do people get more conservative as they get older?

[pstokely]

or does marriage and kids make people lean to the right?

[RC]

1. No

No & no.
I went the other way.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Nope

I'm 52, and as liberal as ever.

[THUNDER HANDS]

3. not me

I was a flaming right-wing, pro-life, pro-death penalty conservative all through high school and my freshman year of college.

Then I saw the light when I started actually having logical debates with people.

Now I'm a solid liberal...and will probably be a socialist by the time I'm 30.

:)

[bluestateguy]

4. Marriage and kids

Which of course correlates a lot with age. Conservatives want to conserve, preserve, protect and maintain the established socioeconomic order. The more people become part of that status quo the more likely they are to adopt conservative views, though there are exceptions. Society tends to view single adults with no kids as somewhat out of the mainstream, which is why these folks tend to be more anti-establishment.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. Robert Byrd...

Look at what he was and what he now is, one of the few voices of reason left. Maybe we get more liberal as time goes on.

[Hubert Flottz]

45. Byrd For President!

I'd vote 98076879976512321642310975342 times if I could! If you get Kahn-servative when you get old, I'd as soon be dead, as to be BRAINDEAD! Who wants to be a Mongomoran Kahn-Servative????

[Gman]

6. Getting older makes you more practical

you realize there are some pie-in-the-sky things that will never be (at least anytime real soon) regardless of how right the cause.

[jab105]

7. I think they get conservative....

as they get older, and then when they become seniors they go democratic...LOL!!

Just kidding...

I think a lot depends on when you grew up, the Roosevelt generation, the Reagan generation, the Clinton generation...

And your experiences...a lot of people start out idealistic, and then become more cynical, and usually more religious....these could also be reasons?!?!

[pstokely]

40. a lot of boomers said they would never vote Repub

now, a lot of them do, but a lot of them got rich

[shirlden]

8. No and No

At 18 I was a flaming liberal. Through marriage, kids, the whole bit, I am now 67 and still a flaming liberal.....well maybe not so flaming..........

:kick:

[Cha]

9. NOt this ,,,soon to be 59 year old girl!!,,,,I grew older....

and wiser!!

Just look at Granny D!

[shanti]

37. woo hoo!

look at granny d! what a great role model.

[Jacobin]

10. Hell no.

The older I get(or, as I like to euphemistically refer to it "wiser") the more liberal I get.


Keep in mind that what we have in the WH and RW administration now is not what anyone would ever have called "conservative". They are extremely radical fascists.

Barry Goldwater was a conservative and he was against making abortion illegal, disgusted by fundies and would be rolling over in his grave if he thought Smirk was called a "conservative" by anyone.

[Sava]

11. possibly... for some...

People can change over time, and I think there are different life experiences and situations that can change your view of the world. Time just gives people more opprotunity to change, but it isn't necessarily a given.

[JohnKleeb]

12. depends on the person IMO

I'll be a socialist when I am a granddaddy I bet lol. I'll also be the only grandpa playing video games too. Heh.

[curse10]

13. I keep going further to the left

But I'm not the old...

[booksenkatz]

14. Not in my family

My parents are conservative Dems in their 60s and they lean further to the left every day, it's an amazing thing to see. They started out as moderate Republicans many years ago! I myself started out as a moderate Republican in my 20s, became a conservative Dem in my 30s, and now that I'm in my 40s, I'm a proud liberal. Having a child 4 years ago pushed me WAAAAY further to the left than I'd been before. Since becoming a mom, I no longer believe in the death penalty (took me a long time to reach that point). At this rate, I'm wondering how far to the left I'll be when I'm my parents' age??! Oughta be fun, that's for sure!

[juajen]

32. I love Patsy Cline

Hey, I even liked Goober. That is who that is, eh? LOL

[finecraft]

15. Not in this house!

Mom - 45 years young and proud to be a liberal - always was one, always will be!

Dad - Will turn 60 this year and has been a closet liberal since he was in Vietnam. This past year he "came out" and went to Washington to march with the Vets in an anti-war protest.

Son - Just turned 21 - Proudest moments in his parent's life:
1. When he organized his first anti-war rally this past December
2. During his freshman year political science class when he scored as a "Welfare State Liberal" on a where do you fall on the political spectrum test. Both Dad and I felt that we had done our job well!

[JanMichael]

16. Not with me or my family.

35 now and radically Left.

[Imalittleteapot]

17. More left than ever.

The longer I live and the more hate, bigotry, injustice, hunger,
etc.etc.etc. I see in this world, particularly right here in Texas, the more anti-conservative I become. People ask me how I can be so liberal when I own a business. I tell them because I need to be able sleep after a hard day.
:boring:

[Dr Fate]

18. Not politically conservative.

n/t

[JitterbugPerfume]

20. I don't know yet

I'm only 62
and I'm still young (at heart)

[KidneyStoner]

19. i tried leaning right and fell over

My father used to tell me I'd get more conservative with age. He was right to an extent. I've always been a registered voting Democrat but no one ever mistaked me for an activist.

