Has anyone noticed that Liberals tend to dislike kids?

[rothwem]

So this is something strange I've noticed.  I'm pretty moderate--grew up in super liberal Central Maryland and felt way too conservative for the area, moved south to NC and then felt like a crazy liberal compared to a lot of people I interacted with, now 18 years later, I've realized that I'm pretty much a moderate politically.  I've got a buddy that joked that I'm a "damn good fence sitter", and I don't really dislike anyone for their beliefs unless they're truly hateful about them. 

So anyways,

I've got more conservative friends and more liberal friends, and for whatever reason, most of my liberal friends have decided that they're not going to have children.  Even though they're my friends, I never want to dig too deep into why people aren't having children. I don't want to dig up an embarrassing medical problem, some childhood trauma or a relationship hot button that they're not comfortable talking about.  However, it has almost completely broken down on liberal vs conservative lines. 

In addition, whenever we go somewhere with the kids, its the people with southern accents and work boots on that say hi in a non-weird way to my children, while everyone else just gives us wide berth and/or a stinkeye. 

Is there something I missed in the standard liberal manifesto that goes against having children?

[Dee18]

I think your sample is too small to be valid.  Here is one study I found: "Over the entire sample (1972-2010), family variables have quite a small effect.  Being married made you 2.3 percentage-points less likely to be a Democrat, and 1.8 percentage-points more likely to be a Republican.  The effect of children was statistically insignificant – .3 percentage-points less Democratic per child, .1 percentage-points more Republican per child."

That study is using data 13 years old.  I wonder if among adults ages 20-35 more liberals are so concerned about climate change that they worry about any future for their children.  This comment is based solely on my conversations with some liberal young adults...not nearly a large enough sample to reach a conclusion.

[DragonSlayer]

Okay, as a "liberal" I'll step into this quicksand. We decided not to have kids for a variety of reasons (years ago, I'm long past that point now), none of which were political. Mostly lifestyle related, I knew my personality wasn't suited to kids, and some questions around genetic diseases that we might pass on.

However, as someone who is very aware of the problems of climate change and the ever growing authoritarian movement in this county, I'm very glad we didn't have kids. I wouldn't want them to have to deal with this mess. It would suck for a kid to turn 40 and have no world to live in, or be fighting in the streets for water and food, or having their home flooded or blown away every two years. So my guess is that a lot of younger people who are still of childbearing age may be factoring some of these things into their decisions. I don't know, but that's my guess.

As to why "liberals" don't seem to like your kids, I'm not even going to venture a guess. I generally will smile and interact with kids if it's appropriate. I don't hate kids, they just weren't for me.

[HPstache]

I would say in my experience it skews in that direction as well, but there are a lot of outliers.  I wouldn't consider it disliking kids, they just tend to want them less.

[StarBright]

Equating not having kids with disliking them is sort of wild. Feels like a deliberate stirring of the pot.

Like others have said, liberals are more likely to care about the environment which would be a strong motivator for not having kids.

My hypothesis is that it has more to do with where liberals and conservatives eventually settle.

People who are more liberal are more likely move away from where they grew up (and to end up in HCOL areas), meaning they may not have a support network, which is super helpful when having kids. You have to make sure you have your sh*t on lock if you are having babies with no support network, making it likelier that you put off having kids or forgo them.

Conversely, conservatives are more likely to settle close to where they were born (and it is like within 15 miles or something?), making it likelier that even if you aren't sure you are financially "Ready" that you go ahead and do it, because you are likely to have help nearby.

My background is a religious liberal who has had kids (and has also lived/worked in MD and NC).

If we had stayed in MD we would have been less likely to have 2 kids just from daycare costs. We still would have probably had at least one because DH and I have both always wanted children. When we got married we said we wanted 4. We ended up with 2 because we couldn't swing more than that. But if we had lived nearer to either of our families we would have been more likely to go for a third.

[Morning Glory]

In addition, whenever we go somewhere with the kids, its the people with southern accents and work boots on that say hi in a non-weird way to my children, while everyone else just gives us wide berth and/or a stinkeye. 

I find the above true but I think you are conflating "liberals" with "northerners" or "upper middle class people" .  Having also moved to NC I have found that southerners, regardless of their politics, are just friendlier towards strangers, whether or not the stranger is a child.  I have heard some conservative southerners make remarks like "damn liberals" when they hear a person with a New York/New Jersey accent being rude, but they don't seem to realize that the rude person is just as likely to be a conservative. Likewise half of the nice southern people might be liberals who are just quiet about it.

