My mum is pretty much the same! Never outwardly anti socialist, she's always been so completely apolitical that she kinda missed the entire Cold War, she at most says that communism is a bit out there and won't ever work, and when it comes to actual issues and policy, she is easily the most socialist liberal I've ever met. Being a mom and thus a Mama Bear seems to have become a central part of her self image when she had kids, then even more so when us kids were teenagers and she took a job working for a local school as support staff/general dogsbody where she often ends up responsible for all the special needs kids' extra supports, not because she has any formal training, but just because she raised me and I was a "quirky" kid, and she often ends up protecting these kids from her coworkers who abuse and neglect them simply out of desperation and frustration and a lack of training and knowledge, and so she seems to have taken a political view that centers on whatever is best for the good lives and personal autonomy of all children and the people who care for them, which tends to produce a lot of socialist and youth-liberation stances... and she's way more passionate about education policy now, which leads to her having opinions and a willingness to discuss them on everything in regional politics, which she didn't so much when I was younger. She's probably never gonna call herself a socialist and she's always gonna squirm a little when I call myself a Bolshevik or a "tankie", but she's way better than my dad, and for a child of the Cold War... she's one of the better ones, for sure. My dad is more... pretty much what you'd expect from any Anglosphere man his age, who was a child during the Cold War and still a younger adult when it supposedly ended. Rabidly anti communist and very conservative, but... he started to tear himself away from such rabid and consistent conservatism when the US conservatives became straight up fascists and their rhetoric started to leach into other Anglosphere conservative parties and movements, so I have hope that he can grow and change with my mom's help and me doing my best to be less argumentative and meet him where he's at. He might never agree with me that Lenin had a point, but he'll agree that Hitler had to go and the Soviet Union was instrumental in the Allied victory, y'know? (I give this example because the one thing we both like is Eastern Front war movies. We both like dead Nazis, he doesn't care who's killing 'em and I like seeing the Soviets as the good guys in a war movie. I also enjoy the more common and often more lighthearted Western Front stuff with him, because again, dead Nazis are good fun no matter who's killing them, I just prefer the Soviets doing it.) He'll never be a communist, but at least he can admit fascism is worse and given the choice of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union I can trust he'd pick the reds. So, y'know, he could be worse and he can get better, I think.

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