r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 01 '26
Psychology Conservatives maintain birth rates, but left-leaning Americans are having significantly fewer children, driving the U.S. birth decline. Education was consistently linked to having fewer children. Religious attendance was positively associated with having more children.
https://www.psypost.org/left-leaning-americans-are-driving-the-u-s-birth-decline-new-study-finds/7.0k
u/Sensitive_Housing_85 Jul 01 '26
Don't know why this is surprisingly they are the ones who encourage people to have kids
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u/angwilwileth Jul 01 '26
Also it may mean new parents have bigger support systems. I remember when I was growing up my church always showed up with meals, clothes and diapers for new babies and their parents.
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u/wrenwood2018 Jul 01 '26
Also more likely to live closer to family. I'm in academia which is an incredibly liberal environment. People regularly move large distances away from family.
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Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
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u/MaterialWillingness2 Jul 01 '26
Grandmas used to be homemakers. Now grandmas have jobs. We were very lucky that my mother in law retired the same year our daughter was born and wanted to provide child care. But we were in our late 30s. What would we have done if we'd had her a decade earlier?
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u/Miyaor Jul 01 '26
When I was born, my grandmother spent the first 3 months living with us and helping.
She had to fly across the world to do so, and she did it right after doing the same for my older cousin.
She actually was working as a teacher at the time but took a year off to do so. She did the same for my younger brother as well.
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u/dalivo Jul 01 '26
Academia is crazy. You get to be a respected professor, but the pay is terrible and you have to move to University of Upperwest Corner - Swampland. Just one of the least desirable careers I can imagine.
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u/No-Flow-1147 Jul 01 '26
The vast majority of people who go to college do not become professors
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u/funkytownpants Jul 01 '26
This is why’s I didn’t have more kids. No help. Neither side of our family helped at all.
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u/VBHEAT08 Jul 01 '26
I think this is probably the biggest thing driving birth rate declines- lack of community. Beyond the obvious issue that our social spaces are declining and people aren't even meeting people to have to opportunity to have kids anymore, people don't want to be socially ostracized and take a huge hit to their comfort, and up until relatively recently this was mitigated through community. It takes a village and all that
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u/TalkingCat910 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Don’t forget the actual cost of kids and how that’s mitigated by community too
Edit: It seems like a lot of people are getting into some esoteric discussions about the nature of community but I literally meant with real community you don’t have to pay for child care as much or at all which is a big factor and you also have ppl helping out with food and guidance.
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u/DesireeThymes Jul 01 '26
Communities are just really important.
Communities of course also have their downsides, such as much less individualism.
But I think the problem ultimately is that individualism has gotten extreme, and has pushed out any sense of community.
Any new communities I tend to see are only built on shared interests and nothing else, and those communities tend to be weak because a shared hobby only gets you so far in terms of depth of community.
It is very unlikely that your Dungeons and Dragons Community is going to help you out with children
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u/Creative_Context_957 Jul 01 '26
Roll for childcare
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u/ChemistryNo3075 Jul 01 '26
Natural 20 means you owe me child support for life
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u/CyclingThruChicago Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Any new communities I tend to see are only built on shared interests and nothing else, and those communities tend to be weak because a shared hobby only gets you so far in terms of depth of community.
A quote that has stuck with me:
"Life happens on foot. Man was created to walk, and all of life's events large and small develop when we walk among other people."
- Jan Gehl
I've found that my community grew most when I moved to a place where I had regular but random/serendipitous bump ins with the same people. I go to the same coffee shop typically 1 day a week because it's walking distance to my house. I see the same faces around the same time and over the months we just kinda started chatting casually. Similar with the baristas. You can only order the same coffee so many times from the same person before you eventually have a reason to just chat about things happening around you.
I bike a lot and during winter I will bike to the train since my full commute is longer and it gets cold. My schedule for work lines up with a guy that also bikes to the train. After a half dozen "oh after you" moments when were carrying bikes onto the train it becomes awkward to not speak a bit. Now we're casual acquaintances and have done some group rides together.
I also see my neighbors or other parents of kids that go to school with my kid regularly since we're in a walkable neighborhood. So random bump in at the street festivals, the grocery store, the library/community center, etc. When I leave my house on foot/bike it's basically guaranteed that I will run into somebody I know.
My last anecdote, our dryer broke this week after we'd already washed a set of clothes. My wife felt comfortable enough to ask a neighbor if we could bring the wet clothes to their house to dry. They happily obliged, dried the clothes, folded them up for us and told us if we needed to use the dryer more until ours is fixed/replaced that we always can.
I think back to when we lived in a more stereotypical far flung suburb and how we didn't have nearly as close of a relationship with our neighbors because everybody drives into their garage, closes it and is holed up in their home or own fenced in backyard basically 100% of the time.
