Many young Appalachians, regardless of later political affiliation, can recall the childhood moments they learned how free they were to voice their own thoughts about contentious topics with family members. Julia Pritt, 24, originally from Hurricane, West Virginia, recalled her excitement the week gay marriage was legalized in June 2015. Pritt and her mother were driving to visit her mamaw and extended family that summer. “We were talking about it in the car,” she said. “And I remember, she told me not to bring it up when we got there.” 

Pritt did experience strong objection to gay marriage from some of her extended family. However, before the Supreme Court opinion had come down, Pritt had a different conversation with Mamaw, the family matriarch. “I remember my mamaw saying, ‘I never understood why that’s such an issue for people because that’s love. And that’s beautiful.’” Pritt remembered how her grandmother had spoken about gay marriage when she herself came out as bisexual: “I felt comfortable to have an explicit conversation with her even though it was really hard and scary.”

Within the national media, stories about adults who feel their children have shut them out over political or social issues are common. But for some young adults, there is eagerness to start those discussions, especially about issues that directly impact them, like poverty, workers’ rights and gender. Sometimes, that can be difficult.

When Grace Davis, now 20, was 17 and living with her devout Catholic grandparents in Hurricane, she was reading articles about abortion, which she was aware her grandparents opposed under any circumstances. But she was compelled to tell her grandfather how she felt: “we shouldn’t ban it, because even though they’re banning it, they’re really not. They’re just — like, I had to explain to him that they’re banning it being done safely.” With a “seventeen-year-old explaining things to a seventy-something-year-old man,” she said, the conversation got “a little heated.”

Others echoed Davis’ experience. Levi Cyrus, 23, a registered Independent who described himself as “open minded,” takes issue with his family’s belief that “[Trump is] the best option for everybody” and voiced his own thoughts. “That conversation didn’t go over well,” he said. Now he sometimes avoids talking politics: “I don’t like being put in the middle of things.”

Cyrus said he believes people of all generations are too focused on issues of identity rather than putting resources towards issues that affect everyone, such as policing, homelessness and schools. He says his experience as a customer service representative has taught him that “everybody wants the same thing…living somewhere where you don’t have to worry about your next meal.” 

Media and the political moment have super-charged conversations 

Many of those who spoke to 100 Days in Appalachia noted that political discussions had become harder to have over time, and some attributed this difficulty to Fox News, the Trump presidency or social media. 

Reid, a 22-year-old librarian in eastern Kentucky, asked his last name be withheld to protect his privacy. He said has noticed a change in the way older Appalachians learn information. “I find especially with older people that I work with, not just my relatives…they don’t know how to sort misinformation because they have, at least a decade ago, decided that this was a trusted source. They haven’t re-decided if it’s still a trusted source now.” Pritt mentioned that a lack of broadband internet in rural areas means many older Appalachians may be relying only on cable TV for information, with no chance to evaluate different sources online.

One study from Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review found that the “prior exposure effect” — a phenomenon in which the more a person sees a claim made, the more accurate they think it is — is stronger in older adults. This may create outrage over a handful of flashpoint issues. 

Reid, who is transgender, explained that while trans issues are important to his everyday life — “my ability to access health care, and my ability to attend my friends’ weddings and to see people and to have a community and to exist” — his family members are stuck on his identity as a point of debate. 

“It doesn’t matter what conversation I’m in, even if I don’t bring it up, I tend to have the adults in my life, especially my relatives, bringing it up for me,” he said. Not only are arguments over “why trans people exist” dehumanizing, said Reid, they dominate conversation and exhaust him. “Not to look at the concepts with sort of rose colored glasses,” he said with a pained laugh, “but I think I’d like to be able to go to a cookout and not get berated.”

Some young people find alternative partners for conversation and information outside of their parents or grandparents. For Grace Davis, it was a campus pastor who was willing to have an expansive conversation about abortion. Still, she says, she doesn’t know “if I would have those types of conversations with like, anybody older than me, without…reading the room.” When talking to members of older generations, she censures herself: “‘Is this actually a good idea to think these thoughts out loud?’” 

Intergenerational communication is a two-way street 

Reaching out for conversation happens in reverse, too, with some older adults trying to stay involved with the young people in their lives. Julia’s mother, Dreama Buck, 54, recalled her approach to talking about politics with her children. In 2010, Buck went back to school to become a college English teacher and brought the classroom discussion techniques home. “As I was processing critical thinking and research skills, I was sharing those with them and really instilled in them that you can argue whatever you want to argue, but you better bring the receipts,” she said. 

These days, Buck chats often with her kids’ friends, who are typically open to discussing political and social issues with her. Buck also prioritizes asking clarifying questions “when I feel like I don’t know enough about what they’re talking about, or if maybe I disagree.”

She said that while, in her view, older adults might be more likely to be closed-minded, she’s seen the tendency across generations and believes social media algorithms contribute to that. Buck attributed this attitude to “an unwillingness or maybe just a lack of awareness that things that are outside [one’s] experience can be true.” 

Chris Bailey, 36, is the campus minister who has become a conversation partner for Davis. He enjoys conversations with college students in his ministry group because they are “still open to experience.” 

“There’s a lot more work that has to be done to deconstruct and get at the heart of a real deep talk with someone who’s more certain of their beliefs,” Bailey said. He explained that being willing to learn about each other, and developing a “relational foundation,” is key to intergenerational conversations.

Hovering over much discussion of intergenerational conflict is the assumption that young people are too quick to pull away from older relatives over “differences of opinion.” Several young people expressed that a difference of political opinion, when it concerns identity issues or civil rights, can cross the line into personal disrespect. For young people who “feel unsafe around someone or feel degraded to such a degree that their humanity is being taken from them, that’s not a relationship that [they] need to pursue,” Bailey said.

Young Appalachians emphasized their longing to have conversations with older generations that have shared goals of understanding and listening with curiosity, habits they are working to develop, too.

Alex Monday, 24, a lifelong West Virginian, found she was unable to have “polite discussions” with most family members growing up. When she was young, she felt she was “the only person to defend me at any point. So I became a fierce defender.” She credits therapy with helping her have complex conversations as an adult: “communication errors happen all the time, you’re going to hurt your friends’ feelings…that’s always going to happen in any relationship, regardless of everything. It’s having the resolve to sit and talk about it [that’s important].” 

Monday is still learning, and knows perception isn’t foolproof. She recalled a moment recently where she was at the mall and saw two men wearing t-shirts with pro-gun slogans and trucker hats — she assumed they had nothing in common with her. 

“And then they put their hands in each others’ back pockets, and then they kissed, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was so wrong about you.’” 

Originally from Virginia, Hannah Wilson-Black is an environmental writer and 2023 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow based in Huntington, West Virginia. Her work has appeared in Grist, Terrain.org, and The Daily Yonder. She is at work on a novel about a disgraced coal baron.