Political Literacies: Parents as Sponsors

of Political Consciousness

by

Stephanie Zlotnick

Queer Literacies
Mark McBeth
December 15, 2020
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Abstract

How do we form our political views? Through personal anecdotes and interviews, this paper

explores the influence parents have on their children’s political opinions and activity. Following paths to

political consciousness, I analyze the factors that shaped my friend’s political literacy in comparison with

those that shaped my own. Our respective parents sit opposite each other on the partisan spectrum, yet my

friend and I are very much aligned – though we have not always been. Through theoretical lenses based

on Deborah Brandt, Paulo Freire, James Gee, and Dirk Lange, this paper connects my friend’s and my

political literacies to the sponsors of literacy that we have both encountered from childhood through

young adulthood.

My investigation consists of a video conference interview with my fellow subject, email

interviews with my parents, personal narratives, and a look at some primary sources, including a high

school yearbook and CD recording. Drawing on others’ theories regarding the shaping of individual

political views, I examine the ways in which parents act as sponsors of political literacies and the

implications of this concept. Some names have been changed for privacy.

Introduction

In 2020’s unparalleled political climate, almost everyone is awake, aware, opinionated. For a lot

of people, this is a new phenomenon. Since Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017, we have

seen record-breaking voter turnout and young people running for office. Even more, the recent killings of

unarmed Black people by police officers has sparked an international outrage, specifically among

Millennials and Gen Z, causing regular discussions among family members who disagree.

My liberal friends and coworkers have shared with me their frustrations, and sometimes surprise,

after speaking with or reading Facebook posts from their fathers, in-laws, cousins, siblings who regularly

say things like, “But really it should be ‘All Lives Matter’,” and “You can’t make me put on a damn

mask.” Through all of this, I’ve realized something: I haven’t had any of those conversations. Instead, my

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immediate family group text message is filled with anti-racism book recommendations and the highly

popular suggestion that I name my new fish “Ruth Bader Gillsburg.”

The ideological struggles people I know have faced during the global COVID-19 pandemic and

social justice uprising have made me exceedingly grateful for my one-sided, active Democrat-filled

family. But more importantly, they have made me exceedingly curious. Curious about how my adult

family is all in agreement, curious about how my liberal political views were formed, and curious about

how my friends’ liberal political views were formed in families led by conservative parents.

In this paper, I will study the formation of political literacies through personal experience and

first-hand interviews with a close friend of mine, Bridget O’Brien. Bridget and I, now both twenty-six

years old, met in Kindergarten, and our families have been connected ever since. We were born and

raised in a geographically large but populationally small town in Westchester County just north of New

York City. We attended the same public schools, played the same sports, and watched the same television

shows. However, for most of our friendship, we had different political views. Or rather, we had an

unspoken knowledge of each other’s parents’ different political views. Our distinctive beliefs were not

detrimental to our friendship, but they followed us around the school hallways and towns parks like

shadows – present, but not really important because, like most young children, we did not discuss public

policy on the playground.

In September of 2008, Bridget and I entered high school. Also in September of 2008, Barack

Obama entered the final weeks of his presidential campaign against John McCain. It was this historical

time that our unspoken knowledge of each other’s parents’ different political views became, well, spoken.

One specific lunch period that fall was particularly notable. In just a few weeks, Barack Obama

would be elected President of the United States. And on that Tuesday in November, every student in our

high school would cast their vote in the pretend polls set up in one of the history classrooms on the

second floor. In the cafeteria, I sat with a few friends and asked, “Who is everyone voting for?” Bridget

said John McCain. Katie said John McCain. Marisa said John McCain. I said Barack Obama.

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 For the rest of lunch, I listened to these girls I thought were just like me degrade Obama and

berate me for being on his side. “His middle name is Hussein! Is he even American?” “It says in the bible

that abortion is murder.” “Marriage is between a man and a woman.” My first reaction to these comments

was that they stemmed from mimicry of their parents’ behavior. It was that lunch period that I discovered

my parents were different from theirs. My mom and dad had already taught me that the fear of a name

like Hussein was a racist result of 9/11. I knew my bible was different from my friends’ bible, and I was

pretty sure the Torah didn’t require people to be pro-life. Not to mention, one of the first things we

learned about the US government was a little thing called separation of church and state. And from the

moment I was born, my parents assured me they would love whomever I love.

