How to Keep Your Kids Out of the Culture War
For $18, fans of President Donald Trump can purchase a onesie for their three-month-old from his campaign website that declares I cry less than a Democrat. Primary, the children’s clothing company, provided instructions on its website for a DIY Ruth Bader Ginsburg Halloween costume. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America sell baby apparel, and Etsy, where even the most absurd crafting projects find a home, offers an embroidered bib with the slogan Sorry for the spitup. I thought I saw Joe Biden.
Maybe this is messed up. Theoretically, politics is the process we use to determine how we want to be governed. Instead, it’s become a game of identity, in which children are recruited at a young age to join their parents’ tribe and blow raspberries at the other side. Many parents feel an intense attachment to their children’s political identities: 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats said they would be unhappy if their son or daughter married someone from the opposite political party, a 2019 from and the Public Religion Research Institute found. This gulf between the parties has widened in 2020, when students around the country have been
