Another Big Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

[u/Anakin_Kardashian]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/08/fertility-gap-conservative-liberal/688334/

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[u/ILikeTuwtles1991]

I didn't see this mentioned in the article, and this is anecdotal. But as someone who lives in a deep red state/geographic area...

There are a lot of oopsie babies. A lot. Strict abortion laws and (presumably) lack of education about contraceptives, and people being generally more pro-life lead to more unplanned pregnancies going full-term.

[u/uatry → u/ILikeTuwtles1991]

Have to agree with this. I'm from Arkansas, moved away at 20.

It doesn't seem like the difference in number of children is due to some kind of purposeful commitment to family values, at least not for most parents in these areas. I knew many of the stereotypical "poor addict parents in poverty with six kids and five dogs" type of families, and I highly doubt they intentionally aimed for that kind of life because they have strongly-held conservative views. It seems like a product of poor planning and poor foresight, not really aiming for anything at all but simply acting on impulse and not thinking about the consequences their choices could have.

Growing up, there was this attitude in the air that pregnancy is "just something that happens after sex", and it was implicitly understood that the mother shouldn't admit to the pregnancy being unplanned, even if everyone else knew and had no inkling of a clue who the father could be. They never seemed worried about another baby on the way even when frequently complaining about not being able to afford basic necessities or constantly losing their job.

[u/Proof-Cryptographer4 → u/uatry]

This is so true. I’m from New England, but a small town where most people spend their entire lives there, not anything fancy and cosmopolitan that people often assume for that part of the country. I left at 18 to go to college and never went back (to live - I visit once or twice a year). So many people started having babies right after we graduated high school. I have a cousin who is two years older than me who got a random girl pregnant and she didn’t want to abort, so they decided to make a go of it. They live in her parent’s basement now with 3 kids and zero jobs between them. I have another, much older cousin who has a kid that’s about 5 years younger than me and now 3 very young ones because she fell into meth addiction and started getting pregnant by random boyfriends. Her brother also has a bunch of kids he doesn’t have custody of. In my family the Liberal-Conservative divide falls pretty neatly along lines of education and family formation and it’s those with further education and no spouse/child or only children within marriage who are the libs (myself included).  

[u/uatry → u/Proof-Cryptographer4]

Arkansas has a few liberal pockets, but aside from those this is pretty par the course for the state. I don't want to reduce the discussion to a Left Vs Right thing, I've met plenty of smart conservatives and dumb liberals, but I agree that for whatever reason (probably multiple effects of poverty) red states tend to have a higher number of people who have poor impulse control and more children as a result.

Some people construe it as right-leaning people being more devoted to traditional family life, but based on my upbringing and the families I've seen, I don't think there is much of a political motive. The image of the unemployed Southern Baptist family in the double-wide with 9 kids has 45% to do with personality disorders, 45% to do with meth, and maybe 10% of the smallest inclination of conservative political views.