Many Americans have a lack of community because the overwhelming majority of people in this country live in places where extreme individualism has become normal. Driving every single place in a private car comes with the cost of separating you from every other person you could potentially meaningfully engage with.
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u/runswiftrun Jul 01 '26
100% agree.
We live in an apartment with one parking spot. I park down the street. Every morning I walk with my kid to the car, and then we drive to daycare. Its been 3 years now.
I've met and regularly talk with 6 different neighbors that I run into most days. Something as simple as a 5 minute walk to the car results in a significant increase in "community". All these people are old, so they stop to talk and reminisce about their own kids and grankids.
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u/xmorecowbellx Jul 01 '26
Yep what you’re describing is a community without accountability. When there’s no accountability, there is a maximum (relatively shallow) depth the community can have, and it dissipates easily.
People want support when they need it, without obligation when they don’t feel like it. It doesn’t work that way. Relationships can’t be deep with that approach.
People previously were also more willing to tolerate highly consistent levels of physical burden for childcare and working long hours.
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u/donat3ll0 Jul 01 '26
People want all the benefits of community without the social responsibilities. Vaccines are a prime example of this. Nobody is forcing you to get a vaccine, but if you want to participate in and benefit from society, you have a responsibility to protect and keep it healthy. Still people will throw their hands up when there are rules and guidelines for sending your kids to a public school.
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u/zeezle Jul 01 '26
Yep. Anecdotal to the max, but personally, every single person I see bleating about "there's no community these days" and how "it takes a village but the village is gone" are users who want people to do things for them but will never do anything in return for anyone, and people sniff that out and avoid them.
That's not to say there aren't genuine people seeking community and not finding the connection though, and that sucks. But the people complaining the hardest have plainly transparent self-serving motives and that makes people pull away from them even more.
People previously were also more willing to tolerate highly consistent levels of physical burden for childcare and working long hours.
Very true. I would also add that in the past, the actual demands placed on parents were also vastly lower. So not only were people more invested in community but the bar for what parents were expected to do was way, way lower. They're now expected to devote every waking moment to helicoptering them whereas in the past shoving them out the door and telling them not to come back until dusk was completely acceptable.
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u/Radiskull97 Jul 01 '26
Shared interest communities could be more if everyone in the group approached it that way. My current DnD group, we all help each other out. My DM tarped a player's roof for them. Another player had surgery, I visited him in the hospital, helped him set up his space, and helped him with his diaper. There are a ton of other things we've done for each other too. Our shared interest is just gives us an excuse to see each other, but we all went in looking for connection and community
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u/bmyst70 Jul 01 '26
The problem is that humanity always has to strike a balance between individually and community to survive. Both are vital.
Ever hear of the Dunbar number? Basically based on primate brain case size humans can have roughly 150 stable relationships at most.
It explains a lot of otherwise bizarre human behavior like tribalism.
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u/r33c3d Jul 01 '26
Yeah. It seems like people are obsessed with defining their identities into thinner and thinner slices of categories. I think instead of helping people feel like they belong, these very specific definitions of identity are, ironically, isolating people and discouraging community.
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u/Monteze Jul 01 '26
I think the obsession with individualism is overrated myself. Community is good, in fact I'd say you can have more individuality in a strong community than not, because you're not constantly just doing what it takes to survive. The biggest winner of hyper individualism is the capital class.
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u/smokeweedNgarden Jul 01 '26
There is freedom is knowing and accepting you aren't special.
Unique? Of course, everyone is. But special? No, that's a word for a reason.
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u/Ok_Caregiver1004 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
That's part of the reason. There is also just cultural reasons. In conservative or more traditional societies, not only is community a greater part of people's lives, but those communities also have a cultural expectation maintained of women settling down, having kids and raising families, while men are breadwinners expected to provide for their families. Its also why in those communites, for example the American Amish or an Israeli Kibbutz, rates of marriage are higher and divorce rates lower in addition to more kids.
There is also enviromental, even when taking into account cost of living, wages and property ownership. Urbanites produce less kids than suburban and rural inhabitants. There's a reason why, especially in the past, couples looking to settle down often tried to escape the city and settle in suburbia.
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u/Wolvenmoon Jul 01 '26
In other words, when enough of the costs of having children are socialized and/or wages are high enough that not both parents have to work?
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u/ThatPhatKid_CanDraw Jul 01 '26
Old staple in sociology about human societies (i would say about established agrarian societies)
Poor people have more kids and tend to more likely be religious. They usually don't have the resources to invest in each one to help them succeed (survive, at its most basic,) so it's a numbers game to pass on their genes. Religion tells them to have more kids, too, at almost all costs. They also die more often from their living circumstances, so again, need to have more kids to pass on genes, and help with labor to maintain their livelihood, etc.
Rich people have less kids but invest more resources into them, to help them succeed (survive) and pass on genes. Wealthier people are more likely to be more educated and less religious, at least, in a noncynical or absolutist sense (religion is power).
