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JULY 5, 2001
To the left or the right
Has parenting changed your politics?
by Terri Mauro
I try to think about politics as little as possible, because I have enough things in my life to make me crazy without that, goodness knows. I tend to vote along party lines just so I don't have to think about specific issues. Dealing with the specific problems of my own little family unit always distract me from dealing with the general problems of the community, the nation, the world. I wouldn't say I'm proud of that, necessarily, but it is the way it its.
But when I saw a reference on another Web site to a quiz called "The Political Compass," I thought it might be interesting to see where I fit these days. I've always thought of myself as generally being on the liberal side of the line, but I know I've become more conservative with age, with Catholicism, with property owenership and with parenthood. Am I still on the left, after all that drift? Or am I on the road to semi-conservative soccer-mom-hood? I answered some questions to see.
The Political Compass site leads you through a series of statements on economic, governmental and social issues, allowing you to strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree. It then calculates your responses and plots the results on a graph, from left to right and from autoritarian to libertarian. I wound up still left of center, somewhat farther to the right than Gandhi but in the same general quadrant.
Many of my answers are significantly different than they would have been 20 years ago, and as expected, many of those answers were significantly more conservative. But I was interested to note that, on statements that concerned children, I think parenting -- especially the parenting of special-needs kids -- has made my opinions more liberal. I don't believe I would have felt as strongly about questions like these before adopting my two challenging but lovable little ones:
Education should involve enabling children to develop their own personality.
Good parents sometimes have to spank their children, to teach them right from wrong.
Schools pay too much attention to the arts and not enough towards their real function -- equipping the future generation to find jobs.
Significantly physically disabled people should not be allowed to reproduce.
The most important lesson for all children is discipline and respect for authority.
When a person is troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
When adults are entertaining, a child should be seen and not heard.
Social workers waste their time trying to rehabilitate those who are simply born bad.
How has parenting, and in particular adoption and special-needs parenting, changed your attitude toward political and social issues?
copyright (c) 2001 by Terri Mauro