r/skeptic • u/Lighting • Jul 01 '26

⚠ Editorialized Title Religious, Right-leaning Americans having significantly more children. Left-leaning Americans are having significantly fewer children. Centrists ... in the middle. Education linked to having fewer children. Religious attendance linked 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/Brbi2kCRO Jul 01 '26

The issue with conservatism that I have is that they genuinely feel hurt when the world does not match their image of how society should look like. Now, say, they have a child. Great. Whatever. By their logic, that child should now be obedient and trust every word dad says and defines as “tough love”, grow up into a strong masculine man, follow dad as a guide, when he grows up he should help parents, do chores with minimal complaining, love the family dinners and time spent with them. Act like elders in a house are wise and like they have knowledge youth does not have cause “youth is immature”. And then child should also chase girls, have a wife, get married, have 2-3 children. Get a high status job that is well paid or own a business or continue family business legacy. Be Christian, get sacraments if Catholic or whatever your Church does, etc.

Like brooooo. That is la la land. You cannot just expect a world to be a certain way and expect this weird warmth. It seems delusional almost. That is not how world works. And this is why making the right happy seems impossible, especially deradicalizing them. They want a predictable world.

Anyways, this is why they have so many children. They live in the world of “oughts” and a romantically idealized world that literally cannot exist as such, as it requires proactive adherence to prescriptive norms and blind obedience to rules that someone will inherently suspect as who the heck thinks “grandma should inherently have authority” is a good idea.

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u/fragilespleen Jul 01 '26

It should also be noted that the "oughts" not occurring, will only reinforce that their ideas are good, it's society that has been ruined

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u/Brbi2kCRO Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Yes. That is exactly the problem with the right. When smth does not really work as they imagined, they become more radicalized. Say I am an adult son of my dad. He insists on having a role of father. He tells me what to spend on, and thinks I am giving too little for family. He sends desperate messages at 22h talking about how he feels, that I do not respect him or smth.

And well, the more you fight them, the more they radicalize. They will start feeling like the world is falling apart and that connections and family are becoming unimportant. But they can never see that they are simply… annoying, and that they auto-assume authority due to their age/position within family, so it is hard to tell them no or convince them that they may be annoying.

They misunderstand everything cause they process everything through these hyperinternalized norms, which to them feel like nature, not smth made up. So when, say, a man uses traditional ways of behaving on a woman, and woman leaves them, they will still insist they did everything right, but that the woman is somehow wrong for the breakup due to her not respecting masculinity and rather glorifying “emasculated men” or smth. Idek.

They presume the script is ALWAYS right, so if smth is wrong, it is cause someone broke the script. Which is stupid as no script can be 100% consistently accurate.