A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that political beliefs are increasingly linked to the number of children Americans choose to have. The findings indicate that while conservative individuals tend to maintain birth rates near historical averages, left-leaning individuals are having significantly fewer children. This demographic trend provides evidence that differing birth rates are a main driver of recent fertility declines in the United States.
The data revealed a pronounced change in how political beliefs relate to family size. For individuals born in the early 1900s, political orientation had almost no association with the number of children they had. However, beginning with the cohort born between 1943 and 1947, a massive divergence emerged.
“We expected these results, but not to such a dramatic extent,” Fieder told PsyPost. From the mid-century cohorts onward, individuals with right-wing political views maintained birth rates at or slightly above the replacement level. The replacement level, typically considered to be 2.1 children per woman, is the rate needed for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next without immigration.
In contrast, the birth rates of left-wing individuals dropped sharply, falling well below the replacement level in the more recent cohorts. The authors noticed this drop aligns with historical changes in family planning. “We found that the gap began with the introduction of modern contraception,” Fieder said.
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Low birth rates are a problem for capitalism, not humanity.
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When given a choice, women choose to have fewer babies.
When given a choice, women choose to have fewer babies.
No? Most women say they’d have more kids if they could afford it.
Most women say they’d have more kids if they could afford it.
When women have access to education, career opportunities, and contraception, birth rates drop.
Sure, but even then they stay above replacement. You need the economic calculus of an urbanized capitalist economy to get the shitshow seen in most of the developed world.
Wow, you really linked to the Institute of Family Studies?
The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) is a conservative “think tank” which, according to its website, has the expressed mission “to strengthen marriage and natural family and advancing the well-being of children through research and public education.”[1] Research from IFS and its employees are frequently cited and published in both conservative outlets such as National Review [2] and more mainstream ones, like the Washington Post.[3]. “IFS is a successor to the Ridge Foundation, through which Bradley and others used to support Wilcox’s National Marriage Project.”[1] The Institute for Family Studies says that its “commitment is rooted in the social-science fact that children are most likely to thrive when they are raised by their own married biological parents. The underlying premise of its work is that families and communities, freedom and prosperity, and the political order itself – both at home and abroad – are all critically dependent upon the existence of a strong healthy, pervasive marriage culture among the citizenry.”[4]
IFS is also an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a web of state pressure groups that denote themselves as “think tanks” and drive a right-wing agenda in statehouses nationwide.
That’s not a credible source at all.
Affordability is only 36% of the stated reasons women aren’t having more children.
The other reasons are: still looking for the right spouse, lifestyle or career, family is still growing, and trouble conceiving.
There’s many reasons and just shrugging and saying it’s the economy doesn’t explain enough.
I mean there are many reasons, but it’s still obvious from the data that a more accommodating society (both economically and otherwise) would have more children. It’d be easy to argue, for example, that “still looking for the right spouse,” is at least partially caused by delays in entering long-term relationships until it’s financially viable, and this also ties into “trouble conceiving,” because people are expected to spend the years they’d have the easiest time conceiving advancing their careers so they can provide a decent life to their future children. It’d also be absurd to suggest the necessity of two-income households hasn’t contributed to women prioritizing their careers over starting families*. What “affordability” really means here is the proportion of women who’d be able to have more children right now if not for money; it doesn’t count knock-on effects that boil down to unaffordability. Modern urbanized societies are deeply unkind to mothers in ways that need to be untangled before current birth rates can be presented as the results of freedom.
*To be clear, this is perfectly fine as long as it’s a free choice, but clearly in most cases it’s an attempt to optimize against social and economic conditions. Current birth rates aren’t any freer a choice than those of two centuries ago; both are responses to social conditions that make one choice much more optimal compared to others.
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wait, so you’re saying milking people for ALL the cash is causing people to not be able to afford… kids? Wow. I mean, this is a shock. A shock i tell you.
I’ve been fed that line that I’m selfish for not wanting kids. I ask them why they had theirs. They’ll feed me some BS, but we all know the majority had them for selfish reasons.
