Sunday, June 03, 2007

How to make a liberal adult

A new study suggests that a more stressful childhood produces liberal adults.

As with everything, I found myself thinking about this through the lens of my own experience. Any liberalism that I might have is the result of what conservatism my parents have. (They are conservative in some areas but not in others.) I find their conservatism very unattractive and unpleasant. Whenever they demonstrated conservatism, my train of thought would be "This is ugly and unpleasant. I don't want to be that kind of person. I want to be better than that." And so I do my best to be the kind of person I want to be instead of the kind of person I hate being around.

Now, I don't know if other people are liberal because they are repulsed by the conservatism they see in their parents. But nevertheless, this all led me to a follow-up question: Does having conservative parents produce a stressful childhood?

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