“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”
So begins Philip Larkin’s widely celebrated poem, This Be The Verse. To what degree do our parents actually affect us? Do we always inherit their political views or vices, their intolerance or tolerance, their good or bad characteristics? Is it just our parents – or are we affected just as much by our teachers, our friends or our own economic circumstances? Are our views our own, or is it impossible to have your own opinion in this day and age?
Your parents, no matter how much you wish they weren’t, will always be the people you first encounter the majority of issues with. Unfortunately, this means they will often – both accidently and purposefully – transfuse their opinions on to you. Even more unfortunately, your parents are fallible human beings, liable to – shock horror – being wrong or not knowing everything. I was curious and wound up contemplating whether our parents an absolute liability to our own free will, or are they actually quite helpful? I reached out to several friends and other writers for The Indiependent to see how their parents affect their opinions.
“My parents never really discussed politics with me as a child and it wasn’t until I started studying politics at AS last year that I started to form any political views. It was only then that I began to take an interest in my parents political views: my dad voted Liberal Democrats in the last election, my mum (as politically engaged as ever) couldn’t quite remember. Neither of my parents are committed to any political party and tend to solely base their vote on what each candidate can offer our constituency. So clearly I have never exactly had much of a ‘political’ upbringing.”
“My Dad’s from Newcastle so has always voted labour and my mum’s a Tory so family mealtimes are fun: but despite the occasional argument it’s been helpful because I’ve always been able to have opinions from opposite ends of the spectrum and understood the disparities in policy focuses and shortcomings of various governments, past and present. I think having parents who are politically opinionated just gives you more of a pla
tform to discuss current affairs and makes you more rounded as a result”
“My parents are the kind that moan and roll their eyes whenever a politician comes on TV, they just don’t care anymore. Forty years in the country and they have both become completely disillusioned with politics, with our tea time debates often resulting in crys of ‘they’re all the same’ and ‘he’s from oxford, he has no idea what it’s like’. I’m from a working class family up North and hence, feel exactly the same as them. The only difference being, whilst my anger and upset with the status quo has caused me to become more interested in politics, eager to change the system, my parents have totally given up and stopped voting altogether.”
“I’m an only child so I have a very close relationship with my parents and they have definitely influenced where I stand when it comes to politics. I live in a predominantly conservative/ right wing area but my parents have always supported left wing parties. I think that my allegiance to left wing parties – particularly the Green Party – has come from my parents raising me in a thoughtful way and that led me to believe in striving for equality. Ultimately I agree with the way I’ve been brought up and the majority of the values that my parents believe in.”
“Above all, my mum has taught me to question everything in politics; she always wants to know the figures or maths behind a policy and she extends this to me when I try and make a point. I am always amazed by how she can see through politicians’ promises when I am often totally absorbed by them, something I think she probably had some practice doing growing up under communism. Once I joked that I might burn a UKIP flyer that had come through our door but she was adamant you should never burn literature. That has stuck with me. From my dad I have learnt a healthy amount of contempt for politicians; he doesn’t vote because he doesn’t like any of them. I don’t talk about politics much with him because we’ll argue over it. I think he’s ignorant of inequality and he thinks I’m argumentative.”
Here I think most could agree that we have a wide and varied spectrum of politically motivated and involved parents: generally, their children can said to have benefited from their views. If intentionally or unintentionally, their children seem to have adapted some sort of median between their parents views, or at least a modified version of their parents political views. It almost seems better to have indifferent parents, or parents who hold opposing views than simply parents who agree consistently on policy and parties. John Stuart Mill wrote, “it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.” So even if you disagree with your parents views, it may heed to at least pay attention to their argument.
To begin to understand why we share so many of our opinions with our parents, or at least why we begin to form our own opinions due to their apathy or own intensely strong, contrasting views, we need to look at what affects how we perceive the world.
Politics used to be something you inherited. If you were well off (middle class or above), you’d be a Conservative voter through and through; if you were working class, you’d be a Labour voter. Such has been the pattern set, since the formation of the Labour party in 1900. The unions have supported one party, and the rich and well off the other. The partisan press have existed largely to provide the views and opinions of both sides, allowing people to exist in the political climate that they agree with, to read pieces that affirm their political stance and to put them at ease with their views.
For the past century, this has had undeniable consequences in the home; if you’re brought up reading one newspaper it is likely you will subconsciously adopt that newspaper’s supposed political views. In the past, these views would often go unchallenged, until those views were so enforced and passionately defended by their owners, that they would rarely change.
We live in a world where the media do control our opinions. Any providers of information, either incidentally or coincidentally affect the views of the consumer. That in itself can be scary. Fortunately, our prospects,of finding our own political opinion, is far greater than that of any previous generation. We live in the information era, where our views are just as much influenced by social networks as they are by parents and broadsheets. Twitter, Tumblr and independent sites (such as The Indiependent!) are exposing young people to different opinions, political ideologies and perspectives. Frequently my sister and I have argued against our parents due to shared views: hers coming from Tumblr, and my own from a mishmash of media.
While often the internet is viewed as a vehicle for misogyny and hate, it can also be a vehicle for equality of gender and race, for debate and a huge source of information for those who would otherwise go uninformed. No longer is it simply a case of a person reading one newspaper for their information, but now we check countless blogs, read thousands of tweets and check more than a handful of websites for news each day. We are now offered the ability to be pragmatic about our political stances, informing ourselves and, often changing our views due to these facts.
We do, however, need to encourage political pragmatism more. For a start we need more engagement in politics, within education. Unbiased, informative and factual information when it comes to political parties, the political process and where you can inform yourself are needed. This will help people, who would otherwise only adopt the view of their parents not to. Or to at least to debate and question, if it’s the best stance they should take.
Larkin, writes:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”
Our parents ‘were fucked up in their turn’ by the media and ideological battles of the 80s. Yet we’re growing up in an age, an era, where we can do better. The internet is akin to one huge fight at the dinner table; it is a constant political debate, the melting pot from which countless people are able to pull their own opinions from.
It is the opportunity to do better, and we need to seize it with both hands.
Words by Harry Coloe