What were the political leanings of your family growing up?

[Very_Boring_Name]

Poll question: What were the political leanings of your family growing up?

By family I mean relatives you were close to growing up, not some distant cousin twice removed

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Grandmother and Mother were Democrats and Libeal...

Grandfather and Father were Eisenhower Republicans, considered conservative at the time but today would be considered centrists.

[Hosnon]

2. I come from a family of small business owners in the Deep South.

And they are liberal as fuck. Take that pubs, haha.

ETA: And there were no issues with my gayness - as in none. We shatter stereotypes left and right.

[barbtries]

3. democratic father

republican mother

[vim876]

23. That's unusual.

Usually, it's the other way around.

[barbtries]

43. i think in our neighborhood

it was mostly republican mother republican father. i don't know how i turned out so well. nature.

[vim876]

45. Right.

I mean, usually people are the same party, but when they aren't, it's usually because Mom is more liberal and Dad is more conservative (within a heteronormative nuclear family, at least.)

[onyourleft]

4. Our parents were...

...Republicans. From that union, they had three daughters who are very spaced out age wise. We three have always been very staunch Democrats. Go figure. :)

I basically grew up in a union family, parents, grandparent, uncle, brother-in-law.

[flvegan]

5. Old school republican.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My parents were Eisenhower Republicans; moderates.

They were not racists. I was liberal from an early age and we used to talk politics, but without rancor.

Several years ago, my parents tired of the Republican sleazy tricks, and re-registered in time to vote for Obama/Biden.

I was very happy, and felt quite vindicated!

:D

[anneboleyn]

7. Father was centrist, mother liberal, grandmother and grandfather devotees of FDR

and the New Deal. We are all from California, and my mother, while never attending an anti-war rally in person, was entirely against the war and a hippie. My (maternal) grandparents actually did very well financially during the Depression (despite the typical republican argument that only the unemployed supported the New Deal). They adored FDR and the New Deal, and my grandmother often spoke of her high admiration for the WPA in particular.

[Broken_Hero]

8. Center Left I believe, nt

[cliffordu]

9. My stepfather was a racist, sexist brute who loved the paperworkers union he belonged to

and voted straight democratic ticket every time he could.

He wanted equal rights for people whether he hated them or not.


He was like an ultra right wing progressive. Go figure.

[Very_Boring_Name]

25. You know my dad is almost exactly the same

I've heard him make so many racist/homophobic slurs, but he absolutely despises the Republican party and one of his chief reasons for this is where they stand on equal rights for both those groups.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. The attitudes of that generation were different.

Today, politics is a package deal. You are supposed to either agree with Rachel or Rush.

I'd be rich if I had a buck for every racist diatribe I listened to from my dad and stepmom, yet their best friends late in life were both African-american. :shrug:

[Cleita]

32. Your father was Archie Bunker? n/t

[cliffordu]

33. No - he was a brute and a drunk and there was nothing about living

with him that was remotely as warm and fuzzy as Archie Bunker.

[themadstork]

10. Apathetic. ESPN usually on the telly.

Very sweet. Religious but not fundamentalist. Doubt they would ever have been interested in the rabid fear-mongering of today's republicans, but there might have been a time when Eisenhower-style moderate Republicans would have interested them. Mom's dad was a chicken sexer his entire life and a staunch advocate for labor, so she does tend to unconsciously lean that way. Dad comes from snobby racist well-to-do whites who are OBSESSED with money and boring as FUCK, but bizarrely he has retained nothing of that mindset. His mentality is more like that of the working class, probably because much of his satisfaction in life comes from the manual labor he does in the small local greenhouse that he now co-owns with his brother. (A family business passed down through generations.) He has always gotten along VERY well with my mom's family, to the point that my Poppy and the rest of that clan have always been the family I actively ID'd with, with the stuffy whites being the type I dread seeing on holiday.

[Lisa0825]

11. My dad voted for Reagan, and my mom almost left him over it.

I never remember her being so angry as that night when the returns rolled in and she kept yelling at him that it was his fault, and people like him! LOL

[jannyk]

12. Both Socialists - Grandparents too. nt

[RZM]

13. Both parents now vote the opposite of how they did when I was a kid

My mother used to be an apathetic Republican voter, now she's an apathetic Democratic voter.

My father spent most of his life a firebrand liberal, slowly moved away from it, and is now a firebrand libertarian Republican.

I learned a couple years ago that my grandfather was a socialist (he was a railroad worker) and apparently self-identified as a Communist for a time during the 1930s, though he eventually abandoned that.

[seabeyond]

14. one conservative, one liberal. an open house of discussion.... respectfully. nt

[drmeow]

15. Left but not necessarily

registered that way:

Dad's side were Republican from way back except for his mom (something she was never forgiven for - she was very active in politics and would have gone far except for her refusal to cave into a quid pro quo sexual harassment situation) but my dad's ideology has been left for as long as I've known - but he may have still be registered Republican until after Reagan (who he didn't vote for in CA or nationally).

Mom's liberal (even dated Jerry Brown a few times before dating my dad).

I feel blessed to have grown up with liberals and have married a liberal who grew up with liberals. I'm quite possibly further left than most of them but only by a matter of degrees.

[Zoeisright]

16. Both of my useless parents are despicable, mouth-breathing Limbaugh devotees.

All they watch is FUX and they are continually getting worse.

[fadedrose]

17. Parents adored Roosevelt, but voted for Ike because he was a war hero to them...

All other elections were Democratic votes...

[Control-Z]

18. I voted "right", but should clarify

that it was crazy, fringe, John Birch Society, hard right. My father was registered American Independent.

He was so far right he was almost left. Scary.

