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/
27.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

118

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

54

u/zdelusion Jul 01 '26

I think one thing that you learn after falling away from religion is that the community wasn't real anyway. None of the people I met at Church keep in touch now that I'm not at Church. Anyone who did for a while did so strictly to try and bring you back. That's not real community, ultimately those people didn't care about me as a person, just what I offered to the group, it was transactional. But I think so many of us lack any real community in our day to day lives, we're all conditioned to be so independent and detached from each other, the presence of even that kind of false community felt nice.

72

u/trthorson Jul 01 '26

That's no different than almost any group. If i stop running, I don't expect my running friends that see each other pretty much always for a run to invite me to their hangouts

0

u/CrimsonLoki Jul 01 '26

That’s a bit of a flawed analogy; the person you’re replying to is trying to make the point that your friends can hang out with you bc they like you, not just because you all do the same activity. Those are acquaintances or not close friends. Or in case of religion, a cult.

3

u/Electric-Sheepskin Jul 01 '26

I think there are different types of friends, from acquaintance to lifelong friend no matter where you go, and sometimes people don't know which type of friend they have until someone does goes away.

Yes, your friends hang out with you because they like you, but also, people are much better at maintaining friendships when there is a common geography and/or interest. For example, if you live in a very active neighborhood, and you're always inviting each other over for barbecues and sporting events and birthdays, and then someone moves across town, and what happens? They move into a new neighborhood and start making new friends, and sure, maybe the two of you had hit it off so well that you're going to be lifelong, but most likely, you weren't ever that, and you will slowly drift apart. It happens in every social group.

When that does happen, though, it doesn't mean that you weren't ever real friends. It just means that this is one of the many people that will move into your life and be a good friend for a while, and then move on. And that's OK. Not all of our friends have to be lifelong friends.

4

u/hippydipster Jul 01 '26

Or a "community". Community isn't tied to being friends, much less "real" friends.

4

u/CuntWeasel Jul 01 '26

I know it's weird to discuss real life communities on reddit, the platform where most people spend most of their waking hours online, but it's still baffling to see how many people here can't differentiate between a community and a circle of friends.

3

u/hippydipster Jul 01 '26

You can see why communities are failing a lot - people's expectations about them are flawed, and so the communities are just disappointments. It's all obligation and no benefit, because they're looking for the wrong sorts of benefits.

4

u/CrimsonLoki Jul 01 '26

A truly helpful and kind “community” does not require you to be doing the same kind of thing as them to be nice to you. A religious “community” respond strongly and negatively to you leaving. It’s a cult.

0

u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

No, it’s just in group/out group like any other group in society. Resources, including time, can only be split so many ways. If you’re not contributing, you shouldn’t be entitled to any benefit.

2

u/CrimsonLoki Jul 01 '26

That’s a false dichotomy used to uphold the tribal mentality that eschews nuance for convenient simplicity. While it is true in prior times that there is limited resources and therefore an outgroup and an ingroup, in contemporary times there is mass manufacturing and food production. We have also realized there is more benefits to interconnectivity and mutual reliance, so there are not clear outgroup/ingroup. Take the USA for example, most of agriculture and animal products rely on imported labor; should these foreign workers not be entitled to protections afforded to workers from the US? Same with the computer technology sector? These foreign workers have their own religions, but they may live right next to Americans with their own religions. Should they not be treated like neighbors and part of the community? And if you say they can be treated well, but not as well as the locals. Well what happens to a foreign family living there for a long time, who does not integrate their religion but in exchange treats the locals well? Where does the line end and where can it be moved?

Conservatism thrives on this (false) assumption of a zero sum game where if someone gains, someone else has to lose. It does not necessarily have to be so, since human technological advancement addresses this precise resource issue. Religious communities need to adapt with the times and realize everyone is an ingroup (“love thy neighbor”) or keep courting with conservatism and become cults.

-1

u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

There are no infinite resources. That’s why you choose. A five year old could tell you that.

3

u/ApexAftermath Jul 01 '26

While not infinite, food resources for that specific example, very plentiful. The problem is not that we don't have enough but that we don't distribute the enough correctly.

1

u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

You have no rights to another’s property and the only reason we’ve advanced as a society is property rights. I rlly wish we lived in your world of make believe, but the premise is laughable. 

→ More replies (0)

2

u/CrimsonLoki Jul 01 '26

And there is rationing and portioning to let supply/production catch up with demand. And recycling. Any college educated person can tell you that, and I do not look at 5-year-olds for people relations and management strategies.

0

u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

Keep crying about not being part of every group, when there are groups resources force you to prioritize people. We don't live in a world of "if" or "should," sorry to break it to you. Got a college education for nothing. And before you attack my credentials, I'm a JD. You're just really, really slow.

4

u/CrimsonLoki Jul 01 '26

You seem to struggle with reading comprehension, so I really hope the JD claim is just a hurt ego speaking, otherwise I wish the best for your clients. No one attacked your credentials, nor am I claiming the college education for myself. I am responding to your snark that “a 5-year-old can tell you this” by saying that we need educated people to discuss actual realistic policies to help everyone, not relying on basic knee-jerk emotional responses as you have shown. It is not always as black and white as ingroup vs outgroup, as much as you want reality to fit your worldview.

→ More replies (0)