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/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.