Halting hostile politics at home
Open-minded approach can lead to healthier youth, families
At 18, Ella Schumacher is looking forward to what’s next: college, volleyball, exploring a potential career in cancer research. And voting for the first time. ● Thinking about the election, it’s not necessarily the political topics she sees as stressful, but the way discussions about those topics can play out at home or at school. People tend to default to a mindset of, “This is right, this is wrong,” rather than being more open-minded, she said.
“I guess I’m a little bit more anxious about all the conversations that (the election’s) going to bring up. I feel like our country just becomes so divided, by the time that we hit November,” said Schumacher after the final bell at Hamilton High School in Sussex, a Milwaukee suburb, in late February.
That “right v. wrong” mindset is getting attention in Wisconsin. The state’s Office for Children’s Mental Health listed political “divisiveness” as a stressor on young people in its 2023 annual report. As the presidential campaign ramps up, that stress is likely to become even more pronounced.
Especially for young people, the “us versus them” mindset associated with political hostility can augment stress about “fitting in” with a group, said Kathy Russeth, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Madison. Holding views not accepted by that group might feel off limits, she said, even though young people should naturally explore new ideas and identities as they figure out who they are.
“I hope that people would begin to see other people’s opinions, respect other people’s opinions, and take a second to actually listen to what people are saying and not be so quick to hop in with a rude remark or judge.”
Ella Schumacher Hamilton High School senior and first-time voter
“If you feel like you have to align completely, not really giving yourself time to explore — for the reason that if you don’t (align) you’re going to be embarrassed, you’re going to say something wrong, you’re going to be excluded — that’s detrimental,” Russeth said. “There might be unresolved conflicts going into young adulthood about who you are.”
Advocates for children’s health acknowledge that hostility in political discussions can trickle into at-home conversations and particularly affect young people. But they also point to a whole host of solutions that can lead to learning for people of all ages: intentionally using healthy conflict resolution tactics, for example, and learning about media literacy.
The idea is to steer clear of exacerbating the already well-documented hostility in U.S. politics and stressors that come along with it. Instead, experts suggest it’s healthier to respond to political divisiveness with education about ways to combat it, like healthy conflict resolution strategies. Doing so can build “civic engagement” among young people, or getting involved with work that promotes healthy resolution of bigpicture issues at the root of political disthat, agreements.
That message resonates with Schumacher, a peer mentor at school who puts a strong focus on mental wellness.
“I hope that people would begin to see other people’s opinions, respect other people’s opinions, and take a second to actually listen to what people are saying and not be so quick to hop in with a rude remark or judge,” Schumacher said.
What is political divisiveness?
A fall 2023 poll by the Pew Research Center described the current U.S. political landscape as “mired in partisan warfare.” It found that 84% of adults think political debate has become less respectful in the last several years, and 78% say it’s become less based in fact. “Divisive,” “corrupt,” “messy” and “chaos” were among the most common descriptors for the current state of politics cited among the 8,480 people surveyed.
Wisconsin fits with the trend, especially as a presidential swing state with a divided state government.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, different sources have different takes on the true scope, impact and sources of divisions in U.S politics. But what’s clear is Americans are becoming more likely to personally dislike those who hold different political opinions from their own, rather than just disagreeing on the issues.
For example, Republicans and Democrats became more likely to view each other as closed-minded, dishonest, immoral, unintelligent and lazy between 2016 and 2022, according to a different Pew study based on responses from 6,174 adults.
However, there’s also evidence to suggest that the majority of people in the U.S. feel partisan disagreements — rather than actual issues — simply get too much attention. That’s the finding from a 2023 Pew survey, which reported those sentiments were shared among the majority of people surveyed, regardless of their political leanings.
Teens stress about ‘fitting in’
Schumacher responded to a social media post by the Journal Sentinel seeking advice from students in Wisconsin about improving divisiveness over politics. At first glance, she wasn’t into it — but decided to respond when she realized it related to mental health. That issue is particularly important to her, as someone with diagnosed anxiety who talks to peers about navigating it.
Politics can be difficult to discuss at school, she said. Debates in class can get stressful. She described watching “eyes scatter around the room” when a conversation in a civics class devolved into argument.
“My goal for this issue would be that these students wouldn’t become so set in their ways and (would) have an open mindset to new ways of thinking. It’s true that the most popular political debates all have pros and cons, I believe at least in schools, we should be able to look at both the pros and cons to some issues before instantly saying ‘my reasons are right, and yours are wrong,’ ” Schumacher said via email.
