affiliation.

Similarly, avoidant attachment predicted away from ideological conservatism, but was not negatively related to Republican Party affiliation even though anxious attachment was positively related to Republican Party affiliation. As Wegemer explains, “The Republican party in this election is very much harping on fear, capitalizing on people’s fearful disposition, aiming towards tradition, making America great again, rather than exploring new possibilities.” (The implication that political parties might target specific personality traits and dispositions further builds the case for parents to be aware that their parenting has long-term political impacts.)

Neither early childhood attachment nor temperament were predictive of Democratic Party affiliation.

“The question of understanding how young people develop politically is not necessarily partisan Republican versus Democrat, it’s about democracy versus authoritarianism.  It’s about how young people feel agency in our society. Political polarization and the animosity between the parties is not just eroding people’s faith in the parties but it is eroding people’s faith in democracy,” said Wegemer.

Children need support in assessing credibility

Add in social media and things get more complicated. Many children and teens have trouble assessing the credibility of online information.

According to a study published in 2021 in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, age 14 is when kids often start believing in unproven conspiratorial ideas. A Stanford University study found that less than 1% of high school students in 2019 could identify the true source of a video alleging voter fraud in an American election, which was actually filmed in Russia. However, according to a separate Stanford study published in April 2022, high school students who attended six 50-minute lessons in digital literacy were twice as likely to spot questionable websites.

For parents who think their children will learn these skills in school, think again. Only 14 states have some kind of media literacy laws in place, but many are vague and some simply require schools to include a list of resources on their website. The increasing censorship in schools makes things worse. In the last year alone, America recorded 3,362 instances of book bans in public school classrooms and libraries. Talking politics with students is becoming more and more risky for teachers.

“Teachers are nervous and hesitant to talk about social issues because they know there is disagreement and they don’t want to create disagreement or hostile environments in the classroom,” explains Laura Wray-Lake, an associate professor at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. “And that just perpetuates the divide even further. We are only hearing one perspective, especially on social media. They are getting their news from single sources, rather than hearing different perspectives.”

Volatile politics is an opportunity to enhance participation

In this vacuum of school resources and parental guidance around politics, the increasingly hostile political climate has coincided with measurable changes in how teens perceive marginalization and their own civic agency.

In a study published in the journal Child Development, researchers surveyed 1,433 students from 22 schools in grades 4 to 12, in the greater Los Angeles area, the suburbs of Minnesota, and rural West Virginia. They found that the students’ opinions of Trump predicted massive shifts in their sociopolitical development over the first year of his presidency.

“The Trump era was a volatile and highly politically polarizing time for the country,” says Wray-Lake, who conducted the study. “Some experienced it as a very hostile and marginalizing time and were attacked by Trump’s rhetoric and policies, whereas others were satisfied with political decisions.

“The biggest takeaway is that young Trump supporters and Trump detractors had different developmental experiences during the first year of the Trump era. In fact, these two groups showed change in opposite directions on several political beliefs.”

The researchers found that 63% of students either strongly disapproved, disapproved, or somewhat disapproved of Trump, while 24% either strongly approved, approved, or somewhat approved of him. Approximately 13% had no opinion.

Students who disapproved of Trump exhibited more race consciousness and awareness of inequality. These students were also more likely to report being threatened or harassed, talk with people of other racial or ethnic backgrounds, think about multiple sides of an issue, and believe that some groups in the U.S. do not have equal chances to participate in government.

In contrast, students who approved of Trump became less likely to support equal rights for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds—but more likely to want to vote in national elections.

As for voting intentions for students who disapproved of Trump, there was a divergence based on race. White students who disapproved of Trump reported increased political action intentions, while Latino and Black students who disapproved of Trump reported greater declines in voting intentions compared to white students.

But overall compared to students with no opinion, Trump detractors and Trump supporters became more likely to believe they could get other people to care about a problem, contact someone in leadership, and make a positive impact in their community.

The study’s findings suggest that volatile political times may enhance youth’s engagement with politics across the political spectrum, and may reflect growing political divides, especially around acknowledging racism and other inequalities.

“For me, this paper also comes from a long-standing interest in how historical moments like elections shape adolescents’ development in lasting ways because they are coming of age,” says Wray-Lake. “They are thinking about their identity. Who they are in relation to the world. Who they want to be. What they believe in. What the research shows is that young people need education, support, and different viewpoints to develop politically.”

So how should parents talk to their kids about politics?

This handy guide from the Greater Good Science Center’s parenting director Maryam Abdullah offers seven tips.

1. Center your why. Talk about the civic values that guide your political thinking: Explain how what and who you vote for connects to these principles.

2. Nurture critical thinking around media. Here are some questions you could ask your kids after they see one-sided political news:

Who created this message?
Are they using facts, fear, or stereotypes?
Whose voices are not being represented?
What other media can I look to for multiple perspectives?

3. Use specific, individualizing language, not generalizations. If you disagree with something a politician says, then point out specifically why to your kids rather than using broad-brush language about a group of people. Finer details can help kids notice that communities are not monoliths.

4. Find common ground. We have a natural inclination to view ourselves as good and reasonable and others as not. Challenge your kids to ask what others value and how their views lead them to think they are good and reasonable, too.

5. Reconsider the jokes you tell. Disparaging humor about whole groups of people can normalize discrimination against them.

6. Check your body language and tone. Kids notice our subtle gestures and facial expressions. They’ll take cues from how you treat neighbors with differing politics.

7. Talk about when it’s time to take a stand. We have a responsibility to call out dehumanization by politicians. Talk to your kids about actions we can take to stand up for each other.