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DanArmak comments on Solutions to Political Problems As Counterfactuals - Less Wrong
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A priori we should expect children to be genuine knowledge seekers, because in our EEA there would have been facts of life (such as which plants we poisonous) that were important to know early on. Our EEA was probably sufficiently simple and unchanging that once you were an adult there were few new abstract facts to know.
This "story" explains why children ask adults awkward questions about politics, often displaying a wisdom apparently beyond their age. In reality, they just haven't traded in their curiosity for signalling yet.
At least, that is one possible hypothesis.
I do expect children to be knowledge seekers in a sense. When they see their parents avoid a plant, they learn to avoid it also. When they hear them say that binge drinkers should go to church more, they learn to say this also. In both cases it is the same behavior.
The difference between our descriptions is that calling them "knowledge seekers" implies some kind of deliberate rationality, whereas they are really just executing the adaptation of copying their parents. Most children who repeat their parents' political views won't try to understand what the words actually mean, or check different sayings for consistency.
Of course this is a generally good adaptation to have. Even if children had better innate rational skills and even if they could fact-check their parents' words, there's little benefit to a dependant child from ever disagreeing with its parent on politicized issues.