[Raine]

19. Moderate Repubs who left the party when Raygun took

it over. After that they became moderate Democrats and eventually drifted over to be very Liberal Democrats, even became peace activists participating in demonstrations. :-) I am so proud of them, unfortunately they are both gone now.

[AsahinaKimi]

20. Not sure really...

My father is from Osaka, and became a citizen. He registered as a Democrat, only because my mom was one. I am not sure which way they leaned.. and they always told me to make my own decisions.

[B Calm]

21. My dad was born in 1917 and praised FDR on getting us out of the Great Republican Depression.

[Scuba]

22. John Birchers, KKK members and one sane grandmother....

...from whom I thankfully got MY values.

[Le Taz Hot]

24. Other - None

Absolutely no political discussions, no voting, nothing. Luckily I came of age in the 60's and early 70's so, if one was halfway aware, one couldn't escape the politics involved in the myriad of movements and activism that was happening at that time. Flash-forward and many have gone ultra right-wing which makes for some really "fun" family gatherings. By coincidence I seem to always have other plans those weekends.

[stlsaxman]

26. Marxist Catholics... Dorothy Day types.

[socialist_n_TN]

27. Left. Daddy was a union local president........

and Mom worked before it was popular to do so because she HAD to. We needed the money. She would probably have been considered "liberal". She's more of a socialist now, so she got MORE left as she got older. VERY working class background.

My maternal grandparents were pretty racist (born and raised in the south in the early part of the 20th century), but were FDR Dems. They held the attitudes, but didn't screw over black folk just because they could. My paternal side were also FDR Dems and a whole lot less overtly racist.

The joke in our family was that on the paternal side we were the only ones not in the Klan in our little southern community because we were too lazy to go to the meetings. Not true of course, but it did keep the rabid racists at bay. I've STILL never heard any family member on this side use the "n" word and never did growing up either.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. Franklin and Eleanor Democrats

And that goes for close, far flung, twice removed.

[Dappleganger]

30. My father was a CWA member and voted republican.

He was very pro-military and voted for whoever wanted to go to war and bomb someone. He has completely gone off the deep-end w/his political beliefs (conspiracy theories) but he is also bipolar with early onset ALZ, too.

My mother voted republican but she was pretty moderate. She was more issues-driven than anything. She grew up very poor and never forgot her roots and really did 'walk the walk.' At her memorial one person after another got up and told stories about how much she'd given and helped them (we had no idea about most of this). I seriously doubt that today she would be able to stomach the direction the republicans have gone, she couldn't handle hating on poor, elderly, disadvantaged people (she was also a geriatric nurse).

[mvd]

31. I voted Left

My dad was always a bit more centrist, but he might be even more disappointed with Obama than I am. I got my mom to be anti-death penalty like I am. I'm more spiritual than both my parents. Whatever small differences we have, in this environment, I'd say Left for all.

[spin]

34. My parents had moved from Pittsburgh to northeastern Ohio ...

and I was raised in a very conservative Republican area.

Both my parents were strong Democrats and had been union members. My father had worked for Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and my Uncle worked their all his life and retired.

I remember a high school teacher calling me a communist because I was in favor of Social Security.

[bighughdiehl]

35. I am very alone

Mom and stepdad: Evangelicals with mixed political views, but vote
mostly republican due to paranoia over taxes, impervious to the facts
on that, not as homophobic and fetus-worshipping as their church friends.

Biodad:Fox News/Glenn beck watching paranoid repub,
but socially moderate strangely enough.

Sister:no opinions, developing those might interfere with
her reading pulp novels and stuffing her face with chocolate
schedule.

Granparents: Somewhat socially conservative FDR dems.

You know that stuff a while back about political views being genetic?
It's hard for me to believe, especially since I only swung really left
due to the antics of the Bush administration and I was in my mid-twenties,
missed some nifty opportunities for activism in college.

[Lucky Luciano]

36. My mother and her side of the family have all been members of

the communist party during the McCarthy era. They have not been very active since then, but they still believe in the ideals. My mother is still very much radically left, but also a big tv watcher that does not really do much more than internet political activity.

My father was always center left until he passed in 2000. Now, he would be considered a radical leftist because the "center" has moved so far right.

[Urban Prairie]

37. My late "Greatest Generation" father was MUCH more religious than political

He always voted Democratic as far as I know, that is, when he bothered to do so.

My now elderly mother was far more political and became less and less religious and ceased going to church regularly as the years passed, and although she was left leaning, she was and still is also somewhat hypocritically racist and bigoted. I have noticed when I have visited her recently, if her TV was on, it was tuned into Faux Noise....ugh...sigh...

I explained to her that she was watching lies, but at her advanced age, she likely forgets what I said. Guess it doesn't matter anyway, since she no longer votes.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

38. Poor poll. My parents were dead center Democrats but the party moving to the right putting them to

the far left, like myself.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. Reds (as in commies) on one side, conservatives on the other.

But, what the hell, it was an Irish family and we fought about everything.

[Shagbark Hickory]

40. This apple didn't fall far from the tree.

[Arugula Latte]

41. I voted "centrist." Fiscal Repubs. in the 70s/80s, social liberals, later to become Dem.

Actually, my mom is registered as a Green now. They were always big into the environment, hated the church poking its nose into things, were very pro-choice, etc.

[old mark]

42. Mom was a democrat, dad still is a Nixon republican at age 94...

He refers to Nixon as "That poor man" because he thinks the "liberal media" destroyed him.


mark

[fishwax]

44. Right -- my dad was (and remains) a right winger, except wrt abortion and a handful of other issues

My mom is generally center right, I suppose, with moments of clarity. She voted for Papa Bush in '92 but supported Clinton during impeachment and voted for Gore in 2000. She voted for McCain in 2008, though.