Today, I remain politically aligned with my parents, as do my two older siblings. Bridget, on the

other hand, is no longer aligned with her parents, and neither are her three older siblings. After years of

friendship in which politics was off limits in our conversations, we are both settled comfortably on the

left side of the spectrum, free to discuss anything with the knowledge we will likely agree.

How did Bridget and I formulate such a similar set of political ideals despite our drastically

different start? How did I end up agreeing with my parents, while she ended up doing the opposite? What

were the factors that pushed Bridget from right to left? What were the factors that kept me planted?

Ultimately, what role do parents play in the formation of political literacies? By tracing and analyzing the

development of Bridget’s and my political literacies through a selection of literacy frameworks, I aim to

answer these questions.

Frameworks of Literacy

Before analyzing the intricacies of our upbringings, we must first understand the methodology

through which they will be examined. Most comprehensive is the idea of sponsors of literacy, specifically

as written by Deborah Brandt in her 1998 essay “Sponsors of Literacy.” Brandt defines sponsors as “any

agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit,

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regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt 166). Her work

aims to trace the dynamics of literacy sponsorship through case studies and show the connection between

her subjects’ opportunities for literacy learning and the economic and political activities of their

respective sponsors. She notes that sponsors are the “figures who turned up most typically in people’s

memories of literacy learning” and they “deliver the ideological freight” from which individuals grow

(Brandt 167-168). Parents are natural sponsors of literacy for many people, and my research points to the

intricacies of the parent-child relationship in regard to the transmission of political consciousness from

one generation to another.

In combination with Brandt’s theory, I will examine how the education which Bridget and I

received can be defined through Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and ultimately how our beliefs

were formed and/or informed. Freire analyzes his experiences as a teacher of impoverished and illiterate

students across the world to understand how the language and actions of elite classes allow them to

maintain their power while feeding the lower classes, i.e. the oppressed, a set of controlled ideas and

literacies. Freire argues that education is the key to freedom of oppression, and Bridget’s political

upbringing, in particular, reinforces this. This is not to say that Bridget was raised oppressively or that her

parents actively tried to maintain power through their children’s literacies, but by removing the negative

connotation of oppression and looking critically at the ways Bridget utilized resources from her parents in

order to develop her own political literacy, I hope to prove Freire’s claim correct.

I will also utilize James Gee’s Literacy and Education throughout my analysis as a backdrop for

literacy itself. Gee asserts that literacy is not a minor topic, but it is in fact the study of “how the ways in

which we humans make meaning with technologies create the social and cultural geography of human

practices, groups, and institutions, for better and worse” (Gee 135). I will explore the weight of various

sponsors in our lives to express the ways in which Bridget’s and my primary discourses were developed

in regard to politics and shape how we interact with the world, i.e. “big D Discourses” (Gee 92). He states

that “Socially significant identities do not belong to us as individuals alone. They belong, as well, to the

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groups of people and institutions that create the conditions for their recognition” (Gee 93). His argument

here reinforces the need for us to acknowledge the sponsors and conditions that determine our values,

thoughts, and actions in order to make sense of why we do what we do and think what we think.

Finally, I will include references to Dirk Lange’s work, “Between political history and historical

politics: fundamental forms of historical and political literacy,” to define political consciousness and how

it is developed through education. He argues that political consciousness “can be understood as that area

of general consciousness in which the individual constructs subjective ideas” about the process in which

an individual’s interests transform into an overall sense of responsibility (Lange 50). Lange’s theory will

help me connect the partisan beliefs Bridget and I have wrestled with throughout our lives to the literacies

through which we experience the world.

Bridget’s Political Literacy

I interviewed Bridget on Sunday, November 1, 2020 – three days before the most gut-wrenching

presidential election through which either of us has lived – through a Zoom video conference. A few

weeks prior, I sent her a text message explaining my research goals and asking if she would be willing to

participate as a subject. In addition to agreeing, she wrote, “It would be fascinating because I grew up

with my parents more conservative, and I was totally in line with those ideas until late high school/college

when I was like, uhhh my parents are nuts” (O’Brien Oct. 9). In one text message, she confirmed

everything I thought I knew about her.

