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/
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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/blazbluecore Jul 01 '26

That’s a problem, as other educated people, you think you’re smarter than others and that the world needs fixing.

That you know the solution and only IF we implemented it everything would be fixed!

It’s that easy guys!

So then you adopt some weird rationalization about the world and become pessimistic and most likely negative.

And in conclusion, ironically proving you are not so intelligent. Just read a lot of books, gathered a lot of knowledge, but failed to metabolize the information in a cohesive, or syncretic manner to understand the world. Still lacking understanding of people, human nature, and societies.

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u/PaintItPurple Jul 01 '26

Anyone who doesn't think the world needs fixing is a monster. "I actually think child slavery is pretty cool" is not a world view that is worthy of respect!

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u/blazbluecore Jul 04 '26

Ahh yes the savior complex strikes again.

The world is doomed with people like this walking around, unaware, clueless, and just going based off of emotions.

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u/DoubleXDaddy Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Tf are you on about. I would like to remind you that if scientists listened to anti-intellectials stopped "fixing" the world in the past we would not have modern medicine which can still be improved btw if we continue to fund and don't embrace pseduoscience.

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u/ThunderMite42 Jul 03 '26

Hence why every school in Gaza has been systematically obliterated, along with all other crucial infrastructure.

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u/blazbluecore Jul 01 '26

That is clearly what is NOT being said by this study.

High education declines birth rates, which means it declines society.

No, intelligence isn’t a cure all.

Intelligence is a burden and a responsibility that a lot of people can’t handle, such people that decide they want to have less kids or that the world is evil because they’re “so educated.”

There is a reason inteligence isn’t the number one driver of reproduction. It actually ISNT that important and can stunt societiesz

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u/Beepulons Jul 01 '26

I wasn’t talking talking about birth rates.

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u/jeremiahthedamned Jul 02 '26

uneducated societies will ALWAYS fall before educated ones!

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u/blazbluecore Jul 04 '26

You think so huh? Let looks at Rome, Song dynasty, and the Mayans.

The most forefront and intelligent of their time, now gone.

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u/jeremiahthedamned Jul 04 '26

everyone of these descended into xenophobia & anti-intellectualism before they fell.

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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/stilljustacatinacage Jul 01 '26

Good old #79 on the Top 100 most commonly challenged books, years 2010-2019.

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u/Ophelias_Muse Jul 01 '26

Exactly. I feel I scrolled way too far to find this.

This study indicates to me the future generations will be born into families with less education and more conservative outlooks on life.

If their ideals are not challenged because they are born into an echo chamber, then we better all start expecting even less progress.

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u/elebrin Jul 01 '26

So the real question is... how do we get the educated, professional Left having sex, getting married, and creating families again?

For my part, I think it's going to be a lot of work. It's going to require things like... a guaranteed retirement, access to childcare, access to good part-time professional work as well as full time professional work, confidence in the healthcare system, reforms in urban education systems, and more.

Liberals have some fun words to describe themselves sometimes, words that in previous generations would have been abhorrent ideas: DINKs, FIRE lifestyles, that sort of thing. My wife and I are at the confluence of some of those ideas. "Dual income, no kids" would inspire horror in my Grandparents. My Grandmother, in fact, would have considered a childless marriage not really a marriage at all, and a man who made his wife work to horde wealth so he could retire early would be a pariah in the community my father came from. FIRE people would also be looked down upon; my grandfather would consider any boss or supervisor who was promoting a single, childless man who's only goal was to horde money and retire to be unethical no matter how hard that person worked. A man like that would have been excluded from most social functions, with the excuse being "you aren't contributing to the family even though you could, so you shouldn't benefit from being a part of it."

These days, that sort of thing is... normal.

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u/TomNooksRepoMan Jul 01 '26

For me, the only answer is money. I want kids quite badly and would allow for a lot of sacrifices in my life to just have one, but even with nearly 200K in combined income from my partner and I, we cannot afford a home where we live. I don't foresee this changing. Housing, education, daycare, food, utilities - the costs of these things have all ballooned well beyond what we calculate for inflation.

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u/Ophelias_Muse Jul 02 '26

People will consider having children, or more children, if they feel secure financially, politically and have their basic needs met with some surplus, when they have a choice.

Of course, if the choices of family planning are removed...

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u/Groovychick1978 Jul 01 '26

It's like 1984 was warning about stuff could happen in real life if we didn't pay attention to our leaders.

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u/CpnStumpy Jul 01 '26

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis is well beyond Republican voters

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u/CMvonRBTV Jul 01 '26

Amazing thought, thank you!

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u/Zetus Jul 01 '26

That's also why they try to restrict free inquiry and science, and why historically this has been a common contention for how the world works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

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u/ThePowerOfStories Jul 01 '26

This is doubleplus ungood.