Parent-youth discussions about politics from age 13 to 28

It has been commonly assumed that post-adolescent youth have fewer political discussions with parents than do adolescents, due to transitional events in young adulthood and the emergence of new age-appropriate socializing agents, like peers, colleagues, and romantic partners. We proposed a contrasting view that post-adolescent youth have more frequent political discussions with parents due to their increased political interest over time. Using an accelerated longitudinal design (n = 4286), we found that neither transitional events nor political discussions with other socializing agents decreased political discussions with parents. The long-term developmental trajectories for political discussions with parents and youth's own political interest showed a linear increase from adolescence to young adulthood. Cross-lagged models showed that youth's political interest positively predicted political discussions with parents over time and vice-versa. These findings indicate a need to see political discussions with parents as a parent-youth bidirectional process.