When we logged on for the interview, I first wanted to understand specifically what her parents’

political leanings are from her perspective. “My dad [Jack] is definitely on the conservative side, typically

votes republican…My mom’s [Anna] kinda tough to nail down. She told me she was a Democrat when

she was younger and then financial reasons made her be more conservative in her adult life…I guess [I]

would call [her] the ultimate Independent” (O’Brien Nov. 1). It’s also important to note that Jack and

Anna, and for that matter, my parents as well, are recipients of their own literacy sponsorship, so their

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opinions must also be placed in that context. Both Jack and Anna were born in New York City and raised

in the Bronx. Jack was born seventh out of seven children to New York City-born, “very patriotic”

parents in 1957 (O’Brien Nov. 1). Meanwhile, Anna is one of two children of Irish immigrants, born in

1958. It is this distinction that Bridget credits for her mother’s more moderate views: “I think that she has

now seen, like, the anti-immigration rhetoric coming out of the right now and…she knows the struggles

that her parents went through” (O’Brien Nov. 1). To that end, she notes that, though she’s not sure which

ones, she knows she has relatives on her father’s side who served in the military, so he grew up with more

of a “super American…never disrespect the flag, always stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and National

Anthem” kind of attitude (O’Brien Nov. 1).

Perhaps more important than the specific views Anna and Jack hold is the awareness Bridget had

of these views as a child. While in their household, Bridget had a relatively strong understanding of their

fiscal beliefs. As the parents of four children in a high-priced region, “they were making good money, but

it was just going out as fast as it came in. [They] didn’t grow up poor by any means, but [her] mom

always just felt she was spinning her wheels” (O’Brien Nov. 1). Besides taxes, other issues that her

parents felt passionately about were more or less absent, which, upon more examination, is likely due to a

lack of political talk. Political talk “has been defined as ‘a specific type of social interaction, [which]

manifests itself in the form of discrete events where two or more people engage in exchanges of meaning

with reference to politics’” (Nolas, et al. 68).

When asked about political talk in the home, Bridget reflected: “I wouldn’t say we ever had, like,

deep political conversations…Things would pop up and we would, you know, talk about it, but nothing

too impactful” (O’Brien Nov. 1). She added:

I remember one conversation I had with my mom, I think it was, like,

sophomore year of high school, um, and it was about gay marriage. And I was
like ‘Mom, where do you stand on the whole gay marriage thing?’ And she
kinda gave, like, a wishy-washy answer, like not really committal either way.

And I very vividly remember telling her that I’m okay with them getting
married, I just, I don’t really understand how gayness, like, happens, like it
doesn’t make sense naturally. I think it was because we were in [biology class]
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 that year, and so I was thinking…all species do what is best for survival. Where
does homosexuality pop up in that? (O’Brien Nov. 1)

The conversation did not continue. Evidently, Bridget had questions and a desire to know more,

but was unable to engage her mother in an educational conversation. Elias Dinas, in his work “Opening

‘Openness to Change’: Political Events and the Increased Sensitivity of Young Adults,” argues that

“adulthood is deemed to be particularly important…because of the weight young individuals attach to

[political cues]” (Dinas 868). This suggests that Bridget’s immediate and vivid recollection of this

moment in time represents the significant weight on which she put her mother’s response to her inquiry,

or lack thereof.

Because of the lack of political talk in her home, Bridget searched elsewhere for it. Fortunately

for her, the above conversation occurred within the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, a

particularly formative event in her political literacy. The mock election held in our school that so

distinctly divided me from my friends ended in favor of Obama, and the 2008-2009 yearbook following

the election reflected the excitement felt across the student body. For example, the final pages of the

textbook-like yearbook were titled “World Yearbook” and provided a timeline of the biggest news from

that year. Developed by the Yearbook Club, this section is eleven pages, five of which mention or show

Obama (Somersbook). Even more, the language used in the captions and blurbs on these pages echoes the

sentiment that most of the students had from this historic election. The repetition of phrases such as

“victory speech, “unprecedented turnout,” “celebrating,” and “popular vote” encouraged any reader of the

yearbook to celebrate (Somersbook).

