Which party cares about passing down their politics? New survey finds answer

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A study shows Republicans are twice as likely to value passing political beliefs.
• Roughly 81% of Republican teens share their parents' beliefs, compared to 89% of Democrats.
• Most parents discuss politics more with spouses than children, survey finds.

SALT LAKE CITY — Samantha Reagan grew up in a Democratic home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Politics definitely is something that we talked about in my house growing up," she recalled. "I feel like I was always really surrounded by the news and I was always pretty aware of how my parents voted."

Back then, Reagan said she internalized her parent's fundamental political values. Now, as a University of Utah Mecha leadership board member, she said her beliefs have evolved.

"I now have a lot that I would say is politically different from my parents," she said. "And I think that that even started pretty young as well. As a student organizer, I'm a lot more involved with like left-wing, grassroots organizing than I am with the Democratic Party. And I would consider myself a socialist before I'd consider myself a Democrat."

Reagan is far from alone. Across the country, young Americans are discovering their political identities — many of which differ from the beliefs modeled in their homes. But according to a new study, not all parents believe in the importance of passing on their politics — and the divide falls broadly along partisan lines.

The American Family Survey — an annual, nationwide study of 2,000 Americans by the Deseret News, the Wheatley Institute, and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University — found that although most Americans in general don't see passing on political beliefs to children as important, Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to say it is important.

Jeremy Pope, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and one of the study's co-authors, said researchers "don't know why that difference exists" between political parties.

"It doesn't matter if you use ideology or partisanship or whatever," he explained. "They all give you the same answer. For whatever reason, they think it's just more important to pass on their political beliefs and values."

Passing on beliefs ... or values?

A 2023 study from Pew Research Center found that although Republican voters may say passing on their beliefs is more important, it doesn't necessarily mean the group retains more youth.

In the study of parents and teens, roughly 81% of Republican parents had teenage children who also identified as Republicans. Democratic parents, however, had about 89% of teens who identified the same way.

Pope said he was "a little bit skeptical of the idea" that Democrats are simply uninterested or impartial to their children's beliefs. "That doesn't really track for me," he added.

Instead, he offered a speculation: Democrats may not agree on the need to pass down political beliefs, but might agree on the need to pass down political values. It's a subtle,but important, distinction. Political beliefs might be more connected with policy, candidacy and allegiance, while political values are more abstract — a moral framework.

Reagan said as a self-proclaimed socialist who grew up with Democratic parents, political values — not necessarily beliefs — are exactly what she retained from her childhood.

"I think certain elements of my parents' political beliefs are things that I really held on to," she said, referring to faith in the scientific process and valuing the welfare system. More importantly, she argued, she retained political values that continue to shape her own political ideology as a college student.

"I was raised religious," she explained. "I think those are the elements of a religious upbringing that really stuck with me — especially these very fundamental ideas of the teachings of Jesus' mandate that you care for the poor and that you are kind to people, even if they're different from yourself.

"... I think those fundamental moral beliefs are things that I still really carry with me even though I no longer consider myself religious."

Reagan mentioned wanting kids of her own in the future. She said even if her children "arrived at different political conclusions" than her, the most important thing would be to pass down the values she sees as important.

"I think what's most important for me is that I feel like my children have a strong moral compass and that their political beliefs are built on a strong moral foundation," she said. "And in my opinion, I think a strong moral foundation would be one that's built on compassion and on empathy."

Conversations and satisfaction in the home

The survey also included a question on how often parents talk about politics in their home.

Among respondents who say passing down political beliefs is important, 41% report discussing political or social issues with their families at least weekly. Among those who say it is not important, only 29% do. The gap narrows when it comes to spousal conversations: 79% versus 63%.

The findings align with what the nonprofit More in Common found in 2024 qualitative research: Most parents don't discuss political or social issues with children under the age of 7. Even with older children, only about half of parents spoke with their children about politics.

Pope said the pattern didn't surprise him: "I don't think that many people talk about politics with their kids," he argued. "It is very clear that people are much more willing to talk about politics with their spouse or their partner."

However, most everyone who responded to the survey reported satisfaction with their family life, with small differences between political parties.

"That's because people are doing different things. And if you don't want politics to be part of your family life, I don't really see a huge problem with that," said Pope. "You can have happy families that are political and happy families that aren't."

The survey, now in its 12th year, focuses on how families live, including attitudes across a range of topics. The full survey will be released later in November.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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