Not having kids with the state of the world the way it is is pretty selfless. I respect that
Yeah the choice to have or not have children should be regarded with much more respect by everyone.
Not everyone in here is child-free by the way.
I assume most of the people here have kids.
Ah so you decided to feed all of us the line that we’re selfish for having kids in a comment where you’re complaining about being told you’re selfish for not having kids.
Thanks for clarifying.
I said the majority of people have kids for selfish reasons. Why did you have kids?
Does it matter? We shouldn’t judge others’ personal decisions for their own lives, right?
I judge those that judge me, but thanks for clarifying. I never said there was anything wrong with having a kid for selfish reasons. I just think it’s important to be honest with one’s self.
When we put our thoughts out into the world, sometimes people will respond to them.
I hope you have a great end to your week and have a relaxing weekend.
Just like animals, humans don’t like to breed in captivity.
When given the choice, women choose to delay having children and they don’t have as many children as they were forced to before contraception was available.
The economy doesn’t help, but it’s not the main driving force.
You will find that men agree to the same extent.
The descent into Idiocracy has begun.
Right? Like, I understand not wanting to have kids, it’s not that it’s an irrational decision. But that’s the whole point of the intro to Idiocracy. If only irrational people are pumping out kids, it’s only a few generations before the population is composed entirely of the irrational and their kids.
Take it to the next step then - what option other than allowing women to have the choice do we have?
I’m not convinced to start stripping women of their right to choose because we might become a plot of a movie.
This is a manufactured problem being used to control women.
Why do you think abortion is illegal again in some states in the US?
Because having a kid gives people a lot of leverage over you. Suddenly, you need to think twice about leaving a shit job or a shit spouse or a shit anything else.
That’s true, but women should still be allowed to choose that for themselves.
Having a kid can also be motivation to leave those situations.
Uh, I think you’ve radically misconstrued my point.
I’m asking you clarifying questions.
Not really? I didn’t say anything about what people should or shouldn’t be allowed to do. Obviously women should have the autonomy to not have children if they so choose. I’m just observing that, like with every choice, there are consequences.
Children born to conservative parents arent doomed to be conservative the rest of their lives.
I don’t like this insinuation that it’s women’s fault if conservatives (correction: the “irrational”) take over because they are choosing to not have children.
I know many children of conservative parents, and many of them are, in fact, conservative. Not that they’ve given it much thought. Still, it contributes to a rightward trend.
But when did I say anything about anything being anyone’s “fault”? Again, you’re misconstruing my point.
Can we all just admit that Mike Judge and Etan Cohen are prophets?
This sounds like the study was funded by anti abortion losers. Contraception isn’t the problem, its billionaires, lobbyists, and politicians making it utterly unaffordable and morally wrong in multiple ways, but only left leaning people would even consider holding back on having children based on how much suffering they would guarantee their own children by merely giving birth to them.
Also correlation is not causation. People living in denser cities both tend to lean left and have a higher cost of living, which makes a family less practical. People living in rural areas tend to lean right, have a lower cost of living, and live closer to more family, which makes starting a family of their own much easier.
According to the research I’ve seen most people don’t have kids because they don’t want to have kids. Significant amount also can’t afford it. Everything else (like worrying about wars, climate change, healthcare etc.) is not that significant.
True, if anything, there are a lot of people who have kids and wish they didn’t.
“People having kids and wishing they didn’t” is due to a lack of options, social pressure, ostracism for choosing abortion, the stigma of remaining childless, and a whole bunch of propaganda.
People choosing not to have kids because they don’t want them is a relatively modern lifestyle.
For most of history, people having kids wasn’t so much a choice as it was something that happened to them.
I feel so guilty for having my kids. In all my life I never expected this to be reality. I hope they forgive me.
People have been having children in terrible conditions for a long, long time. I like to focus on the small joys when I start to feel this way about having kids.
Remember the joy you see on their faces when you’re spending time with them. Celebrate their cleverness and their love. Focus on building your real community around you for them and for yourself. Help neighbors. Grow plants. Reconnect with the good parts of life.