Despite voting for McCain in the mock election, Bridget’s tune on Obama shifted quickly after

his history-making inauguration. “He always spoke in a way that was clearly so eloquent and

sophisticated, but still approachable and easily understandable” (O’Brien Nov. 1). She liked the way he

talked “to people, not at them…And it also helped that his voice is deep and smooth like listening to

verbal silk” (O’Brien Nov. 1). With a combination of mesmerizing pitch that many young people fell

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victim to and a welcoming tone, Obama piqued Bridget’s interest. Throughout high school, she would

catch moments of cable news highlighting Obama’s speeches, and the more she heard, the more she

wanted to learn. Listening to him speak “started to sway [Bridget] to the democratic side of politics…to

research it more and become more aware, and actually see what the platforms were” (O’Brien Nov. 1).

In addition to Obama himself, entertainment media played a role in Bridget’s political literacy

journey, particularly Saturday Night Live (SNL). According to the study reported in “Political comedy

shows and public participation in politics” by Xiaoxia Cao and Paul R. Brewer, exposure to political

comedy shows is “positively associated with some forms of political participation” (Cao and Brewer 90).

Their study zeroes in on the effects of The Daily Show in the 2008 election as an umbrella that represents

political comedy shows. They report that viewers of The Daily Show exhibited “confidence in their own

ability to understand political issues,” and this confidence contributed to an increase “internal political

efficacy” (Cao and Brewer 90). Bridget notes that, of all television shows, “SNL had the most impact” on

her because it was “always big on political races and is more liberal leaning, so [she] found humor in

that” (O’Brien Nov. 1). In addition to educating Bridget with its liberal-leaning humor, SNL reinforces

Cao and Brewer’s point that “such programs usually represent politics in an entertaining manner, which

may lead viewers to think that politics is enjoyable, thereby stimulating political participation” (Cao and

Brewer 90).

After graduating high school and beginning college, Bridget’s opinions continued to shift left,

seemingly rapidly. This is not uncommon: “Young adults leave their parental home, enter in the

workplace and/or in a university environment…Throughout this process, they are exposed to various

political stimuli” (Dinas 868). With this in mind, Dinas points out that this time in a young adult’s life

“operates as a channel of potentially cross-cutting political messages” (Dinas 868). However, what I find

most interesting about Bridget’s transition out of her parental home is that her immediate social space was

also quite conservative. Freshman year of college, Bridget was randomly paired with a roommate named

Kathryn, a former pageant queen from Kentucky. Bridget recalls that Kathryn “was devastated when

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Obama beat Romney” in 2012 – the fall of our freshman year (O’Brien Nov. 1). Even more, Bridget

shared a story that captures Kathryn’s influence on her political literacy:

I thought she was a little crazy, and when I met her parents, I thought her
parents were a little crazy. Kathryn told me that her dad, before driving up to
Syracuse from Kentucky…called Syracuse [University] and asked, like, ‘Is it
okay that I have guns in my car?...Do I have to take them out before I drive
onto campus?’

…I remember she was kind of, like, proud of it, and I thought that was strange.
And so I think that kind of helped me realize that maybe I don’t want my views
to be in line with this girl’s views (O’Brien Nov. 1).
Clearly, Kathryn’s enthusiasm for guns and Mitt Romney was even farther right than the views

Bridget picked up from her parents. Because they felt so crazy to her, she was pushed even more in the

opposite direction.

College continued to expose Bridget to more and more factors that influenced her current liberal

views. She identified elements of her life including Facebook, Twitter, group projects and classmates, a

‘US History from a Foreign Perspective’ class taught in her London study abroad program, certain

professors, and more that informed her political consciousness after moving away from home. It was this

“investigation – the first moment of action as cultural synthesis –” that “establishe[d] a climate of

creativity” within Bridget’s literacy and empowered her to become truly conscious (Freire 154).