As far as actually having children I think that less educated people who, on average, tend to be more conservative also tend to have their children younger, so if you are fairly young the more liberal people in your circle may not have gotten around to having them yet. I think there are also some cultural expectations around parenting that are different depending on your income, age, and education level, and can be pretty toxic. It's likely that people who have stricter parenting expectations for themselves may be more judgmental of others, hence the stink eye. 

[tygertygertyger]

What a quicksand trap of a post.

I skew liberal, have no kids (and no plans to), and I'm crazy about all the kids I know. Glad you're not interested in prying into why people don't have kids. But whether one political persuasion likes kids more than another? What a riot.

I talk a LOT with my partner and our friends (some have kids, some don't) about climate change issues, which hang heavily over all our heads.

But also... living in America... there are so many stories about parents being arrested for sending their kids to the park by themselves, and a million other concerns arguing whether 1) an embryo is a human, 2) it matters how a parent chooses to give birth, 3) how to raise children, etc, that might also be informing this topic.

Maybe people who don't have kids have less experience with kids. That seems to be all you're saying.

[economista]

I am religious and liberal and have 2 children. My family is very religious and very conservative and in general they have a lot of kids. One thing to point out is regarding birth control - religious conservatives tend to eschew birth control and accept that they will have as many kids as God gives them. They also tend to live closer to their families like StarBright pointed out, which makes things much much easier. I love being a mother and I love my children and I would have probably had more than my 2 if I had some kind of support network. Instead I live across the country from any of our family members and we have no help at all.

ETA - I will also say that my liberal friends who have kids all tend to be much older when they start trying to have kids, which leads to less or no kids overall.

[trollwithamustache]

Liberal, as in liberal from 20 years ago? or our current progressive political ideology? 

The progressive idea is you basically have to change everything to make it better. Once you hit school, you may not really want to change everything anymore since you have model of what worked when you were in school and it turns out kids are hard enough. why reinvent the wheel?

Then of course there is also Nihilism, but that should probably be a separate thread.

[Kris]

This is a pretty reductivist argument. My guess is that there might be some chicken vs. egg confusion, as well.

In my case, I knew pretty early on (in my early teens) that I wasn't interested in having children. When I expressed this when the subject came up in conversation, my generally conservative family and friends of family had a strongly negative, bordering on shaming reaction. They would dismiss me, try to convince me, fortune-tell about how much I would regret it in the future, and strongly imply that there was something wrong with me.

It's not much of an effort to imagine that this had the effect on me of not wanting to spend a lot of time around that kind of person or mindset. As I grew older, I naturally gravitated away from people like that and toward people who wouldn't be the type to shame me for the things I wanted out of life: education, travel, not necessarily to get married and start a family as my main goals. Those are not particularly correlated to people who hold conservative political values, as it turns out.

*shrug*

[ysette9]

I wish I saved the link because I can’t find the article again. A while back I read that someone did a survey of women around the globe and found that pretty consistently women reported thinking that the ideal number of kids to have is 2. This was regardless of how many she actually had, what country she lived in, and so forth.

Obviously things get in the way of what someone might view as Ideal. Education of women is strongly correlated with reducing fertility. Increased cost of living, including housing and education reduce the number of kids people have. There are gentler effects of family leave and affordable childcare access.

Thinking in that framework we can broadly imagine conservatives as more likely living in rural areas, southern states, all of which aren’t known for supporting women or families when it comes to family planning and general human rights. Cost of living is also lower and as others have said, if you haven’t moved away from family to the big city, then you may have support to make up for the glaring failure of the state to offer childcare optons.

Conversely liberals are more likely to gravitate to other cost of living cities where you can’t survive without two incomes, and childcare is as much as one income. Anecdotally I’ve seen a trend among my acquaintances of more kids for those who live in cheaper areas. My sister’s college cohort in California may be a bit of an extreme, but of all the people she went to school with only two have kids. The others say they can’t afford them. My BIL and SIL only have one kid, and she clearly stated she would have liked to have had another but they couldn’t afford it.

[Just Joe]

In my red state its the conservatives that want to limit people's safety nets. That includes help with daycare costs. Its the liberals who would like to manage the costs of living and education - and who want better gun control for the protection of everyone, especially the kids in schools. They'd also like to see more parks and urban development such as bike paths and car alternatives.