Just a spectator.

Then I got sick. Lost jobs. Lost faith. Got sick some more. May have lost a few more jobs. Heard Limbaugh spewing about how extending unemployment benefits (mine years since exhausted) was some kind of hand out. That really pissed me off - and I've stayed pissed off.

I work for a small fire department live and breathe 9/11, the faux channel and *. I'll get into it with them at the drop of a hat. Of course "it" is over pretty quickly given the administrations sparkling record of funding first responders.

Never would have done that 5 years ago. Now I do it every damn day.

[West Coast Democrat]

21. My 75 Year Old Father Keeps Getting More Liberal...

every day!

[OneTwentyoNine]

27. Yup,my dad---80 in November....

He hates Repigs and what they do to the US more than he did 40 years ago.


David

[West Coast Democrat]

30. After My 75-year old Dad Read Paul Wellstone's Book...

"The Conscience of a Liberal," he declared it required reading for everyone in the family.

[Kat45]

22. Some do, many don't. I didn't.

I'm in my forties, and I'd say the more radical views of my teen years have been tempered by common sense as I got older, but I'm still liberal. I'm known as the liberal in my family, since most have been repub voters.

But I am still single, a renter, and underemployed in low-paying jobs,so I don't exactly have a status quo to try to preserve. But I also started going to church in the past couple of years: it's a liberal, and extremely tolerant, Christian denomination, and I think reading about Christ's life shows that many of the liberal values are the correct values.

[roguevalley]

23. depends.

I don't think informed people do. People who aren't, yeah.
I've noticed that. Keep reading, keep thinking. It will be
a lifelong habit if you do.

[Lex]

24. Not in my family either. We get more liberal.

In fact, I think my father is more liberal now than he was when I was growing up.

Here's the theory: many people do get more conservative as they age because they get *scared* -- of crime, of people different than themselves, of running out of money at retirement . . . well, of everything. They get afraid of someone taking anything they have. And the repukes feed that fear in a big way: the Dems are going to take your money and give it to welfare queens; the Dems are going to take away your choice of doctors; the Dems are soft on crime.
They vote their fears, not their hopes.

Sad.

[veganwitch]

25. not for my dad

he voted for bush and is going to vote for kucinich now.

actually now that he is getting older, hes starting to feel the pressure of age discrimination. he works retail at a midwest bigbox hardware store chain. before that he worked in sales for a plumbing distribution company and owned his own store when i was really really young. he knows his stuff but did not finish college.

but you dont need a college degree when you are working retail (he's non-managerial--he got demoted the same week he recieved an outstanding "how am i doing" card from a shopper). they can hire a college kid for the summer to do the same thing he is doing for much less pay.

he use to think unions were corrupt, now he wishes he could join one.

im an only child but my parents were "older" when they had me. im 22, dad is 54. he doesnt want to work until hes 75. but hes looking for new work and my mom, 52 is changing her field of work. and the economy sucks.

they are voting for kucinich.

[JohnKleeb]

29. dang thats a change

my dad supported Gore and was pretty much your rank and file democrat which is all right but is supporting Kucinich too. He is a liberal yes but he like myself has really been getting political as the years go by.

[juajen]

26. I think it's just the opposite

After experiencing (job-related) narcissitic and elitist privileged professional men; children who had real problems as opposed to the perfect children of your dreams; getting to really interact with African Americans and, gee golly, liking them; problems with breaking the glass ceiling; sick parents on social security and the related problems faced daily as I aged, I went from being a Young Republican to a very liberal democrat. See, just the opposite.

[CWebster]

28. Some sell-out

I suppose it could be considered the same thing.

[baldguy]

31. Maybe.

Either they learn more about what really makes the world work, and thier opinions become sharper - in which case they become more "liberal" (or more enlighted self-interested at least.)

Or they become hopeless and apathetic - which is exactly where the the "right" wants them.

Or they become lazy, greedy and bitter - Republicans.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

33. i'm 51, married 33 years, have 4 children and 3 grandchildren and

more LIBERAL than i ever was in my youth

[scarletwoman]

34. Not in MY family!

My parents are both 75, lifelong liberal Democrats and getting more radical all the time. I was brought up with totally liberal and progressive values which I have NEVER abandoned in all my 53 years on this earth.

I'm an old hippy who's kept the faith all these years, through marriage, child rearing, home-ownership, and everything else. And I am getting further and further left as time goes on.

sw
:hippie:

[Cheesehead]

35. Not me

I'm 55. Set my political agenda in the anti war atmosphere at UW-Madison in the late 60's and haven't backed off a lick.

[shanti]

36. not in my case!

i've gotten MORE radical. after selection 2000, who couldn't be??

[Az]

38. If anything

As I have gotten older I have become increasingly fixed in my liberal views and have even managed to drift further to the left.

[mainer]

39. Quite the Opposite

I started out a Republican in college.
After having children and worrying about what the future holds for them, I've turned into an outright angry liberal.

I suspect this is a common pattern for women like me, who've been in the work force and have seen how unfair things can be in this country.

