Analysis finds marriage and children rates on steep decline among liberals
February 3, 2026
A recent Institute for Family Studies analysis has found steep declines in marriage and childbearing rates among liberal young adults, a shift the analysis report argues is reshaping the American political divide at the family level.
Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute, wrote in the report that the study tracked U.S. marriage and childbearing trends using General Social Survey data from 1980 to 2024. In the 1980s, the marriage gap between conservative and liberal adults ages 25 to 35 was about 10 percentage points, with conservatives generally marrying a few years earlier. Decades later, the report finds a much larger marriage gap among young adults: just 44% of liberal women have ever married, compared with 60% of conservative women, while 35% of liberal men and 57% of conservative men have married.
