Thinking about Thanksgiving in the Gospels
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Brad Wilcox’s Institute of Family Studies has come out with some challenging statistics [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G6md2QJXIAEvsFX?format=jpg&name=medium ] about how politics affects young women in terms of marriage and family formation. Bottom line: the more liberal you are, the less you are likely to marry and/or have kids.
While both female self-identified conservatives and liberals have declined in terms of their share of marriage and family formation, liberals started out worse and fell further. In the 1980s, 83% of female conservatives aged 25-35 were married; in the 2020s, that figure declined to 60%. But among female liberals of the same age group, the 75% who were married in the 1980s fell to 44% in the current decade.
The numbers for parenthood are starker. In the 1980s, 65% of women aged 25-35 identifying as conservative had children; in the 2020s, that number grew to 71%. Among liberals, the 60% who had kids in the 1980s fell to 40% in the 2020s.
Marriage and parenthood as institutions are in decline among liberals. This should concern Catholics for two reasons:
First, marriage and parenthood should not be partisan issues. They are natural aspects of normal human life whose decline is worrisome. They should not be turned into “mere lifestyle choices.”
Second, in a society functioning on a “one person, one vote” model, the politicization of marriage and parenthood risks social policy being made as if those institutions are purely personal choices whose health and welfare do not matter to the broader society as a whole.
Both outcomes should be worrisome to Catholics.
John Grondelski (PhD Fordham) was former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He is a Catholic theologian with special interests in moral theology and the thought of St. John Paul II. All views are his own.