[Shadowen]

41. There's an old saying.

"A man has no heart if he is not a liberal by sixteen, and no head if he is not a conservative by sixty."

I think it was Winston Churchill who said it, or it might have been a Canadian PM from that era. But the point is, it was a British (or British-based) Conservative (with a capital C, like the party) who said it, not the extreme right-wing freaks calling themselves conservatives in the United States today. The British (and Canadian, and Australian, and...) view of true the political spectrum is far different from that of the Americans'. The British political definition of Liberal (with a capital L, as the party), for example, is essentially a centrist--no knee-jerk reactions because something is considered to be left or right, but reasoned observation of a concept (And perhaps some testing of it) before accepting it or rejecting it.

That's my viewpoint, anyway.

But the saying was originally meant to say that liberals are emotional people, and younger people (thanks to hormones) are stereotypically more passionate about things they care about; and that older people are more stoic, are content to move more slower in order ot think things through, and set in their ways (another definition of conservative).

[WoodrowFan]

48. actually

It's from the French leader Georges Clemenceau and the original went something like "a man who isn't a communist when he's young has no heart, a man who is still a communist when he's no longer young has no head." The American right has bastardized it and changed who they claim said it, probably because 99% of rightwingers couldn't pick Clemenceau out of a lineup if their life depended on it.

BTW, Clemenceau was a republican in France when being right wing meant being pro-clerical or a monarchist. He was conservative by modern standards (he opposed women's suffrage for example) but he always defended the Third French Republic against it's anti-democratic enemies from its birth in 1870 through the early 1920s.


Once again, the right wing twists history to "prove" a point.

[SharonAnn]

42. Not me. Just the opposite. Was consservative when young and

didn't know any better.
Well, conservative moderate.

Get more liberal as I get older. I like to think it's because I'm wiser now.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. The activists were never the majority

except at the elite colleges. If you look at the youth-oriented magazines of the period, you will see very little about the Vietnam War or civil rights and a lot about fashions, TV, movies, and pop music.

My college, which was more typical of America's colleges than Berkeley or Columbia, was composed of about 10% activists and 90% people whom their parents would have considered "good, solid kids." They disapproved of the hippies and political activists almost as much as their parents did.

Some of the activists were genuine idealists, and for the most part, they have stayed that way. If you don't know any baby boomer idealists and activists, then you're not hanging out in the right circles. As many graying fifty-year-olds participated in the Portland anti-war and anti-Bush marches as pierced and tattooed young people.

But some of the activists were simply into activism because they thought it was cool. These are the people who were hippies in the 1960s, disco dancers in the 1970s, yuppies in the 1980s, and soccer moms and office park dads in the 1990s.

Despite what Carlos keeps repeating, plenty of people raised kids and maintained their leftist views. Those who didn't were the ones whose "activism" was more of a fashion statement than a deep commitment. They thought of political activism as being as "outdated" as black light posters.

The Pod People who went through the hippie-disco dancer-yuppie-soccer mom/office park dad sequence moved to the suburbs because the mass media and their peers told them that this was the thing to do. They're not into thinking for themselves, so they're susceptible to the invitations of the fundamentalist preachers. That's why there are so many Republican baby boomers in the suburbs.

[Mairead]

44. Yes for men, no for women

There was actually at least one study done on this some years ago. Men tend to acquire wealth and become more rightwing with age, women tend to become more leftist as our responsibilities for children decrease.

Very interesting study. I wish I still had a pointer to it readily to hand.

[CWebster]

47. Another study, Mairead

men lose grey matter as they age, women do not. ;-)

[deutsey]

46. I've been married 10 years, have three kids, and am in my late '30s

I was more of a Left-leaning moderate when I was younger, but as I get older I've become much more of a center-leaning Leftist. The older I get, the more socialism makes sense to me (FYI: for a good book on the history of the Left in America, check out The Long Detour www.thelongdetour.com).

By the time I'm in my '80s I'll probably be as radical as Mother Jones was. :evilgrin:

[BiggJawn]

49. No and No. Thank Ronaldus Rex for that.

I'm watching that senile old bastard on TV one night, wondedring how I'm gonna juggle things till the next payday since the kid was sick and I had to buy a big bottle of this pink shit to force down her, and that bastard Reagan (curses and turds be upon his head) came on the TV and said "Well.....Let me ask you THIS....Are you better off NOW than you were 4 years ago?..."

That's some tough-assed glass in the front of a TV set, lemme tell you! I STILL limp to this day.

I'll NEVER forget that, not as long as I live.

Arrogant rich bastards.

[meow2u3]

50. That depends on the definition of "conservative"

If, by conservative, you mean more cautious, less likely to take risks, etc.--the non-political sense of the word, some of us do tend to become more conservative as we get older.

But if you use the word conservative in the political sense of the word, it all depends on how you grow up. If one grows up overdisciplined or spoiled rotten, one does become more conservative as you get older, BTA, that's because he or she was conservative to start out.

Most of us, because of time and life experiences, tend to grow more liberal (generous, tolerant) with age.