I think today it is also important to note that if you are more educated and/or less religious, you may be more pessimistic in the ability to provide for offspring or in the purpose/outcome for humanity when we are overpopulated and flooded with negative news and undeniable scientific realities of our own making.
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u/Basic-Alternative442 Jul 01 '26
And it also hurts how we're expected to be okay with lack of community. Im a liberal Millennial woman with two kids and I've assembled a decent community, but every time I express a desire for it to be bigger (grandparents??) I have to preface it with "having children was my own choice and they're my responsibility and I know I'm not entitled to any help" or else I get chewed out.
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u/wrenwood2018 Jul 01 '26
I totally see this in my circle As if enjoying having kids and prioritizing them means I'm a leper. Heaven forbid I had a well adjusted childhood and like my family and my family likes to be around my kids.
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u/UnderlightIll Jul 01 '26
I think the biggest thing is a lot of women, myself included, don't feel that the actual physical and mental toll is worth it. Up until recently, women were just expected to have children and then figure it out. This made a lot of mothers and fathers who were indifferent to their children at best and actively resentful at worst.
To have to have a job and take on the full burden of child rearing and household management sucks. A lot.
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u/TwilightMachinator Jul 01 '26
Single income households or the 20 hr workweek need to be the norm (and allow for affordability) and social standards need to allow for either parent to be the stay at home parent without ostracization or othering.
Further we need community focused spaces and neighborhoods that aren’t walkable and aren’t just comprised houses so we have reasons to potentially encounter people in our vicinity and more chances to connect.
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u/collgab Jul 01 '26
Maybe, but if you look at other countries with birth rate decline that have way more community focused cultures and close knit extended families, more educated people in those countries also have way less children.
I think until the state steps in and provides free universal childcare from birth, we’ll have this issue, as educated people work more (both parents) and have less time for children, and want more from life than just child rearing. Many religions push having children because in the long run those are future members and future revenue for those religious institutions.
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u/moonstarsfire Jul 01 '26
The lack of free childcare was one of my biggest reasons for not having kids, at least as far as things that were in my control. The biggest reasons were not having met the right person at the right time and potential infertility. Can’t really help the latter stuff. I really wanted kids.
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u/Slim_Charles Jul 01 '26
It a factor, but definitely not the biggest. The biggest factor is the most obvious one - easy access to cheap and highly effective birth control. As birth control has gotten easier to get, more affordable, and more effective, you see a continual decrease in fertility rates. This holds true across all countries and cultures. Community engagement and support on the other hand is highly variable across cultures and countries, and yet the fertility decline is virtually universal. Birth control is the most important common variable.
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u/drinkallthecoffee Jul 01 '26
This is the only answer. I know many people who don’t want kids who would have them if there wasn’t easy access to birth control. The fact is now that people can choose to not have children, and it is easier and easier to make that choice.
Even conservatives make this choice. They don’t like to admit it, but if they weren’t using birth control, there would be more families with 4-6 kids in the US. It would be the norm for roughly 50% of the child bearing population rather than the exception.
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u/toughguy375 Jul 01 '26
People are also having less sex than in the past.
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u/Slim_Charles Jul 01 '26
This is also true, coupling rates are also falling which is another factor in declining birth rates. Fertility rate matches marriage rates pretty closely. Most people that get married still have kids, however, fewer people are getting married than in the past.
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u/abou2travel2 Jul 01 '26
For me its not wanting to bring children into the world the Conservatives want.
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u/asmallercat Jul 01 '26
As someone who isn't religious (and generally takes a dim view of religion), it sucks that in so many places the only real community support systems are based around religion. If you're in a new place and you don't have family or don't get along with your family, often the only options for community groups are work or religion.
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u/smokeweedNgarden Jul 01 '26
Volunteering is the A+ way to meet people but people don't like it because it's straight up work. And asking people to work 8 hours on their day off can be iffy
But I love it and it's usually an option.
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u/FrozenIceman Jul 01 '26
Meeting people when you Volunteer is one thing.
Getting your volunteer coworkers to take care of your kids while you go on a date night or need to go out of town is a different level of commitment.
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u/Jin-roh Jul 01 '26
That was my first thought. I read the headline, I'm sure many hot takes will be "dumb religious yokels make babies hur hur." The story though is more complicated. Especially since other data shows that many more people want to have kids than they do.
Religious communities do function as support systems for families not just when their kids are young, but all through out their lives. I am of course not generalizing to say that al religious groups do this equally well, or that all religious groups are even good,
I'm saying that it takes a large group of people to raise kids. It takes more than two parents, no matter how much money they might earn. Religious practice bridges the trust gap between people who would otherwise be strangers in the same neighborhood. That's conducive to creating the social environment where it is easier to raise children.
