Many of the things I read in the national media don’t resonate as true for where I live in northeast Indiana. And that is usually a good thing.

Take, for example, a recent CNN report on attitudes children have about playing with other children. Children have been playing with each other since time immemorial with the usual mix of sheer fun and the occasional contretemps that is quickly settled, mostly without the involvement of an adult.

Children who find themselves in a situation with other unknown children generally make friends quickly and immediately take off into improvised play. There seems to be an innocence in how they accept new playmates and get down to the business of having fun.

But maybe not so much anymore, if the CNN report is to be believed. The network interviewed some 10-year-old children about their willingness to go to a house of the other political party. The results are disturbing.

This was not a scientific study with a carefully stratified sample; it was a series of one-on-one interviews by an academic psychologist. That doesn’t invalidate the results, especially given the unsettling answers received.

After showing images of houses with Harris or Trump signs, the children were asked if it would be OK for them to play with children living in homes of the other party. Most were OK with that, as would be expected, but a significant minority refused. And it wasn’t equally balanced between the two parties.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported the major finding was “children in the study were polarized, with what researchers called more extreme responses from the blue state children than the red state children.”

“Democrat-leaning children were approximately nine times more likely (or 800% percent more likely) to express negative emotions (nervous/worried or angry/frustrated) about Donald Trump than Republican-leaning children were likely to express about Kamala Harris,” according to the CNN website.

The 800% discrepancy between Democrat and Republican households is disturbing. CNN attributed this to the fact Donald Trump has been in the public eye much longer than Kamala Harris. Could the anti-Trump bias of many national media outlets have something to do with it?

What are these children hearing at home? One adjective used for Donald Trump was “pure evil” while Kamala Harris was described by one youngster as a “liar.” Are they merely overhearing their parents discussing the election or are they being intentionally schooled?

Maybe it is just a sign of our troubled times young children are reflecting the partisan vitriol motivating their parents. That doesn’t make it right.

Parents have an important responsibility for the upbringing of their children, much more than the state or the public school system. This should be obvious but the multiple news reports of parents challenging school boards over what their children are being taught, indoctrination to these parents’ way of thinking, tells us that even this simple tenet of the social structure is up for debate in our brave new world.

I stand resolutely on the side of the parents in this debate; whose children are they, anyway? That said, I implore parents (and grandparents like me) to take notice of the responsibility that comes with this authority. They have the duty to instruct their children in the moral standards demanded of good people and responsible citizens, and the responsibility to model exemplary behavior in the home.

These children didn’t come up with terms like “pure evil” and “liar” after extensive independent research. They heard these epithets at home. I know I can be an unrealistic dreamer at times, but shouldn’t the Republican children have offered positive comments about Trump and the Democrat children positive comments about Harris rather than such negative ones about the other?

The good news here is parents still are significantly influential with their children. The bad news is too many parents are abusing this influence by fostering negative and unhelpful attitudes in young, formative minds.

None of these interviews were conducted in Indiana, but we shouldn’t assume our households are exempt. I do have one datapoint that may provide encouragement, though. I am a volunteer for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Real Men Read program. During the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, I heard only one negative political comment from a young student. We weren’t allowed to read during the 2020 campaign period due to COVID restrictions so I can’t comment on that election, but it will be interesting what I may hear later this month when I return to my assigned school. I will go out on a limb and predict that I won’t hear any negative statements.

If our republic is to survive, it will be on the backs of informed, well-intentioned citizens who understand the need for civility in civil society. Our democracy cannot survive without it.

Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Send comments to [email protected].