Like folks up thread have explained - the conservatives I know stayed close to family, tend to spend alot of their free time with family, rely heavily on their family's support for everything. AND those same people want to limit other people's family planning choices, limit people's choices in general with intrusive laws, limit LGBTQ+ options and recognition, disregard climate change science, they also do not support universal healthcare - though many conservatives use it in the form of medicaid/medicare/emergency rooms, etc.

In my opinion its the conservatives that ultimately make life more difficult in this country by limiting people's options when they are having trouble. Because life is harder without a well developed safety net - like living far from family - it is probably wiser to have smaller families.

I do worry about our kids' ability to support themselves, afford property, and what the future holds for them - politically and environmentally. Seems like we are prepping for the future challenges ever so slowly.

[charis]

There are studies that show that women with higher educations are more likely to be democrats, as well as women generally.  More men generally, and men with less than a college degree, are more likely to be republican.  Women with higher educations are less likely to have children.  Religious people are more likely to be republican and less likely to use birth control. Ergo...

Liberal couples are more likely to eschew traditional gender norms, unlike republican couples.  Which means being open to be child free, woman working outside the home, etc.  Liberal couples are much more likely to be same sex than republican couples.

The math is very clear on the why.  Your anecdotal guess that liberals dislike kids because they don't seem to like your particular children is funny.  Maybe they give you wide-berth because they don't like you.

[ChpBstrd]

Conservatives are collectivists who think of themselves as members of their groups (religion, family, tribe, club, nationality, ethnicity).

Liberals are individualists who think in terms of "I" and resent the various infringements on their freedom that groups impose (religious commitments, dogmas, and behavioral restrictions, family obligations, club dues, government laws related to their reproductive behaviors, various discriminations).

I've always considered this the reason why 90% of the liberals I know are married not planning on kids, divorced no kids, or militantly single. They don't like being obligated to do things against their interest for other people because the self is the primary unit. The breeding-age conservatives I know, OTOH, cherish the idea of wiping butts for a whole litter of kids for the next decade of their lives because that behavior embeds them in a family unit, which is the end goal in itself.

[getsorted]

Gosh, everyone hold up-- I've got to get my popcorn for this thread.

The breeding-age conservatives I know, OTOH, cherish the idea of wiping butts for a whole litter of kids for the next decade of their lives because that behavior embeds them in a family unit, which is the end goal in itself.

I had a laugh at this. I don't think butt-wiping is the part they are looking forward to!

I totally disagree with your individual libera vs. collective conservative breakdown, because remember the absolute fury over Hillary Clinton's "It Takes a Village?" It was essentially "Bowling Alone" from another angle-- encouraging collective efforts and rebuffing modern individualism-- and yet I still see conservative bumper stickers griping that "It takes a FAMILY, not a VILLAGE" to this day.

I have said for a long time that, barring the real assholes on either side, the major difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals generally agree that the government should be the tool we use to support people in need, and conservatives believe people should rely on voluntary associations like churches, charities, and families, for social support.

As a liberal with a kid-- and one of those awful single moms conservatives have been bemoaning for 50 years-- I have to say I have never noticed that conservatives were particularly friendly toward children, but it is true that I have never heard a conservative refer to children as "crotch goblins" or "spawn," which is routine among a certain sub-set of my liberal friends.

[wenchsenior]

Nearly all of my social circle is liberal, and they are split about 2/3rds with kids (usually one or two) and 1/3 with none. 

I agree with the other posters that the downstream effect of seeing liberals with fewer kids (when that happens) is primarily due to many other upstream issues and has nothing to do with liking/not liking, nor wanting/not wanting.  Higher education and earnings are correlated with fewer kids but more stable marriages; it also correlates with more liberal voting patterns and with delayed start on child raising b/c both members of a couple usually only enter the workforce full time after getting advanced degrees and trying to get well established in their jobs before they can 'risk' the job and financial setbacks that often accompany childbearing/rearing.

So they are older when they settle down, get 'regular' jobs, and form more traditional family units than people with high school or bachelor's degrees or people who are self-employed right out of high school might be. This often translates to less time to have kids and fewer kids. More highly educated people also tend to move more frequently and live in higher cost of living areas, which can be a barrier to lots of kids.

Being liberal correlates more with being a-religious and associated with less conservative religious demoninations, which means there isn't as much social pressure to get started on childrearing ASAP as there is in more socially and religiously conservative communities.

