Young People's Political Curiosity: Question‐Asking Before and After the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

ABSTRACT Children's questions provide a window into both their existing knowledge and what they want to understand. Here, we examined young people's questions about politics and the 2024 U.S. presidential election as a window into political development and meaning‐making during a moment of political change. In a pre‐registered study, we surveyed politically and socioeconomically diverse U.S. parents of 4‐ to 17‐year‐old children ( N = 338) in the weeks before and after election day. Pre‐election, parents reported up to three questions their children had asked about (i) politics broadly and (ii) the election specifically; post‐election, parents reported up to three questions since election day. For each question, parents reported the child's age and their own response. Parents reported N = 2,373 questions, with questions common among even the youngest children. By linking features of questions and responses to child age, timepoint (pre‐ vs. post‐election), and children's political contexts, we examined developmental and election‐based changes in children's political curiosities, and how children's political contexts shaped these trajectories. Our results reveal that children's political curiosities are meaningfully varied and dynamic, and that features of children's questions often predicted whether parents shared political opinions, more so than did aspects of parents’ own political views. Notably, parents reported that both they and their children initiate political conversations, but that children were most likely to do so, particularly near the election. Together, this work underscores the content of early‐life political discussions as an underutilized yet powerful lens into political socialization as it unfolds in everyday family life.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Social Development, 2026 · DOI ↗