BBC Radio 4 2016-02-12

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-12

Good Morning,

A study from You Gov shows that the number of parents who would be upset if their children married or partnered with someone of a different political persuasion has doubled in the last 8 years.

I’m not sure if this shows that politics is becoming more polarised or parents becoming less tolerant. But you’d think most parents would be pleased that their children had any political convictions such is the low level of political engagement being shown by the young across the democratic world.

But, children having different beliefs to their parents is surely the way it’s always been. I have different political convictions to my mother; I have differing theological views to those of my father; whilst my children are still questioning how relevant either of these things are. Do I love them less; do we stop discussing it? Lord, I hope not.

Of course, Mum knows best – until you disagree with her. I’d be curious to know how the Prime Minister really feels about his mother signing a petition this week, against local government cuts to children’s centres in her son’s constituency. I find it oddly reassuring that she did; it’s better to be part of a family, or a society, that is able to hold difference or indifference in tension whilst continuing to care for each other. There’s nothing creepier than kids blindly agreeing to everything their parents think or parents praising everything their children do.

There is a concept in political theory known as The Overton Window, which is the spectrum of ideas that the public find acceptable. It’s the window in which politicians operate. But politicians, like parents, need to keep up with changing ideas and the fact that the window can move, or get smashed altogether. An idea that was once deemed unthinkable (such as same sex marriage, or universal free health care at the point of need) can, in the skip of a generation, become policy. Yesterday’s radical is today’s reasonable.

In their children, parents have to face what politicians of all persuasions have to face: a shifting set of beliefs that challenges their view of the world and how it should be run. As a parent, you can spend years nurturing and influencing your children, training them in the way you think they should go, and all of sudden they turn to you and say ‘I don’t agree with you.’ It might be upsetting but shouldn’t we also welcome the challenge?

When scripture encourages children to honour their mother and father that doesn’t mean believing everything they believe. It means loving them despite what they believe. And when it urges parents not to provoke or exasperate their children, it’s asking them to respect their fledgling thoughts, and remember that they sometimes see the world through a different window. In this life, some things are even more important than the preservation of our convictions.