A sociologist criticized calls on the left for Americans to cut off family members and other loved ones who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, saying such measures were extreme and unhealthy for society.
“I don’t think that’s a great piece of advice. I mean, it sounds like a cult,” Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, told Fox News Digital.
“Cults often encourage people to cut off their family and friends just to kind of keep people within the cult. So I don’t take that advice as worth following,” he added.
Wilcox was responding to advice given to Harris voters on MSNBC, just days after the election, where one guest suggested that it would be better for these voters’ mental health to distance themselves from their Trump-supporting loved ones over the holidays.
“There is a push, I think just a societal norm that if somebody is your family, that they are entitled to your time, and I think the answer is absolutely not,” Yale University chief psychiatry resident, Dr. Amanda Calhoun, told MSNBC host Joy Reid last week.
“So if you are going to a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you, like what you said, against your livelihood, it’s completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why, you know, to say, ‘I have a problem with the way that you voted, because it went against my very livelihood and I’m not going to be around you this holiday,’” she said.
“I think it may be essential for your mental health,” Calhoun added.
This advice also drew support from “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin on Tuesday.
“I really do feel that this candidate, you know, President-elect Trump, is just a different type of candidate, from the things he said and the things he’s done and the things he will do, it’s more of a moral issue for me and I think it’s more of a moral issue for other people,” she said. “We’re just — you know, I would say it was different when, let’s say, [George W.] Bush got elected. You may not have agreed with his policies, but you didn’t feel like he was a deeply flawed person, deeply flawed by character, deeply flawed in morality.”
Essays have also cropped up online from liberals boasting they are canceling their holiday get-togethers with Trump voters in their family because they are completely devastated by the election results.
Wilcox recommended families in these situations focus on points of agreement and try to keep the peace over the holidays by avoiding charged political topics when possible. But if politics do come up, empathy and respect can go a long way.
“I think many of us – my family’s split between Republicans and Democrats – When people are getting together for Thanksgiving or the holidays, you’ve got to be more diplomatic,” he told Fox News Digital.
The sociologist suggested employing a communication skill called a “soft startup” where you set a positive tone by acknowledging the merits of your relative’s concerns before politely explaining your own views, without attacking the other person or their preferred political candidate.
Wilcox said these conversations can be even more difficult in today’s society because many Americans have replaced politics as their “religion.”
“I would say for too many Americans, politics has replaced religion as their primary orientation to the good life and as their primary tribe, if you will. And so that’s why I think it’s particularly challenging today for people who invest almost religious meaning in politics to make their peace with family members who don’t share their politics,” he said.
More Americans are increasingly sticking to their political tribe, even in marriage, Wilcox said.
He cited a recent study, documented by the Institute for Family Studies, which showed that mixed political marriages — where spouses hold different political views from each other — are rapidly declining in America. The study found that 30% of couples were politically mixed in 2016, but that number dropped to just 21% by 2020.
“If marriage is a kind of barometer of the relationship between politics and family life, we are seeing fewer mixed political marriages today,” Wilcox said.
He also cited research from Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer that found that “over a quarter of Americans are estranged from family members, and that differences over values are among the chief causes of those estrangements,” according to the Institute for Family Studies.
“I think that’s tragic because from my perspective, charity begins at home. Our primary obligations are towards our immediate family members, emotionally, practically and financially,” Wilcox said.
“When you’re old and infirm or you’re sick and destitute, I don’t think most of us are able to turn to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party to take care of us,” he added. “So I think people also just need to put things in perspective about who’s going to be there for you when you’re at your greatest need.”
Fox News’ Gabriel Hays and Alexander Hall contributed to this report.