Republican vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance has received sharp criticism for describing Kamala Harris as one of the Democratic Party’s “childless cat ladies.” Vance made this statement several years ago, before he entered the U.S. Senate. He has subsequently attempted to clarify that he was specifically “criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.” Leaving aside questions of his tone or intent, the controversy has served as a useful reminder that patterns of family formation have important political implications.
Though there is no evidence for Vance’s claim that these “childless cat ladies” are driven by a vindictive desire to “make the rest of the country miserable,” it is true that single Americans tend to lean left. Exit polls from the 2020 presidential election make this clear. Whereas 53 percent of married voters supported Trump, 58 percent of unmarried voters chose Biden. This gap was especially large among women. A narrow majority of married women (51 percent) supported Trump, but he lost by a landslide among unmarried women, earning just 36 percent of that demographic’s vote.
Marriage rates have been slowly falling in the U.S. for decades, but the decline has not spread evenly across the political divide. The General Social Survey has always asked respondents about their marital status. We can use GSS data to look at marriage patterns for Republicans and Democrats over time. For simplicity, the figure below includes divorced, separated, and widowed respondents in the “ever married” category. When the survey began in the 1970s, both groups were similarly likely to say that they had been married at some point. Since that time, both groups have shown a decline, but the drop has been significantly steeper among Democrats.
The relationship between marriage and political leanings is even more remarkable when we consider the aggregate data. The U.S. Census Bureau calculates the median age at first marriage for every state, broken down by gender. This variable has long proved a strong predictor of how a state will vote in presidential elections. We see a clear linear relationship: in red states, women tend to get married younger.
Conservatives have always viewed family formation as an essential element of a healthy society. Though these correlations are undeniable, the causal mechanisms remain unclear. Part of the marriage gap can be explained by other variables. For example, religious people are both more likely to get married young and more likely to vote Republican. Older people are also more likely to be married and to support the GOP. Blacks and Hispanics have lower marriage rates than non-Hispanic whites, and they typically vote for Democrats. Even when controlling for myriad other factors, however, the marriage gap remains statistically significant and substantively important.
Though there is no explanation for this gap, there are several plausible theories. In the 1980s, when scholars first began noticing the partisan marriage gap, sociologist Kathleen Gerson suggested that marriage is associated with changing political priorities among women. Unmarried women tend to be more concerned about questions of gender equality, economic or otherwise. Gerson found that unmarried women took great interest in debates about the Equal Rights Amendment and were more likely to be pro-choice. In contrast, married women, especially those who did not work outside the home, tended to support a status quo that benefitted their husbands’ economic prospects and were generally more conservative on social issues.
More recent research suggests that unmarried women, compared with their married counterparts, have a stronger gender consciousness and greater sense of “linked fate” with other women. That is, they are more likely to believe that the status of women as a group is closely connected with their own prospects. Women with this mindset tend to be much more liberal and more inclined to back the Democratic Party.
Other pocketbook issues may also be involved. Two decades ago, economists Lena Edlund and Rohini Pande argued that the political gender gap could be explained by declining marriage rates and the different economic consequences of marriage for men and women. Because men, on average, have higher incomes than women, marriage tends to have greater positive economic effects for women than for men. This makes married women more amenable to conservative economic arguments. As fewer women get married, however, the pool of those who enjoy these economic benefits shrinks, and more women are persuaded to support the party of economic redistribution.
All these theories are plausible, but many questions remain. Even for well-designed studies, proving the direction of the causal relationship is tough. Does marriage cause women to become more conservative, or are more conservative women simply more likely to get married? For a social science question like this, it is obviously not possible to create a randomized controlled trial. Until we have a greater understanding of the phenomenon, I’m hesitant to suggest higher marriage rates as a panacea for the Republican Party’s difficulties with women voters.
Conservatives should exercise caution when designing a pro-family agenda. Strong families are unquestionably a net positive, for both individuals and society. It is not necessarily the case, however, that earlier marriages are better marriages. As legal scholars Naomi Cahn and June Carbone have argued, the “blue state” model of family formation has many positive attributes. This model, prevalent in more liberal states and communities, emphasizes egalitarian relationships and the importance of achieving a baseline of educational attainment and financial stability before forming families. Places where this is the norm experience lower rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy. Conservatives should applaud them for this achievement.
None of these caveats suggests that conservatives should cease caring about family formation—but berating single and childless Americans is not helpful. Turning this into an explicitly partisan issue may even be self-defeating; in an age of cultural polarization, it may discourage liberals from forming families at all.
As we think about what a pro-family platform would look like, we should pay special attention to economic concerns. It takes too long for Americans to reach the level of economic security that they need to feel comfortable marrying and bringing children into the world. Changing cultural attitudes is important, but we should also seek lower housing costs—especially for single-family homes. We should also rethink our approach to education, creating more paths to middle-class security for those without college degrees. It’s a problem that so many Americans feel they must spend a large share of their early adult years pursuing post-secondary education, accruing tremendous debt, and delaying financial stability.
Vance is correct that declining marriage and parenthood rates have political consequences, though I hope this is not anyone’s primary reason for supporting family formation. Responsible conservatives should think carefully about what kinds of cultural, political, and economic changes we can realistically make to encourage marriage and parenthood. A majority of single, childless Americans aspire to get married and have children eventually. Helping them achieve these goals should be our task.
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