Being Liberal or Conservative: Which Does Parenthood Favour?

Like grey hairs and unexpected body pain, becoming more conservative is often thought to be a by-product of age. But now it appears it may be rooted due to having children. Researchers have found that people who do not have children tend to be more socially liberal than parents, and that having children helps explain why people tend to become more conservative with age.

The new published in Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society potentially offers a fresh take on the decline in birth-rates seen in many countries by linking it to liberalisation in those countries. In addition to this, countries that ban abortions might experience a push in the opposite direction (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Politics and Parental Care: Experimental and Mediational Tests of the Causal Link Between Parenting Motivation and Social Conservatism

Go to source).

Does Being a Parent Make You More Conservative?

In this study, researchers split 376 university students in the US into two groups. One group was shown images of household objects and asked to talk about how they might use one.

While the other group was shown images of children and asked to think about possible names and positive interactions. Both groups then completed a survey on views on issues such as abortion and traditional marriage.

They found that participants who imagined time with a child gave more socially conservative responses than those who thought about household objects, although this held only for those highly engaged in the imagination exercise.

When they surveyed 2,610 adults across 10 countries, from Lebanon to Japan, they found that people who were more motivated to care for children tended to be more socially conservative.

In addition, parents were more socially conservative than those who were childfree. And while social conservatism increased with age, this relationship disappeared once parenthood was taken into account.

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This study’s findings were backed up by an analysis of data from the World Values Survey, collected over a 40-year period and involving 426,444 participants in 88 countries, which additionally suggested the more children parents had, the more socially conservative they tended to be.

However, in a few countries, including India and Pakistan, parenthood was not linked to more conservative attitudes – a finding that highlighted having children is just one factor that may influence social values.

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On the other hand, the study reduces political orientation to one specific set of personal experiences, just as the trope of older age driving increasingly conservative values did. Nor does it take into account the changing nature of later life or consider how social conservatism may be affected by changes in society or in social roles.

They also noted that while the welfare state in the UK has supported people to have children, it has coincided with a more liberal and equal society rather than the reverse.

Though the new study is a welcome move, it was hard to say whether parenthood made people more conservative or conservative people were more likely to choose to become parents.

The study also did not find that parents are more economically conservative. Parents do change their economic preferences and are more in favour of government spending. While there was a wealth of research on parenting and its effect on children, there was far less exploring the impact of parenthood itself (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism

Go to source).

This kind of research demonstrates that when your motivations, your goals, your priorities, change, that influences your broader values.

Understanding that point is important in realising that maybe people you disagree with a bit aren’t just stupid and evil. Those people might have been shaped by just their situation in life and what their motivations and goals are.

References:

1. Politics and Parental Care: Experimental and Mediational Tests of the Causal Link Between Parenting Motivation and Social Conservatism - (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550619853598)
2. Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism - (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.0978)

Source-Medindia