Talking Politics with Your Kids

   
Talking about politics with your kids may not come naturally, but as parents we're responsible for raising the next generation of voters. Here’s how to encourage your kids to form their own political views, respect others’ opinions, and—most importantly—vote. 

Because they live in Washington Heights, Steve Snow and his family often shuffle through the 168th Street subway station. If it’s cold weather, they usually see at least a few homeless individuals curled up on the platforms—a sight that sparks the curiosity of his 12-year-old daughter and tends to bring on a slew of why’s for Dad to tackle. “She’ll say, ‘Daddy, why are those people sleeping there?’” Snow says. He’ll explain that they don’t have any money to afford a house or apartment, which leads to “Why don’t they have any money?”, which in turn prompts a conversation about the lack of jobs in our currently slow economy.

While Snow says his daughter is too young to discuss political parties or have any interest in the presidential primaries, he takes advantage of teachable moments like this to get her thinking about the bigger picture. “We don’t talk about politics in the narrow sense, we talk about issues,” says Snow, a professor of politics at Wagner College on Staten Island and The City College of New York in Harlem. “The thing is about young people in general, the mechanics of voting and how elections function tend to be the sort of stuff they’re least interested in because it’s sort of invisible.”

It’s common knowledge that young people are the least likely group to hit the polls come election time. According to figures compiled by The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a project of Tufts University, less than a quarter of eligible voters ages 18-29 cast their ballot in the last midterm election. Fast-forward to this year’s Republican primaries (New York’s takes place April 24) and the average youth turnout so far dips to below 7 percent. While these low stats aren’t exactly surprising, they’re not ideal. And it becomes a bit more alarming when paired with a look at political education in our schools. According to the Civics 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” high school seniors across the nation showed a decline over the last decade in the knowledge and skills critical to the responsibilities of citizenship in America’s constitutional democracy. The report, released last spring, showed that 64 percent of 12th graders performed at or above the “basic” level (marked by the ability to interpret a political cartoon), while only 24 percent scored at or above “proficient” (the ability to define “melting pot” and argue whether or not the phrase applied to the U.S.) and a mere 4 percent scored as “advanced,” meaning they could compare U.S. citizenship requirements to those of other countries.

“I can think of no task more important for the future of American democracy than teaching young people about our system of government and encouraging them to get involved in politics and community service,” says former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton in the foreword of Engaging Young People in Civic Life (2009, Vanderbilt University Press), a collection of essays that address how to best provide opportunities for enhancing civic learning and forming lasting civic identities in young Americans. With poor showings in the classroom and at the polls, the pressure falls even more on parents to mold young citizens.
 

Empowering Kids

Mark Svensson wasn’t much interested in politics or public service opportunities when he was a student at Pearl River High School in Pearl River a few years ago. It wasn’t until he enrolled at Rockland County Community College and attended a guest lecture by Simon Deng, a former slave in Sudan, that his outlook changed. “He told an amazing story about what he went through and how he overcame it, and he’s stronger now today and speaking out against human trafficking. His point was that it only takes one person to help make a difference. That really stuck with me and made me think about what I’m doing to make a difference in my community,” Svesson recalls.

Now a senior preparing to graduate from Georgetown University, the Orangeburg native has attended several student engagement sessions at the White House and founded a series of roundtables in Rockland County that bring high school and college students together with local officials to discuss important issues in the community—showing young people that they can make an impact on government decisions. “I think young people—and adults, too—think ‘What is my one vote really going to do?’” says Svensson, a registered Independent. “But even in presidential elections, just a few votes either way can really make a difference.”

Making young people feel engaged is the key to get them voting, says Kate Kelly, a mom of three and former Larchmont resident (she moved to the Larchmont section of Los Angeles last year) who founded AmericaComesAlive.com, a website that explores little-known stories of America and its citizens. As a kid, Kelly remembers working on local campaigns with her parents, and her now-grown children vividly remember tagging along to the public protest in New Rochelle against a new Ikea store that would have required the town to widen its streets (and shrink residents’ yards). Years later, Kelly is a registered voter who casts her ballot in each local and national election, and her youngest child works for a political website.

It’s clear that political participation starts at home and in the community. “Taking them to vote or to participate in any type of community activity you do is great. And it doesn’t need to be election-related,” Kelly says. “If they help out when you volunteer at a community learning center or a senior citizens home, you are broadening their view of the world and giving them the tools to think about community decision-making.”

And beginning with the 2008 election, we’ve started to see the effect of a new force of engagement: social media. Many attribute higher youth engagement in the last election (youth turnout increased by 2 percent overall) to candidates incorporating social media into their campaign strategies. “The best thing in the world is for [young people] to see that activism makes a difference, and Facebook and Twitter are beginning to show them that it does,” Kelly says. “Regardless of how one feels about the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood story, what all Americans observed was that expressing one’s opinion could make a huge difference. And you could do it through your phone or keyboard.”
 

Party Training

While a study published in the American Political Science Review in 2005 suggests that “genetics plays an important role in shaping political attitudes and ideologies” (the study analyzed political attitudes of twins in the U.S. and Australia), Snow attributes the sway kids experience to the fact that parents are the number-one role model in a child’s life.

“Children are socialized to their parents’ political views, so it’s inevitable that they’ll share their opinions,” he says, adding that he expects his daughter to mimic his Independent views—at least until she hits college. “That’s what college is for and why higher education is so important: It introduces critical thinking and teaches kids to really think about these things rather than just repeating them.”