We all make decisions with what we know at the time. It’s easy to beat ourselves up when we have more information and wisdom than we did before.
Very kind of you to say, thank you.
Implies that right wing parents will necessarily have right wing children. Nothing spooks kids out of becoming right wing like having to live and deal with narcissistic hypocrisy up close daily. Kids are not a reflection of their parents, they are a reaction to their parents.
My parents are life-long Republicans. Triple Trumpers. They aren’t the flag waving MAGAs or anything insane, they just fully believe all the decades of propaganda like “vote R if you believe in freedom and law and order and the working man. And Democrats are all insane evil people that think schools should have litter boxes in class.” or whatever the shit all is.
I’m very Leftist or Progressive or whatever you wanna call me.
It is SO DAMN FRUSTRATING talking to them about anything at all that is even tangentially related to a hot political take. You can visibly observe the “Thought Stopping Cliche” kicking in and any further discussion is over.
It really is the hypocrisy. You question things like “pro life” and how statistically more women and babies die due to medical neglect and very preventable issues with abortion being demonized and a legal issue. If you keep pushing you eventually hit the wall of the hypocrisy where they really don’t care about all the deaths because “it’s just wrong and if people die it’s their fault” as if people are lining up to get medical abortions for funzies.
And on and on. You point out the facts and statistics of how detrimental a conservative policy is and it’s always met with victim blaming, whataboutism, straw men and all the other cliches.
That, among all the other things, and just paying attention and giving a damn about other people pushed me further and further left.
I went Left of my Republican parents, and my son is even more Left than me.
In truth, I didn’t reject my parent’s politics, I just developed my own, using my Critical Thinking Skills, something I noticed that Conservatives aren’t good at. They have to be told what to believe, because what they’re told to believe doesn’t make sense, and nobody with decent Critical Thinking Skills would come to Conservative conclusions…unless they were Sociopathic and Corrupt.
my father and SO dad are fanatics. We could not be more different. I hate them sooo much.
Yet I know a (edit: right-wing) Mormon young adult who speaks and acts exactly like his (edit: right-wing) Mormon father who is a narcissistic hypocrite. Sometimes they are a direct reflection – usually due to brainwashing from birth, as is done with most religionist families.
My point was that its not at all a guarantee, or even good odds. You can’t assume the political alignment of someone by who their parents are. A singular counterexample isn’t what you’re looking for. That person could even have estranged siblings, did you ask about that?
You stated “Kids are not a reflection of their parents, they are a reaction to their parents.” as an absolute, not as a statistic. Perhaps you meant otherwise, and if so, no worries and I concede the point.
I get your sentiment. I find it optimistic, actually, and hope that the human race continues to become considerably more skeptical of any dogmatic ideologies, rejects them, and lives their life in peace. I have taught my own child to think for themself, that while I may have my own notions about things, they should do their own research and proper consideration of any given topic to form their own opinion. I, for one, have tried to do my part to instill such critical thinking.
By reaction, i mean the sum total of their relationship with their parents. Whether they were the golden child, spoiled, neglected, whatever. Parents very often treat one kid more favorably than the other, and that teaches certain lessons on accident. I don’t find it surprising that the golden child takes after their parents for example, but it doesn’t mean their less favored siblings did. And don’t count out the influence on teachers, who can also teach unintended lessons on accident.
I was replying to the main article that was like was sounding like this was an automatic W for right wingers, when its much more complicated than that.
If there’s evidence that kids are necessarily following their parents political beliefs, id like to see it. But i doubt it, because that would imply the age gap doesnt exist in politics.
So far, indicators for turning right wing have to do with personality elements like fear of new things. Thats not necessarily a nature-by-birth thing - life experience influences this, drug exposure, and so on. Id argue that humans in childhood are predisposed to like exploring new things and then something happens for them to unlearn it.
I also dont take it as a optimist thing. I think its more of an always and forever thing about humans. Its impossible to genocide right wingedness out of the population, and still impossible to do the other way around. Because humans adapt to the life they’re given, and not to the life that their parents think they’re giving them.
