Suicide by Liberalism
The National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey (NORC-GSS) is, according to its website, the longest-running, most respected social survey produced by the University of Chicago. Its most recent survey included an alarming graphic showing the likelihood of an American woman not to bear a child, based on her political outlook.
From 1975 to about 1990, liberal women were more likely than conservative women to say they never wanted children by a margin of about 10–15 percent.
In 2020, about one in three conservative women told pollsters they didn’t want any children, a figure so high as to make one wonder by what measure they regarded themselves as conservative. If that weren’t bad enough, three-quarters of liberal women said they never want any kids—and twice as many women in the childbearing years of 18–29 identify as liberal as conservative—a figure we can only describe as suicidal.
From the standpoint of civilization, there is no silver lining to report about these figures. But if one is determined to look for a positive spin on the collapse of Western fertility, I suppose you could say that the few children who will populate the next generation will have the highest concentration of conservative mothers in half a century.
J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.
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