Now, almost a decade after leaving her parents’ house, Bridget is an active, registered Democrat,

who works as a news show producer. While interviewing her, I realized Bridget’s political literacy was

very much developed by her. As a child and teen, she was a recipient of her parents’ ideals through

passive, barely-there sponsorship; she was aware of their views and assumed them as her own before she

understood what they meant. Then, through experience, she compiled knowledge to acquire the political

views that suit her best. As Gee says, “The human mind does not learn by strong generalization and

abstractions. It learns from experience” (Gee 76).

My Political Literacy

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 Every year, my mom, Karen, assigned her twelfth-grade English class a “You” project. She gave

no guidelines, except it had to be personal and eventually presented to the class. Every year, she made

one, too. One year, in the early 2000s, she decided to film a spoof episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio

starring her. My dad, Craig, walked into the living room dressed as James Lipton while my older brother

and sister set up the video camera. I watched from the couch, too young to be helpful. Every question was

scripted with an answer that both captured my mom’s personality and made us laugh out loud. I only

vividly remember one question. “What do you dislike the most?” Across the room, my mom looked at my

dad, looked at the floor, then back at my dad, and, trying not to break character, she said, “Republicans.”

Evidently, my mom’s political views, besides leaning farther left than Bridget’s parents, were

significantly more public. Now, when asked how she would describe her politics, she says, “Left of left.

Probably Democratic Socialist” (Zlotnick, K.). My dad, despite clarifying that he’s “not as liberal as some

others in [his] family,” still considers himself a liberal Democrat (Zlotnick, C.). They were both born and

raised outside of New York City: my mom in New Rochelle, a small city in Westchester County, in 1962,

and my dad in Massapequa on Long Island in 1960. In late-‘60s-early-70s New Rochelle, my mom’s

cognizance of politics centered around feminism and other issues of gender; she identifies “the stories of

women like Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Billie Jean King, and Renee Richards” as having the biggest

impact on her (Zlotnick, K.). East of the city, my dad’s memory of politics growing up was more of a

vague awareness of “the anti-Vietnam War sentiment, mostly from neighbors who were more closely

involved,” as he had no relatives in the military (Zlotnick, C.).

Particularly because of my mom’s passion for feminism and LGBTQ+ equality, I grew up with a

strong understanding of these issues. From the time my siblings and I could comprehend what she was

saying to us, she often told us that sometimes boys loved girls and sometimes boys loved boys, and

sometimes girls loved boys and sometimes girls loved girls. If we had questions, we were encouraged to

ask them. Most importantly, she emphasized that whomever we loved, she and Dad would love, too. As

we got older, these reminders began to encompass more possibilities: if we grow up and fall in love with

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someone who isn’t white, or isn’t Jewish, or doesn’t conform to a specific gender, or we don’t want to fall

in love at all, or we don’t feel like we’re the right gender – it would all be okay. According to Lange,

“politics transforms the interests of the individual into a general sense of obligation” (Lange 50). Because

of this, when issues of gender and sexuality were at the forefront of political debates or local current

events, they were no longer just things my parents told us about: the atmosphere of open acceptance in

my family became, in my eyes, the only reasonable way to live.

In addition to creating their own political schooling for my siblings and me, my parents took

advantage of external events as backdrops for teaching moments. We were not a family of country music

fans, with the exception of a shared love for The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Chicks) among my mom,

my sister, and me. In 2003, I was eight years old when The Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines wreaked

havoc on the country music industry by telling a London stadium full of fans that she was ashamed to be

from the same state as President George Bush. When this scandal broke and The Chicks were essentially

blacklisted from most radio stations and record labels, my parents took this as an opportunity to teach me

about some aspects of life that were less than fair. I remember them telling me that, even though “we

don’t like Bush either,” a lot of people do and feel that badmouthing the president is bad. They clarified

that one of the best parts about our country was something called freedom of speech, and it allowed

Maines to say what she said without being arrested, but the cultural implications were unfortunate and

unfair. I was angry at the world for this. I didn’t know much about Bush at the time, but I did know that

“we” didn’t like him, so whatever Maines said was probably called for.