Young people often explore how they fit in with different groups and ideas, said Russeth, who is also a member of the Wisconsin Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. It’s natural; it’s how they develop an identity. That also explains why young people to feel a pressure to conform, stemming from worries about being “cut from the herd” or alienated.
The feeling of being unable to share or explore ideas that don’t align with a group mentality can lead to feelings of embarrassment or social humiliation, Russeth said. Those feelings are hallmarks of social anxiety. Feeling a lack of acceptance to a group diminishes a sense of belonging, or “social cohesion,” she said. That can lead to hopelessness and isolation often associated with feelings of depression.
A 2021 survey of Wisconsin high schoolers suggests being involved with extracurricular activities is associated with stronger feelings of belonging. Students involved with out-of-school programs are 11⁄ times more likely than their peers to feel a sense of belonging at school, the study found. Among students not involved in extracurriculars, 43% said they felt depressed, compared with 28% who were involved.
Linda Hall, director of the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health, said stress over political divisiveness is a particular issue for LGBTQ youth and those who have different points of view than the majority in their community or at home.
“What we know is that political divisiveness is an issue for kids. We know it’s especially an issue for LGBTQ kids who don’t feel supported at school in many ways,” Hall said.
Data in the 2021 survey also show higher rates of mental health issues for LGBTQ youth than their peers.
Conflict among politicians can end up in homes, behaviors
Russeth said it’s important to remember the difference between political diversity — a range of opinions — and political divisiveness, which describes the divisive, or hostile way those
opinions are sometimes conveyed.
It’s common to see poor conflict resolution skills being modeled in conversations about politics, she said. For example: Attacking someone’s character rather their policies. Dismissing someone’s perspective because it doesn’t square with pre-existing beliefs. Defending a political position at all costs rather than finding common ground and solutions.
Kids don’t look to political figures as models for behavior, she said. They look to the adults in their lives. But those adults can mirror poor conflict resolution strategies they pick up in discussions about politics that play out in places like social media and the news.
Conflict resolution skills can help at home
Ken Ginsburg is a pediatrician and founder of the national Center for Parent and Teen Communication within the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In an interview, he pointed to to several strategies that could be helpful in preventing political divisiveness from trickling into at-home conversations and behaviors.
For example, he said, it’s helpful for adults to model a willingness to seek out new information and change opinions when necessary. It’s also important to share when opinions have shifted and why.
Children are less likely to trust parental figures — and come to them in times of need — if they perceive that person as being rigid or judgmental in their ideas, Ginsburg said.
“You want your child to be an independent thinker and to be open to learning. We shut that down when we ‘other’ people. When we suggest that people who disagree with us are, in fact, ‘less than, other, or wrong,’ we actually interfere with our kids’ ability to learn,” he said.
He said if the message is that “involvement” with civic issues equals tension, it could prevent young people from getting civically engaged later in life.
“And that is going to hurt us far into the future,” Ginsburg added.
Hearing from kids, directly
Catalina Perez, 15, is a freshman at Shorewood High School. She describes a “my side or the other” mindset that she often sees when it comes to divisiveness in U.S. politics.
“It’s a lack of cooperation and understanding — just wanting to see the other side as dumb,” she said.
Perez is a reporter and copy editor for her school newspaper, the Shorewood Ripple. She said it can be difficult to share opinions at school due to the fear of offending someone. But she sees a need to do so anyway to engage in constructive conversations that find common ground.
Perez cautions that adults — and especially media — sometimes fall into narratives that present all young people as a monolith. The stereotype is that young people are unduly shaped by their schools and phones, like machines being “fed information.”
That’s not how it is, she said. “We’re individuals, and we have opinions. It isn’t just what school teaches to us, or what our parents teach to us. (We) have the ability to think critically,” Perez said.
In an interview, Hall, with the state Office of Children’s Mental Health, compared the decadeslong efforts to change public opinion about smoking with the time it’s taken to give more power to activism led by, and for, young people.
Listening to recommendations about mental health directly from young people is a focus for her office. In 2020, it created a series of mental healthrelated policy recommendations from young people across the state. The office also maintains an online map of peerled, in-school mental health resources in Wisconsin school districts.
“We really need to listen to their voice. And listening to their voice is going to make them healthier and stronger, and it’s going to create a generation that may actually take on these difficult things that are dividing out communities,” Hall said.
Asked about how to make things better, Perez said it’s not just up to adults.
“As a young person, you should be thinking critically about what you’re hearing and trying to be well-informed if you really care about the issues,” Perez said. “But — I don’t think that adults should be feeding into them.”
Cleo Krejci covers higher education, vocational training and retraining as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com . Follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci.