When Politics and Family Collide: A Two-Wave Prospective Study
What happens when family members disagree on politics? This prospective study examined the impact of incongruence in political attitude about political issues on familial conflicts, and vice versa. We tested relationship quality as a protective moderator. We used Hong Kong’s recent political movements as the context and asked participants about their conflict with their parent. Data were collected from 185 young adults who co-reside with at least one parent or guardian (69.7% female, mean age = 21.3) in May (T1) and June (T2), 2015. Results suggest that the likelihood and seriousness of conflicts arising from political issues at T2 were predicted by T1 political attitude congruence and T1 relationship quality. Moderation analyses revealed that youths with lower political attitude congruence and lower relationship quality had more, and more serious, conflicts at T2. Results also suggest that the frequency of conflict led to a decrease in political attitude congruence.