A House Divided: Living in a Politically Polarized Household
Learning to live with our differences.
Largely as a result of the economic and social upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, adults are living with their parents in record numbers that have not been seen since the Great Depression. I myself am one of the numerous boomerang millennials living with a parent or two trying to stay sane, safe, and out of as much debt as possible in the midst of a global pandemic. While the shelter of my parents’ cushy suburban home and middle-class lifestyle has protected me from the virus and the ubiquitous monster called rent, it has exposed me to an entirely new problem: living in a politically polarized household.
When I moved back in with my parents in March, I knew things were going to be quite different from my teenage years. It didn’t take long for my parents to figure the same. Whether my devoted following of the Democratic primary races in the spring or my anti-authority comments in the family’s stay-at-home church are to blame, my parents quickly sensed this liberal, independent young adult wasn’t the young, cookie-cutter Mormon teenager they had sent off to college seven years ago.
We suddenly held conflicting opinions on a variety of issues, disagreed with many of each others’ personal lifestyle choices, and frequently struggled to see the other side. Growing up, my parents assumed we all shared the same opinions and experiences roughly based on the Republican Party platform and the words from the most recent Latter-day Saint General Conference. Now a simple joke or opinion could enflame both sides into a fierce back and forth debate divided along party, faith, and generation lines.
As the child and guest in my parents’ house, the responsibility for peacekeeping has largely rested on my shoulders. My parents don’t have to filter their thoughts, opinions, or even emotions on a daily basis when speaking to me. When such everyday topics as the coronavirus response and election results are brought up by my parents, I am constantly conscious of the words I use and how it might affect the way my parents see and treat me. Sometimes I blame myself for these problems, often wondering if these tensions would exist if I hadn’t deviated from my family’s previously held norms and expectations. While it’s natural for children to grow and become different than their parents, I wonder how common it is for this personal growth and change to strain the parent-child relationship.
I’ve tried many different strategies to straddle the line of keeping the peace and not backing down from my opinions and experiences. In the first few months, I kept my thoughts on divisive issues to myself. I initially was only going to be living there for a few weeks and saw no reason to share my potentially divergent opinions.
Silence no longer was an option after a national conversation on racial inequality erupted following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers. After I expressed my beliefs on privilege and racial justice, my parents started asking me questions, partly out of worry and partly out of curiosity. My mother, for instance, nervously asked me if I supported violence against police officers after I used the Black Lives Matter hashtag in a Facebook post. Many of these questions turned into productive conversations about racial injustice in everyday American life that allowed both my parents and me to be open about our feelings, thoughts, and experiences and occasionally even the lack thereof.
From these conversations, I was hopeful that as summer turned to fall and the presidential race came into the limelight, I could be more open about my own beliefs when talking politics, even if they diverged or conflicted with my parents’ more conservative understanding of the world. After several heated arguments erupted throughout the family’s viewing of the first presidential debate, I once again choose to fall silent. After a brief period of openness, my parents and I had unconsciously chosen we’d rather feign unity and sameness than navigate a new normal of a diversity of opinions. If we didn’t talk about these differences of opinions, then we could pretend that they simply didn’t exist.
I sense many of my fellow millennials may have been navigating a similar situation with their family over the past several months. Just take a look at the election results in Provo around my alma mater. Many of my peers are embracing liberal ideas and beliefs while their parents stay conservative. While previous generations have seen drastic shifts of political allegiances and coalitions, Utah and many other conservative states and communities have not seen such a strong embrace of liberal values by younger generations in decades.
In the current climate of political polarization, parents and children divided by party lines find themselves not just arguing economic policies but such personal issues as the value of human life, the coronavirus, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. Because of the sensitivity of many of today’s prevalent issues, one’s political viewpoints are often directly tied to their core identity. My pro-choice opinions signal to my parents that my religious viewpoints have changed quite drastically. Some parents may even be supporting policies that jeopardize the rights of their own children.
The family ideally should be the easiest and safest place to talk about these issues, yet it is the space where one has the most to lose. If the home is not already a safe space to navigate differences of opinion and belief, the risk of alienating family members and harming each other is real. In a political climate where the other side is painted as illogical, selfish, delusional, and evil, coming to terms with your loved one being on the other side is painful. My parents fear that I’ve become a police hating, baby-killing rioter while I fear my parents have sold their souls to a sexist, racist, homophobic, orange demagogue just for a minuscule tax cut. No wonder my parents and I don’t want to engage in political conversations!
In such a polarized climate, I’ve learned that for my family it was best to disengage from politics in order to keep our healthy relationships intact. Living in a household with diverse opinions, setting up personal boundaries surrounding politics and other divisive issues with family members has helped protect hate and animosity from entering our family relationships.
While holding back from sharing our political beliefs has eased tension in the house, it still feels like a personal defeat. I miss having open conversations with my family on many important issues. I have to mourn that at the moment my parents can’t accept my changes in beliefs and values. I have to accept that I can no longer speak about their opinions without getting angry or accusing my parents of selfishness or bigotry. While I would love to help my parents understand my viewpoint, I realize that explaining to my dad for the fifth time that white privilege isn’t a derogatory term won’t change his mind. A sixth time may fray an already less than perfect relationship.
Like all compromises, nobody gets everything they want. Having to settle for complicity instead of advocacy with my family is less than ideal. I want to stand for LGBTQ rights, for racial equity, for universal healthcare, for real solutions to climate change not just in my professional life but in my personal life as well. If I can’t even talk to my own parents about these important issues, how can I expect to advocate for them in my less intimate relationships?
It’s been hard to come to grips with the fact that my parents believe and support policies and measures that I believe are hurting our country and threatening the livelihood and rights of many of my peers. I’m sure it’s been hard for my parents to see me support issues that they feel threaten American ideals and morals or go against their own religious beliefs and philosophies.
Perhaps when I move out again we’ll be able to have more productive conversations like my parents and I shared this summer. Maybe as I get older I’ll be able to see their side of the argument with more empathy. While these can be attainable long-term goals I could work towards with my parents, at least now I can continue to focus on the stronger parts of our relationship and have the luxury to enjoy their company and, for the foreseeable future, a place under their roof.