There are also some subtler social cues... the conservatives of my aquaintance do not place as much concern on being 'financially ready' for raising kids (though I'm not sure this is universal)...there seems to be an assumption that you should get on with kid-having even if you are fairly poor and everyone makes the assumption that it will work out; whereas the social pressure among liberals that I know goes the exact opposite way... everyone in my personal liberal circle would not dream of having kids until all their financial ducks are in a pretty good row.

I do know that among my husband's grad students (already self-selected to spend longer getting settled prior to starting families b/c they are in grad school), there has been a notable split in anxiety and approach over this issue, depending on their background and upbringing. The ones from conservative religious families have verbally noted pressure/worry from their parents and families about 'how long school was taking' and 'when you are getting married?', while among those with less conservative religious families, the  pressure or expectation is to get the degree in the first place and/or get a good job, with marriage and kids to be assumed to follow after that.

Among young/new female faculty at the university, many of them are in a state of stressing about when they can start having kids. It's VERY common for new female faculty to get hired in their late 20s or early 30s after 2 post bachelor's degrees that took up close to a decade of their time, then either instantly start popping out kids on after the other about a year apart, or to start doing so immediately after getting tenured. They tend to rush and have their kids close together b/c their fertility window starts to shrink in their 30s.

Then there's the 'world view' discourager. Liberals (esp those of my acquaintance) are often very concerned about the state of politics and the environment, particularly re: climate change and issues related to population/resource use. Some liberals I know are trying to stick to no more than 1 or 2 kids for 'replacement' purposes or don't feel comfortable having them at all.

I do know one liberal friend who doesn't like kids and never wanted any for that reason, but she's unusual. Many of my liberal friends love kids (and several are in mourning or considering adoption b/c of fertility issues). Several work with kids either in adoption, teaching, or crisis relief positions (placing abused kids, etc).

Personally, I am neutral on kids as I am on all people that I don't know. I like some, don't care about most, actively dislike some. I never had a big interest nor 'ticking clock' desire to have any, nor did my husband; we had a couple pregnancy scares over our first 15 years together, and if at certain points in my life post bachelor's degree if an oops pregnancy had happened, I would have likely had the child and it would have been fine.  However, looking back in my 50s, I'm now very thankful that I didn't have any kids at all, given my despair over the planet's future.

Both my sisters also 'missed' their childbearing window... one wanted kids but didn't have financial or partner stability to try [edit for clarity...until her optimal fertile window was past], the other was like me...indifferent.  Both of them are likewise extremely relieved now that they didn't end up having any.  Several other friends clearly found childrearing most rewarding. A few others had kids and are generally happy about it but struggle with the trade-offs it caused them to make in terms of self-identity, self-expression, financial stability, etc.  I think in that way, people are all pretty consistently varied in their actual experience of parenting and not parenting, regardless of politics/ideology.

[YttriumNitrate]

Based on this article (take it for what it's worth), it looks like conservatives have had on average about half a kid more for the past few decades, but that gap looks to be shrinking slightly.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advantage

[tygertygertyger]

As a liberal with a kid-- and one of those awful single moms conservatives have been bemoaning for 50 years-- I have to say I have never noticed that conservatives were particularly friendly toward children, but it is true that I have never heard a conservative refer to children as "crotch goblins" or "spawn," which is routine among a certain sub-set of my liberal friends.

Ah. I do tend toward "germ bags" myself, mostly for that 3-7 age range. Often after I have gotten sick promptly after visiting, again. But I do like the way they're growing up. :-)

[getsorted]

As a liberal with a kid-- and one of those awful single moms conservatives have been bemoaning for 50 years-- I have to say I have never noticed that conservatives were particularly friendly toward children, but it is true that I have never heard a conservative refer to children as "crotch goblins" or "spawn," which is routine among a certain sub-set of my liberal friends.

Ah. I do tend toward "germ bags" myself, mostly for that 3-7 age range. Often after I have gotten sick promptly after visiting, again. But I do like the way they're growing up. :-)

Read this comment while booking a strep test for my feverish child, so while I'm not saying "germ bags" is wrong, it's maybe worth considering that you might not feel equally at ease referring to men, women, seniors, or any other demographic group in a similar way.

[tygertygertyger]

Fair enough.

[EvenSteven]

Has anyone noticed that Liberals tend to dislike kids?

Categorically false. We find them delicious.

