Just 2 in 10 Biden supporters think marriage and kids are important for society. Why?

Only 39 percent of Americans think marriage and children should be prioritized

As if we didn’t already know that American society was polarized, the Pew Research Center has provided us with a new poll that shows Trump and Biden supporters sharply divided on issues related to family and having children.

Asked whether “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority,” 59 percent of Trump supporters said yes, while just 19 percent of Biden supporters agreed with the statement. Overall, just 39 percent of Americans think society is better off with people prioritizing marriage and building a family.

39 percent isn’t a lot and is a worrying figure for the traditionally minded. However, back in 2020, a Pew poll found that only 36 percent of Americans agreed with the identical proposition, while 61 percent of Americans said “society is just as well off if people have priorities other than marriage and children.”

The political divide was just as stark then, too. Among Trump voters, 55 percent were family prioritizers in the 2020 poll; among Biden supporters, just 20 percent believed in prioritizing family.

Going back eight years, to 2016, one finds very little difference; 42 percent of Americans supported building a family for the benefit of society and 55 percent thought society was just as well off with people having other priorities instead. 57 percent of Trump voters supported prioritizing family life, as opposed to 28 percent of Clinton voters.

Summing up changing attitudes over the past eight years, one therefore finds that among right-leaning Americans, around six in ten people think family is important for society, with little change over time. Among left-leaning Americans, the percentage of those who think family is important for society has dropped quite sharply, from 28 percent in 2016 to 20 percent in 2020 and 19 percent today — just 2 in 10 people.

Getting married = losing progressive credentials

There are a number of reasons for these trends and divisions; one of them is simply that “family” has become a conservative value, as OpenDemocracy.net expresses it:

Defending the “monogamous, heterosexual, many-children family” is therefore not a neutral act of defending the right to a safe and cozy home, but is more often than not tied up in other conservative political goals.

While it seems unlikely that conservatives support marriage and having children because they want to appear conservative in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world, it is perhaps more likely that liberals and progressives consciously or unconsciously reject family values for fear of being branded “conservative.”

Thus, even extreme left-socialist firebrands such as Israeli feminist Merav Michaeli can give TED talks on “canceling marriage” while being in monogamous relationships and having children (in Michaeli’s case, via surrogacy).

All locked up together… or distanced for good

The COVID scam years have also taken their toll on family life, particularly among those who toed the establishment line. Multiple accounts attest to families split apart after injected family members broke off contact with relatives who refused the shots. Many remain estranged to this day.

One poll taken in 2021 revealed that,

... of the fully vaccinated, six in 10 (58%) have reportedly cut off family members who refuse to get vaccinated, while 63% don’t feel comfortable inviting unvaccinated relatives to their parties.

Lockdowns, too, put family life under stress and made it appear far less attractive, with nuclear families locked up together at home for weeks and months, while the supportive structure of extended family was placed out of reach. Studies have shown this effect, with one notable study concluding that,

... family chaos during pandemic-related shutdowns also was associated with increases in maternal-child conflict, paternal-child conflict, and sibling conflict...

Heating the planet, one child at a time

Perhaps one of the biggest factors turning progressives away from family is climate scaremongering. Apparently, one of the best ways to shrink one’s carbon footprint is to have one child less. Plenty of people are opting to do just that, which means for many, having no children at all, given that the average is already below two per mother.

In fact, a New York Times article from 2021 provided testimony from dozens of comment posters on how they (or their children) were taking climate change so seriously that they were opting out of the future entirely.

Sophia from Maine told the world that,

I have one child, a daughter, who told me age 8 that she would never have a child because of global warming. She's now 34 and has never changed her mind. So I will not experience a grandchild. For her wisdom, I am grateful. I would be heartsick if I did have a grandchild who would have to experience the onslaught of changing climate.

Ida from California sympathized, writing that,

I weep with you, Sophia. Whenever I look my 11 year old daughter in the eyes I feel so many emotions: guilt for bringing her into this dying world.

Liberal from Texas added,

I feel your pain. I have 2 sons. Neither one will have children and their partners agree. I'll never have grandchildren. But I also realize that their decisions have in some way been molded by me. I am proud of their decision.

CC from California responded:

I will have no grandchildren. As I watch my peers enjoying their final years surrounded by grandchildren, I can't help feeling a little jealous. At the same time ... our daughters are stepping up to the challenge. I'm proud of them.

Marisa from New York wrote:

I, too, am coming to terms and accepting that my 36 year old son will not have a child as well -- for stated reasons. It is painful for me when I watch other young men and women his age going about town with their children. But I understand, and concur, on an intellectual level, that of course they're right. Bringing more children into the world these days is an existential worry. And irresponsible. So, as I grieve for our planet, I also grieve for the grandchildren that I will never have.

And Liz from Portland put it in stark terms:

Frankly, as someone who has been concerned about climate change, and observing what is happening over the last ten years with real dread, I do not understand why anyone in the last ten years would voluntarily have a child.

Just one, or perhaps none

Three years on and people (on the left-side of the political divide) aren’t feeling any better about humanity’s prospects. The Guardian surveyed “climate scientists” and found them wallowing in depression and gloom, echoing NYT readers with their determination not to bring children into a “dying” world.

Another Pew poll conducted this year found that 27 percent of Biden supporters think it’s “good” for society that people are having fewer children, as opposed to just 17 percent of Trump supporters who feel the same way. 47 percent of Trump supporters think a declining birth rate is “bad” for society, as opposed to just 23 percent of Biden supporters who think that way. 

Meanwhile, the family is under attack from new directions, with queer (in several ways) researchers actually promoting the idea of normalizing birth defects, and the trans lobby inadvertently (?) promoting the mass sterilization of all those who feel they’re “in the wrong body.” A recent BBC Science Focus article promotes the one-child family as the recipe for success, and studies are published claiming that while having one child makes parents happier, any further children make them (well, perhaps just the mothers) more miserable.

Organization such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) encourage people to think in terms of communities and collectives for health and happiness, and only mention family in the context of intergenerational conflict.

Why edit genes when you can program your robobaby?

One other factor that could be driving reluctance to procreate is little mentioned, and that is AI. Common to virtually every parent is the aspiration for their children to have a better life than they do. But with AI predicted to make masses of people unemployed in the future, what can many parents realistically expect for their offspring?

Kai-Fu Lee is a venture capitalist, the CEO of Sinovation Ventures. Seven years ago, he predicted that AI would take over up to half of jobs within ten years (adding, without explanation, that this would “wipe out poverty”).

Asked whether humans will still have a place in this all-new digital world, he insisted that they would, because human-to-human interaction is like nothing else.

Touching one’s heart with your heart is something that machines, I believe, will never be good at.

Lee added that humans have unique traits which machines cannot emulate perfectly: 

We have compassion and empathy. We have emotions and the ability to love. We have the ability to connect to other people and create trust and win trust.

But he added a note of warning:

Do I think AI can fake it? Yes. Do I think people will accept the faking AI, at least for the next 50 years? No. So that’s long enough for your kids to survive and figure out the next step for their kids.

What Lee doesn’t seem to grasp is that compassion, empathy, and love only have meaning when the person giving them gives out of choice. Do we really want teleprompter spouses?

But Lee doesn’t see AI robots replacing our marriage partners anytime soon. What about AI kids? If, as the studies say, it’s all about how kids make us feel, why not have perfectly behaved, well-groomed, intelligent and successful AI-babies?