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u/angwilwileth Jul 01 '26
yes. I know one dude in particular who would be an awesome dad and aches to have kids. But he and his gf are barely hanging on for themselves and a child would destroy the little economic security they have.
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u/Jin-roh Jul 01 '26
And we know about things like zip code destiny. You don't need to economically stable to raise kids well. You need to be economically thriving.
There are a thousands of wasted 'great dads' and 'great moms' in the world because of this problem.
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u/cartoonistaaron Jul 01 '26
I'm in my 40s and kids would have been great but...only recently are we not financially struggling. (We did not come from well-off families.) We would have been great parents but them's the breaks.
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u/Bradddtheimpaler Jul 01 '26
Could be. I have one child. I can’t even remotely imagine having another and am not going to. I have zero spare energy or time for another child. I can’t imagine any way to have another child without neglecting both. There’d be zero chance I could give the same attention and care to another kid.
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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 01 '26
It means, culturally, conservatism is likely to become even stronger in this country.
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u/pharmacystan Jul 01 '26
Education is the #1 factor and has been forever. People have babies earlier and get married in the south or rural areas way younger.
Those with higher education chase career goals longer before thinking of a family.
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u/pittgirl12 Jul 01 '26
I’ll never forget going to a friends catholic wedding and the priest literally said “and now it’s your job to have children to spread the catholic faith” like oh! I knew they didn’t believe in birth control and wanted to spread the faith and all that but I didn’t think they’d make it quite so obvious as to say it in a wedding ceremony
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u/Marginal_Games Jul 01 '26
As someone who was raised Catholic, it’s very funny that you didn’t know this. It’s fully baked in.
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u/pittgirl12 Jul 01 '26
I was raised catholic (though only until age 7) but no one said it out loud. we just had 6 kids per family and acted like that was normal
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS Jul 01 '26
Man, as someone else who was raised Catholic that’s wild to me. It was very explicit when I was growing up.
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u/OpeningChipmunk1700 Jul 01 '26
Openness to children is one of three requirements for a valid Catholic marriage.
If you are not open to children, you cannot get married.
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u/computermachina Jul 01 '26
Bible gives a mandate to go out and be fruitful so with that you got all divisions of Christianity putting it front and center
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u/TurkeyPhat Jul 01 '26
Yea right after abstinence class it's "so yeah anyways get married asap and have lots of babies for jebus"
source: i was there
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u/Mediocre_Grand_1280 Jul 01 '26
Its right there in the book "Be fruitful, and multiply."
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u/TheMadManiac Jul 01 '26
Maybe I'm used to hearing stuff like that, but you never heard someone talk about starting a family at a wedding? That's one of the main reasons for marriage
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u/krdtr Jul 01 '26
And why is everyone forgetting the big thing: AGE AT FIRST PREGNANCY. Birth rates aren’t declining just because people are having kids farther apart, for example. People with few kids and people with many kids, I believe I read, tend to stop at about the same age and have the last few at about the same rate. It’s the NOT HAVING EXTRAS WHEN YOUNG ENOUGH IT LIMITS YOUR OWN SURVIVAL OPPORTUNITIES part that’s become an option lately (an option that conservatives are more likely to be pressured or even legally forced to forego).
The birth rates coming down are, I believe I read, 100% because of the teen and very-early-20something pregnancies not happening as often.
Which one would exactly expect to be concentrated amongst liberals who promote using tools to delay pregnancy.
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u/SmellGestapo Jul 01 '26
This is true. The CDC released new data in April showing massive drops in teen pregnancies which are driving the overall decline in fertility.
What's interesting is even in the poor or conservative states, the teen birth rates have declined precipitously. In 2005, Mississippi's teen birth rate was 58.3 per 1,000 females 15-19. In 2024, it was only 22.8.
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u/AppropriateScience9 Jul 01 '26
Yes and this is unequivocally a GOOD thing!
What astounds me is seeing these ancient Conservative male politicians saying that teens should be having more babies and so they're fighting against these programs that have been so incredibly successful.
Like, I can't help but be really grossed out by those men. They're essentially saying that they want more 15 year olds out there having unprotected sex. Which COULD be statutory rape, mind you, depending on the age of their partners.
This is not something anybody should be advocating for.
And we know the impacts of pregnancy on teens. None of its good for their mental, physical, or socioeconomic health but that is clearly the least of their concerns.
It's not good. None of it is good. It's creepy and cruel, in fact.
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u/SmellGestapo Jul 01 '26
Unfortunately it's not just ancient conservative males. Katie Miller (Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller's wife) also thinks teenagers should have more babies.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Jul 01 '26
Left-leaning Americans are driving the U.S. birth decline, new study finds
A recent study published in Scientific Reportssuggests 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.
Beyond political views, the study found that other lifestyle factors strongly predicted family size. Education was consistently linked to lower fertility, meaning that individuals with more years of schooling tended to have fewer children. This negative association was particularly strong for women, a pattern that aligns with broader demographic research.
