Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance take the stage with their children during the inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump in Washington DC, on Jan. 20, 2025.

Weeks before he was assassinated Sept. 10 while speaking to college students, conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted the following on X:

Get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion.

Leave a legacy, be courageous.

Happy Sunday

God Bless all the parents out there

This was accompanied by an adorable video of Kirk’s young daughter running to give him a hug on a Fox News set.

Kirk, 31, was a strong proponent of having children and starting a family young. So are many other pundits and personalities on the right.

Liberals and conservatives clearly disagree on starting a family

Vice President JD Vance, who has three children, has said that he wants "more babies in the United States of America."

President Donald Trump (himself a father of five) has also gotten on board with the pro-child messaging, dubbing himself the “fertilization president” at an event earlier this year.

The right’s embrace of marriage and children isn’t just anecdotal. A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) highlights the very real and growing divide between liberals and conservatives when it comes to having children.

The implications of this ideological divide are significant to the future of the country.

Why are young liberals eschewing traditional families?

Are liberals avoiding children just because Trump and many conservatives are so pro-family? Some certainly are. Trump Derangement Syndrome has made women do some drastic things, including sterilizing themselves.

Yet, the broader answer is more complicated, said Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at IFS. Wilcox coauthored the report looking at how marriage and family are “cratering” among young liberals.

Wilcox told me that while economics plays into people’s decisions to marry and have children, culture matters as well. And the left hasn’t been prioritizing family.

“I’ve been speculating that the progressive inability to really embrace marriage and family, which I think has been accelerated by social media and the left turn in the culture since around 2014, was manifesting itself in changing marriage rates and childbearing rates for progressives,” Wilcox said.

Indeed, it has.

For example, the IFS report found conservatives are much more likely to have children during young adulthood. While the number of conservative and liberal women, ages 25-35, with children was fairly similar (65% and 60%, respectively) in the 1980s, that gap has grown sizably.

Wilcox and his IFS coauthor Grant Bailey discovered that in the 2020s, only 40% of liberal women between the ages of 25 and 35 reported being parents. Meanwhile, 71% of conservative women in this age group say they are parents – a 31 point gap.

What’s going on? Wilcox thinks it has a lot to do with the stark political and cultural divide between Gen Z men and women.

A September NBC News poll found that women ages 18-29 who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris rated having children second to last when it comes to choices that define personal success. For Gen Z men who voted for Trump, having children was at the top of their list.

“I don’t think that family should be a partisan or ideological issue,” Wilcox said. “This is just an incredibly bigger thing now that it used to be in terms of this divide, both culturally and now with real-world consequences.”

Red states boast higher fertility rates than blue states

The IFS study also tracks the growing fertility divide between red and blue states.

Births in the United States are down across the board, but much more so in liberal states. For example, the 10 states with the highest margin of victory for Trump in 2024 had a 11% decline in their aggregate birth rate since 2001.

Compare that with the 10 states with the highest Harris margins, which saw a 25% decrease.

Families have also been moving to red states that better reflect their values. In states where Trump won the popular vote, the aggregate child population increased by 7.3% since 2000. The opposite was true in states where Harris won the popular vote – the child population decreased by 7.1%.

In addition to the future political impact, the declining progressive birth rate will have effects throughout the economy. Wilcox told me that education is a sector that could be among the hardest hit. With fewer children, more schools will close, impacting jobs (often held by those on the left) and other societal benefits that neighborhood schools offer.

As the IFS report concludes, “If the Left wishes to build a ‘better future,’ it must show up for that future by reconsidering its thinking, messaging, and devotion to the nation’s most important institution: the family.”

If current trends continue, expect the future to look a lot more red.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Liberals aren't having kids, conservatives are. That matters. | Opinion

Reporting by Ingrid Jacques, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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