This event became even more influential when the live album of The Chicks’ Top of the World

Tour – during which the infamous London show occurred – came out on a two-disc CD. On disc two,

before the song “Truth No. 2” begins, the music pauses, and Maines says, “we have learned that voting is

a wonderful way to express your opinion…Here’s a song all about freedom of speech and speakin’ out

and havin’ a voice” (The Chicks). I was young, impressionable, angry, and dying to be as cool as Natalie

Maines. The album played in my discman on repeat, and these words became ingrained in my mind as

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much as the lyrics of the songs did. Even more, they were a constant reminder that voting was important,

and if I wanted to be anything like Maines when I grew up, I had to vote. If it were not for my parents’

explanation of the chaos that ensued during this time, these recorded words might not have meant

anything to me. But I had already been questioning the culture my parents described that forced The

Chicks into hiding, so the addition of instructions to speak out reinforced everything my parents had been

trying to instill in me.

The active teaching of politics my parents demonstrated continued as I got older. Similar to

Bridget, I was enthralled by Obama’s ability to appeal to young people like me and make politics feel

accessible. Even so, we couldn’t turn on the television without hearing something about taxes, and as a

young teen, I knew taxes existed for the development of things like roads and schools but did not quite

understand what the Democrat versus Republican argument was. When I asked my parents to explain,

they emphasized the weight Democrats place on providing services for “those who cannot help

themselves” and how taxes affect those services. For a long time, I did not fully comprehend who those

people were or why they couldn’t help themselves, but I trusted my parents and assumed I agreed with

them. Whether out of my own apathy for understanding fiscal concepts at that time or my implicit

confidence in my parents’ education and Obama’s plans, I mimicked a “prescribed behavior, following…

the guidelines” by which my political literacy was developed (Freire 21).

While Bridget was learning about the Second Amendment from her freshman roommate and

determining her own political beliefs, I was pleading my politically aliterate freshman roommates to even

vote in the 2012 election at all. I had just moved to Manhattan for college, but my mid-November

birthday meant I couldn’t vote just yet; my eighteenth birthday was six days after election day, and I just

wanted to make Natalie Maines proud. The values I adopted from my parents and the practice of political

talk emboldened me to construct my own meaning of the issues that mattered most to me and pass them

along to others in my life: “the student of historical-political education develops the capacity to hand

down political ideas” (Lange 53). It became clear to me during this time that I not only exhibited the

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political literacy of my parents, but this literacy manifested itself as political talk that was not “largely

idiomatic and performative” (Nolas et al. 69) as it was when I was at lunch in ninth grade, but rather

proved the idea that “adults who recall their parents discussing politics and engaging in political activities

are more likely to be politically active themselves” (Gidengil et al. 374).

Throughout college, I became more and more politically active, learning as much as I could from

my parents and external resources. I read the works of Gloria Steinem and discussed them in detail with

my mom; I watched CNN to pass the time on the elliptical and texted my dad when I was confused about

the economic segments; I Googled the down-ticket candidates to make educated choices in non-

presidential elections. By the time I graduated in May 2016, I was politically conscious and liberal. I had

reduced “the complexities of political reality to a meaningful context,” which made understanding that

year’s presidential fight between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump an easy feat (Lange 50).

The development of my political literacy evidently began with my parents’ emphasis on ‘love is

love,’ and continued with an education through which they were a constant resource and sounding board.

As political issues emerged in my life, the instinct I had established throughout my childhood pushed me

to associate most with democratic ideals. Today, I proudly stand next to my mom on the “left of left” end

of the political spectrum. Perhaps most formative was my parents’ emphasis on helping “those who

cannot help themselves.” After years of young adulthood during which social justice was (and continues

to be) the most pressing issue, I’ve learned what they meant by that: those who are inherently

disenfranchised by societal structures due to their race, religion, gender identification, sexuality,

disability, income, nationality, and I could go on. It’s because of this mentality I inherited from my

parents that all of my career choices have been focused on a desire to help others in some way; my career

in non-profit can be seen as a result of the democratic ideals with which I grew up and which intensified

over time. My path to political literacy proves Dinas’ point that “attitudes are strengthened and gradually

become immune to change as a result of people’s actual involvement in politics” (Dinas 870).