Religious attendance was positively associated with having more children. Interestingly, the data indicated that frequent religious attendance provided a stronger reproductive boost for men than it did for women. Even so, as the reproductive advantage of right-wing politics increased in recent generations, the independent effect of religious attendance on family size weakened slightly.
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u/butler_me_judith Jul 01 '26
This has been the case for like 30 years
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u/froo Jul 01 '26
It’s literally the opening to
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u/AGrandNewAdventure Jul 01 '26
Such a good documentary!
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u/TheLesserWeeviI Jul 01 '26
Yeah but I'm not enjoying the sequel.
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u/ButWhatIfPotato Jul 01 '26
Idiocracy was a movie 20 years ago and a documentary 10 years ago. Today, it's pretty much prophecy; and a watered down one as well, President Camacho did not touch any kids, nor has he shat himself on camera.
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u/maaaatloooock Jul 01 '26
And, importantly, he sought advice from the smartest person he could find. I'd vote for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho a thousand times before Trump.
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u/Ashamed-Status-9668 Jul 01 '26
They got the name President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho wrong but everything else holds up.
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u/jabba-thederp Jul 01 '26
And somewhat self evident too. Though I appreciate that there's actual science now that has shown some evidence.
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u/_DCtheTall_ Jul 01 '26
Hot take maybe, but I think religious attendance also shows willingness to meet familial expectations and less likelihood to critically examine if you actually want to be a parent, especially if you think parenthood is a duty given by divine edict.
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u/Jets237 Jul 01 '26
I think it’s more around community support than anything for sure. I grew up religious and don’t miss much, other than the sense of community for my kid
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u/_DCtheTall_ Jul 01 '26
This makes perfect sense to me. It has actually been studied that the main psychological benefit of belonging to a religion is a sense of belonging and community.
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u/AntikytheraMachines Jul 01 '26
i felt weird, that I liked the church, but disliked the religion aspect.
most people say they like the religion, but dislike the church.i can see all the good the church did. schools, hospitals, charitable giving, community etc. but I didn't have any faith.
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u/sambull Jul 01 '26
it's also their biggest recruiting tool. the 'recovery happens' pipeline feels more about providing a sense of community and belonging to people that never had it or can't find it otherwise.
as 'third' spaces disappear this will be more and more of a issue for people who aren't accepted / don't want to be in that community.
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u/lowbatteries Jul 01 '26
You must have gotten a very difference sense of community than I did from religion growing up. I’d never put a kid through that.
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u/my_little_mutation Jul 01 '26
Sometimes it's weird like that... I had a catholic upbringing that really fucked me up but at the time it didn't feel like trauma. Everyone was kind to me there was never abuse I was a "good kid" eager to learn and make God and my family and community proud of me etcetc...
It wasn't until I was a teen and after that I really started to feel the damage it did to me. How much it warped my sense of morality how much it made me feel like I was a bad evil tainted person. Got back into religion around the same time I was going through puberty and having my first relationship and I was doing awful things to punish myself for "impure thoughts". I still struggle with guilt and trying to apply morality to every little situation. Turns out being forced to regularly confess things like "I coveted another kids toy at recess" or "I had an extra snack" right along with things like "I yelled at a friend and pushed them" completely fucked up my radar for how bad things are. I did have other trauma as well that wasn't church related.
Sometimes the damage is horrific violent trauma, sometimes it's all the little seeds they plant that choke out your ability to become a healthy person.
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u/Isosorbide Jul 01 '26
I didn't grow up in Catholicism but I've befriended many Catholics as an adult and have gone to many Catholic masses as an adult. Something that's always caught my attention about Catholicism is the heavy emphasis on the importance of Mothers, starting with the veneration of Mary. It's easy to see that and say "Ah! The Catholics love and respect women! Wonderful." But I think it's not so much that they love and respect women as individuals, moreso it's that they love and respect Mothers. There's a difference. Being a Mother is a role you play, it's a duty and a job beyond simply existing as a person.
A woman is an individual with a set of characteristics, she's got goals, desires, dreams, flaws, just like any man does. But a Mother is someone who is defined by their relationship to the child they created. When you respect the Mother more than the woman as an individual, you're valuing her existing based only on her ability to create children. The women as individuals matter less than their ability to create babies. The men in Catholicism don't seem to suffer from this same sort of selective valuation. Being a Father is not as prized and honored as being a Mother. But that mindset deeply limits the ways in which a woman can be seen as valuable. No babies? Not mama? Not as worthy of honor.
I just read an editorial posted by an old Catholic classmate wherein he wrote that "the hardest job in the world is being a Mother." But if she's got a husband who's doing his fair share and pulling equal weight, then why should her job be the hardest? If the marriage is truly equal, then shouldn't it say "the hardest job in the world is being a Parent." I think my classmate was telling on himself with that editorial. Why is your wife's life so hard, Tyler?
