Parenting in an era of political polarization & COVID-19

Another way to handle conflicts

I’ve seen a lot of posts on the internet from parents who are struggling with whether to let grandparents see their children because the grandparents aren’t taking the pandemic seriously and are undercutting their authority. It’s a tough situation because they don’t not want to disrupt the grandparents’ relationship with the children. Likewise, I’ve seen plenty of grandparents posting about how unreasonable their children are being in restricting access to their grandchildren.

The political divide is making relationships more complicated than they used to be. While there have always differences in how parents and grandparents believe children should be raised, the widening political divide has made things more complicated, especially now during the pandemic.

Here are some suggestions for what parents who are concerned about keeping their children safe from COVID-19 can say to grandparents to ensure to continue the relationship while protecting their children.

To parents: If the grandparents are either suggesting that you’re being overprotective or otherwise criticizing your choices, or putting your child at risk, you can talk to them using this technique. This technique will change the conversation and will work best with grandparents who have a conservative point of view.

First, start with how much you love the grandparents and how you appreciate how well they raised you. Also, acknowledge that you know that they want the best for their grandchildren. Then bridge to the fact that when they raised you, they were the authority, and now you need to be the authority on how to raise your children. Because your children need to have a clear set of instructions and need to learn how to respect authority, you would appreciate it if they would respect your authority to make the appropriate decisions for your children. Then, you can close with how sacred you believe the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is, and how you don’t want to disrupt it, but you need to be able to set the ground rules.

This argument uses the moral foundations of respect for authority and sacredness, which are both conservative values. This signals to the conservative listener that you’re in tune with what’s important to them. Research by Willer and Feinberg has shown that using the values of the other person makes for a more compelling message. So, even if they disagree with what you’re saying, you’ve given it more weight in their mind — and they’ll pay more attention.

I hope you found this useful. Even if it wasn’t meant for you, perhaps you know someone it might help. And if you want to know more about moral foundations and how you can use them to create messages that are more likely to be heard, my book might be helpful, Persuade, Don’t Preach: Restoring Civility Across the Political Divide.