Do we live in two realities?

Estrangement & Politics Part 1

Oct 25, 2024

Years ago, when my children were babies, I saw in a Facebook group for moms a concerned post from a mom who wrote something like, “Why are there so many more vaccines now then when I was a kid? It seems like the amount of vaccines is mushrooming! Do we really need so many?”

At that time in my life, I regularly encountered vaccine-skeptical and anti-vax moms at Mommy and Me groups, in workout classes, made small talk with them while standing in line at the zoo. But I remember this one Facebook post so clearly, years later, because when I read it something crystalized in my mind: the average anti-vax mom was actually a lot like me. She was motivated to eschew vaccines for the same reason I embraced childhood vaccines so wholeheartedly: We were both trying to protect our babies.

Yet from the common ground of our shared goal, we had reached wildly different conclusions about how to protect our babies. And not just wildly different conclusions, but conclusions that forced us to see people with the opposite opinion as a threat.

My conclusion: not only is it necessary to vaccinate my own kids to protect them, but all kids need to be vaccinated in order for the protection to work best. Therefore, parents choosing not to vaccinate are threatening the health of my children, too.

The anti-vax mom’s conclusion: not only is vaccinating my kids threatening to their safety and well-being, but other people who vaccinate are also threatening because they are trying to force my kid to be injected with something that I think is not safe. I must fight against them in order to ensure the protection of my child.

** To be clear, I’m not sympathizing with the anti-vax argument.** I knew then and I know now that my embrace of vaccines keeps kids measurably safer, and that anti-vaxers put kids in danger.

In fact, it’s because this “issue” is so clear that it puzzles me all the more. We all want to protect our babies. That’s not controversial. Yet, we had each reached opposite conclusions not only about what would protect our babies, but also what we saw as a threat.

Why?

Welcome to Part I of my two-part series on Estrangement and Politics.

Today, I’m not talking about how political differences among family members lead to family estrangements. (I’ll talk about that in my next post next week.) Rather, this week, I want to look at the parallels between interacting with people who have differences in political opinions and interacting with people with whom we have estranged relationships.

This brings me to a field called neuropolitics, which, in part, investigates whether political differences can be a result of actual differences in different people’s brains. Famous findings include, for example, “The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives. … On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity.”1

In the FB mom group post example, the availability of more vaccines was comforting to me. In the 35 years since I’d been a baby, science had innovated new ways to keep all our babies safe from more diseases. That made me feel my baby was safer and more protected. (Now I think: did I react this way because I have a huge anterior cingulate cortex? Somewhat joking, but still, it’s interesting to wonder!)

But for Facebook Mom, the fact that there were more vaccines provoked the opposite response. Her question “Why are there so many vaccines now?” implied that she would feel safer if things remained the same as they were when she was a kid. No matter her overall political affiliation, this by definition makes her, at least on this issue, a “conservative”: a person in favor of conserving the past over innovation or change. “Security, predictability, and authority.”

So what the heck does all this have to do with estrangement?

Well, there happens to be a very interesting set of correlations between conservatism, authoritarianism, and family estrangement. Let me walk you through that. Let’s start with this article from 2016, written by Matthew MacWilliams.2 It begins:

If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated?

You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations.

What are “authoritarian inclinations”? MacWilliams continues:

Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.

So, authoritarianism is a world view. It’s also a parenting style, one of three originally defined in the 1960s by psychologist Diana Baumrind. (You can read about all the styles in more depth here.) The authoritarian style is characterized by inflexibility and a requirement that the child obey. The other two styles are “permissive,” and “authoritative.” Authoritative—in contrast to authoritarian—is a style that sets rules and boundaries but also leaves room for negotiation and conversation. A child can mostly question an authoritative parent without fear of severe punishment. A child being parented by an authoritarian mostly cannot.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

Someone3 actually did research on whether any of these parenting styles correlates with estrangement. Here’s what that researcher found.

“Estrangement was negatively correlated with authoritative parenting style…, meaning that people who perceived their parents’ parenting style as authoritative are likely to have less number of estrangements. Estrangement was positively correlated with authoritarian parenting style…, meaning that people who perceived their parents’ parenting style as authoritarian are likely to have a high number of estrangements.”

** Disclaimer: Correlation vs. causation. The paper is not claiming that an authoritarian parenting style causes estrangements. She is describing a relationship between these two variables, which does not automatically mean that “the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the value of the other.” **

Keeping in mind the disclaimer that correlation does not equal causation, I’m offering a way to think about why a conversation with someone with whom you have a strained or nearly estranged relationship can feel so similar to a conversation with someone who sits on the opposite side of a political debate.

In a familial relationship, perhaps you ostensibly start with the same goal: you both want to maintain a good relationship. The problem comes in when the things you define as “good”—openness, curiosity, flexibility, nuance are seen by the other person as threatening—are different from the things they define as “good”: obedience [to them], rigidity, loyalty. Further, you define their “good” as threatening, and they define your “good” as threatening. For you, being asked to obey blindly is threatening to your safety. For them, relenting from their rigidity in order to honor your boundary feels threatening to their safety.

This interaction within a strained relationship parallels powerfully with the example of the Facebook post. In both cases, it can feel like you are saying something totally reasonable that the other person either is completely misunderstanding or isn’t even able to receive. It literally feels like you are speaking a different language, like they live in a different reality from you. Or maybe, as a neuropolitics researchers might argue, the other person may have actual brain differences that cause them to process the same facts totally different from you!

No matter the reason, the things that make you feel safe are the opposite of the things that make the other person feel safe.

You’re at a very real impasse.

As with the vaccine/anti-vax “debate,” I don’t really believe this is a debate. A“good” relationship is a healthy one, and “healthy” can’t be defined by blind obedience and unconditional loyalty.

I’m not an apologist for authoritarians. I am, however, curious about why communication breaks down so swiftly and decisively between two people who have the same goal but also have a different world view.

Another caveat:

Although I see parallels between the frustration in arguing with a person with a different political belief and arguing with an authoritarian family member, they are not the same thing. One major difference between these two scenarios is the power differential. Arguing with an estranged relative (especially a parent) is NOT the same as arguing with a peer about politics. In the former case, there is a power imbalance between parent and adult child, or even older sibling and younger sibling. In our familial relationships, there is either an implied or explicit hierarchy in which one person has a history of holding more power in the relationship.

Still, I think it’s worth pointing out how similar these two scenarios feel when you’re living them, and also how similar they are when it comes to your options. In both cases, you can keep arguing and arguing and, at best, never get anywhere, or at worst, get harmed over and over again. Or you can stop communicating.

That’s all for this week. Next week, I’ll be sharing stories about how differences in political beliefs lead to estrangement.

A request for you

Do you have a story on how political beliefs within your family have influenced your estrangement? Or thoughts about how politics relates to estrangement in general? Send those thoughts to maggie at maggiefrankhsu dot com. I will include them in the Part 2 piece I’m writing, which I’ll publish on/around October 31. If you prefer to remain anonymous, I will quote your email but otherwise keep your name and identifying details entirely out of it.

Want to share a story about estrangement and politics, and don’t care if you are anonymous or not? Post it to the comments of this Substack newsletter by clicking the “leave a comment” button.

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