Teach Your Children Well

A reader asks: How can I communicate with a college-age son who has contempt for the political system?

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I am the father of a 19-year-old college student, whose university has been featured in news reports about ongoing pro-Palestinian protests. My son, who has always been interested in politics, became involved in the protests after October 7, even though (to the best of my knowledge) he has never cared about Israel-Palestine before this year. 

Now, he seems to have stopped caring about anything else—his schoolwork, his romantic partner (they broke up over his activism) and, most importantly from my perspective, the fall election. As a middle and high school student “Jake” (not his name) often picked Democratic candidates to volunteer for, but now he says he is disgusted with the Democratic party and isn’t even going to vote in November. He says he hates President Biden and thinks that if Trump becomes president again, Democrats will finally have to acknowledge his generation’s demands for radical change in the Middle East.

I am worried that affiliating with these groups will harm his reputation, affect his future employment, and maybe even result on being suspended from school as universities start cracking down on these protests. But my biggest anxiety is that we argue all the time and are otherwise barely speaking. I don’t even want him to come home this summer, but I worry that if he doesn’t, his commitment to these demonstrations, and these politics, will only become more intense. What should I do?

Martin G.

Dear Martin,

First, I am sorry this is happening, and you need to know that you are not the only parent, now or in recent American history, to have watched a son or daughter become alienated from the mainstream and make commitments to radical, sectarian politics. 

Sectarian struggles that engage critical differences can also provoke familial ruptures that feel catastrophic in the moment. The one that most immediately comes to mind is MAGA politics, although in my experience it is often adult children who are aghast at their parents or siblings’ turn to extreme conservatism. And we all know that the larger polarization of our political culture has affected our ability to disagree without being disagreeable. I have heard more than one person talk about a relative that they no longer speak to.