But that’s actually true. Most red states keep being red, most red areas stay red. If what you said was true, states would change party every generation
People move, all the time. Often to where opportunities are. California wasn’t always the most populous state. Carpetbaggers, gold rush, dust bowl, and so on and so forth. Take a look at historical election maps. Geography isn’t a good measure for this idea as you’re introducing a whole lot of other variables that aren’t related.
Or the kids left never to return. Its why halmark made so many city girl return home movies. It appeals to that demographic.
Yes yes we all have seen Idiocracy.
We see how fucked up the world is and don’t feel ok with bringing more into it
Living in a conservative hellscape, I have so much trauma I’d never bring another to deal with this shit into the world.
How long before we are just mass growing babies in petri dishes and decanting bottles on an assembly line like brave new world?
Considering the attack on IVF, I don’t think that’s what conservatives have in mind for the solution to this supposed problem.
Yeah they clearly plan on the easier, cheaper, and more vile option: forcing pregnancy onto people via denial of access to contraceptives
That’s way more expensive than forcibly impregnating imprisoned women. Once we put all these psycho lefties into the camps, there will be plenty of worthless childless women who can be put to work restocking our wage-slave peasant numbers. They’re currently working on the means by which to round them up. We got official “trump derangement syndrome” diagnoses in the works. We got impossibly high prices on everything, which forces people to do crimes of survival. Anyone saying any left wing thoughts can be imprisoned for life on terrorism charges. They already started doing the life imprisonment for people who have ever written down anything left of center, but they’re still working on forced identification of everyone on the internet. Once the “age verification” shit gets worked out and they know exactly who posted what, it’ll be super easy to round up all the lefties.
Eventually the only escape will be suicide. If it came down to it, I’d end things on my terms rather than be enslaved to be a baby maker.
We need to invoke the second amendment before that can happen. We need people for the revolution
I 100% do not want to be responsible for bringing new life onto this fucking planet. I’m already fixed and my wife and I will be adopting.
I love that we have that choice nowadays. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to always risk pregnancy every time a couple has sex.
Getting fixed wasn’t just a form of birth control either. My wife is diabetic and was about to join an experimental treatment trial but was rejected because we didn’t have kids and might choose to one day. Nipped that in the bud and now she’s in and doing much better.
Love to hear your wife was able to get into that trial and she’s doing better!!
Oh no.
Anyway.
Pretty much, in meat-space the only people ive seen who actually think this is a problem are conservative bellends or economists.
Don’t worry, Christians are capitalizing on widespread porn
addictionuse by suggesting men can reclaim their power by saving their valuable sperm inside their balls.This isn’t a joke.
Edit: I used addiction wrong, porn use can be associated with sex based compulsivity but is not indicative of an addiction.
Thank you for bringing this up!
Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction, You Should, Too
Over recent years, numerous studies have begun to suggest that there is more to the story than just porn. Instead, we’ve had growing hints that the conflicts and struggles over porn use have more to do with morality and religion, rather than pornography itself. I’ve covered this surge of research in numerous posts and articles.
Now, researchers have put a nail in the coffin of porn addiction. Josh Grubbs, Samuel Perry, and Joshua Wilt are some of the leading researchers on America’s struggles with porn, having published numerous studies examining the impact of porn use, belief in porn addiction, and the effect of porn on marriages. And Rory Reid is a UCLA researcher who was a leading proponent in gathering information about the concept of hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5. These four researchers, all of whom have a history of neutrality, if not outright support of the concepts of porn addiction, have conducted a meta-analysis of research on pornography and concluded that porn use does not predict problems with porn, but that religiosity does.
Right, I misused addiction — but my point still stands. Christians are trying to convince young men that life force is stored in the balls, and jerking off diminishes that life force.
I never understood that line of thought. If you need to “hold onto your life source” then get a vasectomy.
Somebody posted to Asklemmy the other day on the subject who wasn’t christian but instead referenced an islamic background.
Well Evangelists would love for Christianity to be more like Islam, so that tracks.