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Analysis

When I began this research, I was sure that the primary difference between Bridget and me was

the right versus left ideology that our respective parents raised us to believe. However, what became clear

in my investigation is that the real discrepancy lies in the practice of political talk around which we each

grew up.

That said, Bridget and I do share some parallels within our sponsored journeys to political

consciousness. Most significantly is that our parents were primary sponsors of our early literacies, and

they are “an illuminating site through which to track the different cultural attitudes” we held for the first

half of our lives (Brandt 167). Both of our political literacies consisted of some semblance of

understanding of our parents’ positions on common partisan issues. Because of this awareness as

children, we were able to grasp a portion of their views and encode them as our own for some time.

Another similarity I see between Bridget’s and my sponsored political literacies is our individual

adoption of certain traits we observed from our respective mothers. Anna, Bridget’s mother, is more

moderate than Jack, her father, and modeled a hunger for knowledge for Bridget. As our interview closed,

Bridget noted, “My mom is super smart and…always willing to learn. She’s the opposite of ‘you can’t

teach an old dog new tricks’” (O’Brien Nov. 1). The desire to learn that Bridget associates with her

mother is evidently an important characteristic of Bridget herself. She liked the way Obama sounded, so

she wanted to learn what he was talking about; she took courses in college that exposed her to the ugly

realities of America’s role in global history; she turned her cravings for information into a career in news

that not only keeps her informed every minute of every day, but it allows her to provide truthful, unbiased

information to her community (O’Brien Nov. 1). Bridget’s education thus proves Freire’s suggestion, as

cited in Gee’s Literacy and Education, of “the liberating side [to literacy], an emancipatory literacy for

religious, political, and cultural resistance to domination” (Gee 42), which Brandt echoes by noting the

“potential of the sponsored to divert sponsors’ resources toward ulterior projects, often projects of self-

interest or self-development” (Brandt 179).

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 Understanding this aspect of Bridget’s political literacy opened my eyes to the characteristics I

display that come from my own mom. Her philosophy of active teaching of political issues is

unmistakably reflected in my interactions with my college roommates during the 2012 presidential

election, urging them to please just exercise their right to vote. It has continued to surface throughout my

life in various scenarios; for example, at the very beginning of our relationship, it was important to me

that my partner accept that he is in fact a feminist because of his beliefs, despite his discomfort with the

word itself. And when my mom told me she thought she “should know more so [she] could argue with”

her father because she discovered he “thought Richard Nixon was the best president the country had ever

seen,” (Zlotnick, K.), a cache of heated political discussions that I provoked with similar feelings

appeared almost immediately.

What separates Bridget and me is the impact that sponsors other than our parents had on us.

Bridget’s teenage exposure to Barack Obama, Saturday Night Live, and eventually a far-right college

roommate inspired her to rethink her political views. Meanwhile, the sponsors I encountered, including

Barack Obama as well, The Chicks, my college social space, Gloria Steinem books, and others,

reinforced the ideals that my parents taught me. Instead of questioning these ideals, I carried new

knowledge into my conversations with my parents and collaborated with them, and continue to do so, in

the construction of my political literacy as an adult.

The most significant distinction between Bridget’s and my political consciousness, however, is

the act of political talk around which we grew up. In her house, politics was on the back burner. If

something came up, they would chat about it, but not discuss in detail. In my house, on the other hand,

politics was front and center. My siblings and I were reminded of our parents’ opinions and why with

every appearance of a political issue. It is this distinction that answers my most pressing question: what

role do parents play in the formation of political literacies?

Conclusion

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 In my study, I investigated Bridget’s parents’ political views, her political views as a child, the

ways in which additional sponsors influenced her political views, and what steps she took to develop the

beliefs she holds today. My goal was to compare and contrast the development of her political

consciousness with my own and ultimately determine what the role our respective parents played in this

process.