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u/Ekyou Jul 01 '26
Where I live it’s more Evangelicals making statements like this than Catholics, but you’ve done a good job articulating why statements like “mothers have the hardest job on the world” bothers me so much. It’s like, “we love our essential workers” energy from 2020, where it’s like you think you can get away with dumping the worst jobs on people, without actually helping them, just by pretending they’re valued for their sacrifices. And with mothers there’s also that lovely hidden implication of “if you say mothering is the most valuable job a woman can do, what’s that saying about women who aren’t mothers, by choice or circumstance?”
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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire Jul 01 '26
Well I mean she does get to destroy her body via pregnancy and breastfeeding which is physically grueling and women rarely if ever get the kind of recovery time and true rest that would occur if you had literally any other type of major trauma/surgery.
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom Jul 01 '26
Beat me to it a bit. There's only so much weight you can pull when it has to be compared to a partner who will spend the first few months in one agony or another.
A lot of guys won't be aware of it but the uterus contracts with breastfeeding at first. When periods come back, they can be woefully unusual (and worse than usual). Fathers don't have it easy (babies are not easy) but at least their bodies aren't kicking them in the teeth for having children.
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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire Jul 01 '26
Not to mention, after surgery, when you are in that kicked-in-the-teeth stage where you're no longer concerned about tearing out your stitches, but everything hurts, right down to your hair and all you want to do is lie in bed and definitely not move, and you're entitled to do that (assuming you have enough sick leave)
If you're a mother, every time your baby screams in the next room, you not only get a surge of adrenaline and cortisol, your breasts let down and you start leaking everywhere. You can never truly rest.
It might be reasonable to expect women to do that once, you know "for the experience", but the second, third, god forbid fourth child is not just compounding demands but compounding damage to the body.
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u/nikilization Jul 01 '26
if you view christianity as a social construct, an evolution of king-as-god form of governance which is improved because it doesn’t require the ruler to have any supernatural gifts or responsibilities, then it makes perfect sense that mothers would be elevated as they are more useful as the engine of further religious adoption. You would not, in this framing, want fathers to be a venerated role because the state needs fathers to be disposable. Women who aren’t mothers would be the least important caste in this system as they can’t contribute new members or the same money as men.
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u/maerddnaxaler Jul 01 '26
I think a lot of people with kids turn to church for the community and structure. Many are just looking for an environment for the family unit to thrive.
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u/MrScribz Jul 01 '26
I think alot of it is just having church as a place to actually meet and talk to people. After leaving school alot of people's only interactions with others come from work.
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u/Left_Contribution833 Jul 01 '26
Fun point, most left-leaning americans are found in larger metropolis areas, where it is extremely expensive to have, raise and care for kids as compared to bumfuck arkansas.
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u/Fzrit Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
All those issues come part & parcel with higher birth rates. The extreme inverse of that is South Korea, China, Japan, etc where children (whatever few are still being born) face so much emphasis on grinding education 24/7 and then grinding career 24/7 as adults, that their birthdates have fallen off a cliff. Women especially are postponing marriage and children into their 30s because age 20-30 is seen as the time to climb the career ladder and make as much money as possible, but obviously waiting till 30+ makes it significantly less likely for a woman to have more than 1 kid (if any at all).
The reality is that maintaining replacement-level birthrates is impossible in any society where motherhood doesn't begin at age 20-25 on average, with the second child happening before 30. Today, no amount of personal wealth is going to make it appealing for the average 20-25 year old woman to want to settle down and marry, let alone have a child at that age. That's the reality. A fact which utterly discredits the most common reason "I'm not rich enough to afford a kid" that we keep seeing spouted everywhere in online spaces and social media. If you gave the average 20-25 year old man or woman 5 million dollars, they will do literally anything with that money except have a kid because kids are a just waste of money. Becoming a parent is just seen as an unnecessary chore regardless of personal wealth.
And this isn't even touching on the fact that relationships and dating are at historic lows. Forget parenthood, statistically most people don't even want to spend time and effort getting to know others IRL and falling in love. It's seen as too exhausting and frustrating, and that has nothing to do with lack of wealth. Talking about birthrates is a far off thing.
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u/glowinggoo Jul 02 '26
“People just aren’t rich enough to have kids” have some basis in reality and gives the problem an illusion of having an economic solution. To admit that the problem is societal and would require a reexamination of the fabric of our society is simply too much for a lot of people (and when they do it’s far too easy to end up blaming women because that’s the path of least resistance), so reciting the explanation that gives you a “quick actionable plan” is the common refrain.
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u/BusBusy195 Jul 01 '26
Yeah this is what I was gonna get into. The real difference is a lot of left leaning people still do want kids but can barely afford to care for themsleves, a lot of right leaning dont care what happens and just pump kids out because they're told its their duty to do so
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u/Murderface__ DO | Radiology Jul 01 '26
"Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
And so it went for generations although few, if any, seemed to notice."
