Another Big Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives
August 20, 2026
When some Taylor Swift fans listened to the lyrics of her 2025 song “Wi$h Li$t,” in which she sings about yearning to “settle down” with “a couple kids,” they heard a Republican dog whistle. On social media, they claimed that Swift’s desire for family life was “a conservative agenda on a silver platter.”
Swift, an avowed feminist who has endorsed Democratic political candidates, almost certainly did not set out to make “tradwife propaganda.” But her online critics are getting at something real: Having children—particularly lots of children—has become a bit right-coded, as the kids say. Americans and Europeans who identify as leftist or liberal tend to have fewer children than those who identify as conservative or right-leaning. In the United States, differences in desired fertility seem to start at a young age—one 2024 study found that Republican-identifying 12th graders said they want more children than Democrat-identifying 12th graders.
