Does a poor upbringing make you more left wing?

The Telegraph ^ | 5/23/2007 | Roger Highfield

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Liberals are risk prone, are open to new views and ways, value equality and out-group relations, and exhibit high independence and self-reliance."

ROTFLMAOSTC! Yeah, right!

I grew up dirt poor, in a disfunctional family where my dad fought mental illness most of his life. I turned out slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun.

[endthematrix]

Thanks for sharing your personal accounts.

[philetus]

Is your name to blame for unhappiness?

Does a poor upbringing make you more left wing?

Is a lefty in his right mind?

[Major_Risktaker]

I felt a lot of anger frankly, and with it a determination that I would be self-sufficient in all things and never depend on anyone else.

I would be self-sufficient in all things and never depend on anyone else.

I feel the same way and it drives me a little crazy to see every dollar transaction taxed then to see who receives all of those tax dollars.

[Right Wing Assault]

This article reads like a giant horoscope.

[cinives]

Because they put the kids in day care/schools at an early age which are usually run by moonbat socialists - early indoctrination.

[Farmer Dean]

The worst part of this is the people who wrote this trash most likely got a government grant to do it.

[cripplecreek]

I grew up poor in a two income household until my parents divorced at 13 and then we got even poorer. Conservatism grew within me, not from without.

[sneakers]

dasboot, your experience was almost identical to mine - even down to the five siblings!! As a result of my similar experience, I decided I would never, EVER let the government “take care” of me! My husband and I had our financial difficulties throughout the years, but we never asked for help - instead worked harder and found our own solutions. We never whined or blamed anybody else. We learned from our mistakes and took care of ourselves. We are still not rich - but happy and contented and, most of all, optimistic. I am a much happier “righty” than the whining, complaining lefties that I know!

[sneakers]

"I’m not the greatest success now, never will be a millionaire, but what I have I earned and bought with hard cash and work."

Same here!

"That’s the way it should be."

Amen to that!

[reg45]

Ditto! You beat me to it.

[Gideon Reader]

What a pile of crap this study is.
When I was a child, in the late 1930's my father earned roughly $3.00 a week to feed the entire family. Lots of times we had no electric light and rent was a very troubling thing.
We lived at the edge of economic disaster and ate mashed potatoes as the main component of most meals. Meat was not something I recall in my early days.
We grew most of our veggies. (this in New York City tenement backyard)
Until the beginning of WWII there was little or no work available that was not requiring physical challenges to a partially disabled adult male.
It could have been worse. We could have been living in Europe. Then the subject would have been moot. G.Reader would have been a puff of smoke in a Polish sky.

We survived. Things got better. Three of the children went to college/university. Two became professionals. One a pretty decent Lawman. One a successful talent manager.
Our parents were taken care of in their later years, and all of the children are freeholders or homeowners. All of our children went to college/university.
All of us are conservative, very conservative or VERY VERY conservative politically.

Some people do not understand exactly what deprivation is.
The author of this study is surely one of them.

[PLOM...NOT!]

Remarkable...I too share your stories. 5 kids, parents divorced when I was 9. Government fed us "commodities".
I've always thought because I had lot of friends in the neighborhood from stable 2-parent families that this steered me towards conservatism. I interacted within these families because my own was nonexistant. I wanted the stability and emotional connections to it.
My mom was too overwhelmed with the lot of us to really be there for any of us. At the time of the divorce, the youngest child in the family was 2 and the oldest was 16. Our father was mentally unbalanced and nowhere to be seen. His momma took care of him after the divorce.
Because of the poverty we grew up in, and seeing what life could be like with a 2 parent family, I worked my behind off to make my life what it is now. It's sad though, my older sister took the brunt of my fathers illness, she is an emotional, confused, left-wing moonbat at 52. She won't speak with me anymore except to tell me that Bush is evil and I'm full of crap.

[randita]

Generations of welfare families will be decidedly left wing, but does that have more to do with their financial circumstances or with the moral, spiritual and ethical bankruptcy that got them where they are in the first place?

[RavenATB]

“What a pile of crap this study is.”

The study isn’t saying that the causal relationships they’re discussing are 100%, but that the relationships are significant. There will always be those people/families who lived a life that the study doesn’t fit. In this case there are probably a lot of people who might have anecdotal stories that disagree with the study’s conclusions.

That, however, doesn’t mean that the study’s findings are crap.

[JaguarXKE]

Any upbringing that leaves you more left wing is a poor upbringing.

It’s interesting that my local paper, the Albuquerque Journal, had a similar story on Friday as their Front Page lead. The headline: Lean to the Left? It May Be Mommy’s Fault. It stated “Researchers at the University of New Mexico think they know why aunt Bertha is an ACLU-card-carrying liberal while cousin Winthrop is a rifle-toting conservative. Blame it on their parents. A new paper in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior suggests that those who have experienced stresses in childhood – divorce, family violence, angry parents – are more likely to be liberal. Conservatives, meanwhile, are more likely to have had less stressful childhoods.

[RavenATB]

It’s too bad these researchers didn’t look into the link between children raised in the Democrat/liberal home environment and criminal activity. If they had, I think they’d have seen some truly shocking statistics.

[JaguarXKE]

conservatives...prefer social inequality...

What utter bs. A more correct statement: "liberals 'perceive' that conservatives prefer social inequality."

[NittanyLion]

A new paper in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior suggests that those who have experienced stresses in childhood – divorce, family violence, angry parents – are more likely to be liberal. Conservatives, meanwhile, are more likely to have had less stressful childhoods.

One wonders whether there is any causation or simply correlation. In my experience people tend to reflect their parents politics; is it possible that liberals tend to divorce, have greater levels of family violence, exhibit anger, etc?

[Gideon Reader]

It also does not mean that it is NOT!