What I’ve found to be the most powerful discrepancy of the households in which we were raised,

in regard to the growth of politically literate adults, is passive versus active demonstrations of politics. In

summary, Bridget was aware of her parents’ political views, most specifically the fiscal side of things,

and had questions. However, for reasons that would likely deserve their own study, she was unable to

engage them in active political talk (as defined by Nolas et al.) in order to fill the information gaps within

her mind. Bridget’s instinct to learn, modeled by her mom, pushed her to find external sponsors through

which she could develop a political consciousness that suited her. Her parents’ role in her process was

passive.

Meanwhile, my parents displayed active political talk from the moment I was born. They

ingrained in me certain values that were then reinforced by external sponsors. How I so effortlessly

sought sponsors that did not interfere with my parents’ teachings, like why Bridget could not engage her

parents in political talk, would need its own study to fully comprehend. Regardless, my parents have

remained a resource for my political consciousness; my whole family engages in constant political talk,

and we learn from one another every day. To conclude, my parents’ role in my process was active.

The results of this investigation support Nolas et al.’s argument that “what is transmitted across

generations is not necessarily the substance of political talk as much as it is its practice” (Nolas et al. 80).

That said, I must acknowledge the limitations of this study. Before I began, I decided this study

was not going to be a look into how Democrats find their way or a lecture on left versus right. Instead, I

aimed to use the political spectrum as proof of developing literacies. But still, I admit I am writing from

an extremely biased position. Not only am I a subject in my own study, but I have proven above that I

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have a deeply democratic political literacy that removes any chance of true bipartisanship. Another aspect

of my research that limits its results is the rather brief, superficial look into four members of the prior

generation. The political views of Anna and Jack were recorded from the perspective of their daughter,

who could not ever describe them as accurately as they could themselves. The political views of Karen

and Craig were recorded via email exchange with interview questions that covered the basics of their

opinions. Even more, just as there are dozens of more aspects of Bridget’s and my political literacies I

could explore, our parents are also products of their own sponsors and literacy educations. We are all

made up of “accumulated layers of sponsoring influences – in families, workplaces, schools, memory –”

that shape our ideologies, and there were simply not enough hours in the day to analyze each layer

(Brandt 178).

To combat these limitations, future research can dive into more subjects of study. If I could

interview more alumni from my high school, I could look critically at, not only people’s parents’

influences on their political literacies, but the geographical and sociopolitical contexts that inform them. I

could include parents in my interviews in order to connect their political views and parenting styles to the

opinions their children report. Lastly, the specific effects our mothers, more so than our fathers, had on

Bridget and me encourage me to investigate the role gender plays in sponsorship, whether political or not.

A world of scholarship lies beneath the idea that “communications scholars have attributed the difference

in fathers’ and mothers’ political influence to the way that they typically speak with their children”

(Gidengil et. al. 375).

I hope that my analyses scratch the surface of providing a deeper understanding of the intricacies

that form people’s perspectives and biases. My research has given me insight into several aspects of

literacy, political or not: the roles parents and family play in how we read the world, the ways different

kinds of sponsors can pinpoint gaps in knowledge to determine our opinions, and the distinctions among

our individual backgrounds that either provide us with or force us to find a path toward literacy. After all,

“in order to be, it must become” (Freire 57).

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 Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 49, no. 2 (May
1998): 165-185.

Cao, Xiaoxia., and Paul R Brewer. “Political comedy shows and public participation in politics.”
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Dinas, Elias. “Opening ‘Openness to Change’: Political Events and the Increased Sensitivity of Young
Adults.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 4, 2013, pp. 868–882. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/23612064. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Classics, 2017.

Gee, James. Literacy and Education. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015.

Gidengil, Elisabeth, et al. “Political Socialization and Voting: The Parent-Child Link in Turnout.” Political
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Lange, Dirk. “Between political history and historical politics: fundamental forms of historical and
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Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa, Varvantakis, Christos, Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. “Talking politics in everyday

family lives.” Contemporary Social Science, 12:1-2, 68-83. 2017.

O’Brien, Bridget. Personal interview. 1 Nov. 2020.

O’Brien, Bridget. Personal text message. 9 Oct. 2020.

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Zlotnick, Craig and Karen Zlotnick. Personal interview. 2 Dec. 2020.

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