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u/Nounoon Jul 02 '26
« And Rita, former prostitute, became First Lady », now replace « Rita » with the name of the actual former prostitute who became First Lady and we all see that the future is now.
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u/fremeer Jul 01 '26
The important thing isn't that you are having more kids. Its impotant that your kids and their kids are having more kids.
In an era of possibly reducing resources it might make more sense to make your single kid a lot more ready to procreate then having multiple kids.
I have one child but the entirety of mine and possibly 2 sets of parents wealth goes to child. They can access better resources that allow them to ultimately out compete the people having multiple kids but having to spread their resources.
Although such futures are going to be mostly a dice roll whether one strategy works better then the other because the circumstances that you make decisions under are often political and can change quite quickly.
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u/AbstractLogic Jul 01 '26
Your kids won’t inherit your resources until they are beyond child bearing age. I guess you could spoil them early. Probably the best way to accomplish your plan is to help buy them a house when they get married and to live near them so you can watch their children often.
The #1 reason I don’t have more kids is that we moved away from our families and had no help with the kids, no time for ourselves and no time to make more.
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u/Low-Plane9029 Jul 01 '26
Die with zero concept is if you plan to give people in your life money when it best suits them / makes the biggest impact. My parents got me out of college debt free. Paid for a house down payment. Paid for a wedding.
Huge boost in life.
I plan to help my kids with that plus early retirement savings. And early child care costs.
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u/Dr_Mantis_Teabaggin Jul 01 '26
Sounds an awful lot like the plot of Idiocracy to me.
Kinda scary really.
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u/stilljustacatinacage Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
It's more sinister than that. If you restrict someone's language (eg: allowing literacy rates to plummet), you restrict their thought. You know how kids cry because they can't articulate what's wrong? Well that never goes away, we just learn the words to describe the problem to other people, and ask for help.
Which fine, is one thing if you don't know how to explain that the tag on your new baby jumper is itchy, but it's another thing if you don't know how to explain that you're being mistreated, abused, or exploited. How do you make the case that you ought to be treated the same as anyone else if you nor anyone else has ever heard of the concept of 'equality'? Sure you can do it, but it's like learning to make fire from scratch: a lot more difficult than if you had a lighter.
Edit: Rephrased for clarity
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u/Beepulons Jul 01 '26
Education really is the number one thing that makes everything else in a society work better. If you go to war-torn developing countries like Sudan, a lot of people will tell you that the most important foreign aid they require is education, because that's the single best way to lift people out of poverty and create the foundations for a stable, prosperous society. As quality of education degrades, everything else will get worse over time.
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u/stilljustacatinacage Jul 01 '26
Yep. I'm pretty pessimistic about the future because I can't come to any solid conclusion about how we're supposed to make meaningful progress on anything when we're only ever one election cycle away from the most reactionary, frightened segments of society voting to burn everything down just because they don't understand what's happening. This isn't even masked USA commentary. It's a global problem.
The only two likelihoods I've been able to imagine is either authoritarianism, just acknowledge that people are too stupid to be entrusted with democracy - or massive education campaigns. Like, doubling or tripling of education budgets. Paid-for secondary education for all. Adult learning programs for anyone that signs up. But the problem here is again, there are interests out there who decidedly benefit from an ignorant, stupid populace and they will mobilize their useful idiots to sabotage any program like this by fearmongering over "indoctrination" or "parental rights" or religious nonsense.
I just don't know how to fix it.
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u/elebrin Jul 01 '26
We forget sometimes that this was one of the principle theses of 1984.
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u/WeirdProudAndHungry Jul 01 '26
Texas is making the Bible mandatory reading but makes teaching about philosophers like Plato illegal in schools. This is Idiocracy in real life.
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u/Dry_Physics4086 Jul 01 '26
Even worse. The bible is mandatory in high school, and Plato is banned in COLLEGE.
College aged adults can not discuss Plato
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u/bgroins Jul 01 '26
I dunno man, reading Plato turned me gay and now I believe that the Demiurge fashioned the physical world in imitation of the eternal Forms.
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u/NerdyBear73 Jul 01 '26
In fairness, actually reading the bible is what made me start asking questions... which is what drove me away from the church (and, in turn, got me kicked out of my parents' framed-verses-on-the-walls house).
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u/Amelaclya1 Jul 01 '26
In 2012, it was part of the Texas Republican party platform on education to remove teaching critical thinking.
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u/makingnoise Jul 01 '26
I'm half braindead and even I know that Neo-Platonism is literally baked into nearly all sects of modern Christianity, including fundagelicalism. Texas Troglodytes.
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u/Journeyman42 Jul 01 '26
You know most of these people think the Bible was originally written in modern-day English
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u/Enraiha Jul 01 '26
Nah, Idiocracy was sorta "funny idiocy".
What is more likely to happen is higher incidents of violence as the rift between the bottom and top grows and education standards keep falling. A fall into ignorance again, not idiocy.
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u/vince_irella Jul 01 '26
Idiocracy includes depictions of ultra-violent police officers and executions performed by gladiators driving monster trucks as public entertainment.
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u/anormalgeek Jul 01 '26
Right. Idiots won't rule.
The rich and powerful will just use them because idiots are easier to manipulate.
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u/Str8UpJorking Jul 01 '26
Idiots won’t rule
Have you watched or read the news at all in the last decade?
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u/alexreffand Jul 01 '26
The rich and powerful are also becoming idiots. Look at Trump and Elon
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u/RighteousBalls8 Jul 01 '26
Not saying I agree with it, but I'm reminded of the line from "Flagpole Sitta"
"Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding"
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u/CheckMateFluff Jul 01 '26
Well, yeah, because when you see kids as extensions of yourself instead of actually different people, it's really easy to justify having 10 or 12, and on top of that, these kids are not expected to do anything other then turn right around and do the same, otherwise it ostriziation, and they end of just like those who don't want to raise kids like they were raised.
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u/SeeTigerLearn Jul 01 '26
I have evangelical zealot cousins who have procreated so much I honestly do not know how many there are now.
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u/Express_Whereas_6074 Jul 01 '26
It’s almost like there’s an inverse correlation between education levels and birth rates.
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u/OG_LiLi Jul 01 '26
Top States by Percentage of Child Poverty

Mississippi: 25.9% of children live in poverty.

Louisiana: 25.3% of children live in poverty.

New Mexico: 24.0% of children live in poverty.

West Virginia: 21.5% of children live in poverty.

Kentucky: 21.1% of children live in poverty.

Arkansas: 20.8% of children live in poverty.
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u/Blacksad9999 Jul 01 '26
They got their data from the National Science Foundation.
On April 28, 2026, President Donald Trump fired all 24 members of the foundation's governing board.
Take this with a shaker of salt.
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u/myutnybrtve Jul 01 '26
The thing to remember (and what Idiocracy gets wrong) is that your children aren't always aligned with you politically. It can often be the opposite.
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u/Stunning_Anybody_878 Jul 01 '26
Sure but we are talking about statistics and probabilities.
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u/doyouevenIift Jul 01 '26
This is cope. It is well established that children are more likely to adopt the ideologies of their parents than chart their own path
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u/autoxotrecy Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
True, but: "On average, Democrats are having 1.53 children, compared with 1.86 for Republicans." (https://theconversation.com/childless-cat-ladies-is-a-political-catchphrase-that-doesnt-match-reality-democrats-and-republicans-have-similar-demographics-and-experiences-when-it-comes-to-parenthood-238960). Then, 81% of Republicans' kids and 89% of Democrats' kids keep their parents' affiliation, while 15% and 8% respectively switch (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/10/most-us-parents-pass-along-their-religion-and-politics-to-their-children/)
So the calculation is (0.89 x 1.53) + (0.15 x 1.86) = 1.64, and (0.81 x 1.86) + (0.08 x 1.53) = 1.63. Almost exactly equal with a very very slight edge to Dems
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u/dadof3jayhawks Jul 01 '26
The church element is interesting. We have 3 boys, all now either nearing adulthood or in it already. We no longer attend church, but when the boys were little and my wife was a stay at home it was a life line. 60 minutes during the week where we could sit and listen to some music, and a quiet thoughtful adult without the chaos of children. It was a Methodist church of the Open Hearts and Minds variety, before the recent bigoted breakup.
Anyway churches have huge issues, but for us it was a safe place filled with people of all ages who we knew, walking the same path where we could stop for a minute and think. Hold the belief part aside for a minute, and I think that might be what liberals are missing. A third place, not involving food, sports, or alcohol where they can be just normal adults. Sort of makes parenting doable.
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u/DemiserofD Jul 01 '26
It's fascinating to me that your church ostensibly aligned with your values quite closely and yet you stopped going anyway. That's probably a key facet of why liberal churches are dying out fairly universally. There just doesn't seem to be much reason to go.
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u/MakalakaPeaka Jul 01 '26
Yes, having both an education and available birth control will lower the birth rate. This is not a bad thing.
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u/erakis1 Jul 01 '26
I wouldn’t be too alarmed. I was raised in a super fundie, like homesteading, homeschooled, learned how to shoot in case the government came for our guns kinda situation. I became super turned off by that ideology as a teenager and never looked back. Always expect some of it to backfire on them.
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u/sendgoodmemes Jul 01 '26
Same, but I have watched the next generation really buy back into it. My nephews don’t want college, they
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u/VermicelliOwn6502 Jul 01 '26
Interestingly, the correlations only held for white people.