[partgypsy]

I have 2 kids, how to break it to my kids I actually dislike them?  Most married people in my dept, heavily skewing towards liberal being that they are highly educated, science backgrounds, I can only think of two that do not have kids,one being liberal, other being conservative. It doesn't have to do with not liking kids. My family (except for one inlaw) uniformly vote democrat, but love kids being they are Greek American. Otoh, my oldest daughter decided, years ago that she wasn't going to have any children, primarily for environmental reasons (too many people on this planet). It's a complicated issue, but it's def true that liberals believe that individuals should decide how many kids, if any a family should have, and the woman's right to choose is respected. while conservative, in particularly religiously based conservatism believes marriage is for raising children so a union that doesn't include kids is considered suspect, regardless of the actual reasons,  motivations, preferences of the couple involved.

[partgypsy]

Eta just got a text a 12 week abortion ban just passed in my state. It is incredibly disconcerting and dismaying that women have been fighting for decades to have the right over their reproductive health and choice, and it is overturned. Can't say my feelings right now. If either of my daughter choose to get permanently sterilized so they don't have to face the possibility of bearing and giving birth to an unwanted pregnancy, I will support them.  And no, neither of my daughters are sexually active, but rape and coercive sex is a fact of life for women no matter where you live in the world.

[LifeHappens]

I have 2 kids, how to break it to my kids I actually dislike them?

I know, right? When I see my 4 nieces and nephews this weekend I'm going to have to explain how Auntie LifeHappens doesn't actually like them (despite spoiling them with all the candy) because of my political views.

[Michael in ABQ]

I think a histogram would be very interesting to see the data broken down. My hypothesis is that liberals tend to have fewer children and would probably cluster around 0, 1, or 2 with very few having 4 or more. Conservatives would probably cluster around 2 or 3 with a longer right tail of having 4 or more, and fewer having 0.

With 6 kids my wife and I would definitely be on that long right tail of the distribution. The last time I looked up the demographic data nationally it was by household size and only went up to 7 or more and that was about 1% of US households.


Also, I would recommend the OP change the thread title to "Has anyone noticed that Liberals tend to dislike kids have fewer kids?"

I think people who are militant about being anti-kid (i.e. if you have any kids, you are directly responsible for killing the planet) skew heavily liberal, but that's a very tiny segment of the population.

[Metalcat]

Oof...yeah, quicksand is right.

I agree that equating not having kids with hating kids is, well, rude. I love kids, a lot, I just don't have any particular need to have any of my own.

Has it occured to you that perhaps it's not Liberals who hate kids, but perhaps more that Liberals tend to be more tolerant of folks who don't want kids, so the kid-free folks tend to end up in the Liberal camp because we feel unwelcome in the conservative camp?

People who hold more traditional gender attitudes can often be incredibly judgemental and harsh towards folks who don't want kids. And traditional gender norms are traditionally the territory of the conservative side.

I've been told absolutely hateful things about my lack of desire to have kids, particularly by religious gender-norm conservative folks.

Evidently I'm selfish, greedy, and incapable of real love.

Meanwhile, I've dedicated much of my life to actually helping kids whose "loving" parents neglect them. So...yeah...

I don't hate kids. If anything, I hate parents.

[PKFFW]

Obvious click bait trolling thread title but hey, it got people, including myself, to click so mission accomplished.

Firstly, if any significant number of your friends and the strangers you meet, regardless of their political affiliation, dislike your children, I can only suggest you take a long hard look at your children and how you are raising them.

Secondly, it is my understanding, that education correlates very well with number of children.  ie:  the higher the level of education, the less number of children.  So if your Conservative friends are having more children than your Liberal friends perhaps it is just that they are less educated and more ignorant? (ok, that's my obvious trolling response so please don't take it too seriously.)

My wife and I have no kids and no plans to have kids.  We are "Liberal" (though in Australia it is the Liberal Party that is the right wing conservative wanna be Trump ass licking GOP like party).  We both thoroughly enjoy spending time with our nieces, nephews, and friend's children though.

And I'll end by seconding the experiences of Metalcat and others that have pointed out the horrendous behaviour of some people, generally Conservative folk, when they find out we don't want children of our own.  Really despicable in some cases.  I can't think of a single instance of a Liberal leaning person acting in such a way.  Perhaps a thread titled "Has anyone noticed Conservatives tend to raise despicable human beings?" should be started?  (ok, I admit, that was another bit of obvious trolling, not to be taken seriously)

[ATtiny85]

I have some far right beliefs, some far left beliefs, and a bunch of shit I don’t care about at all.

No kids, no desire. My reason is more that it just seems like a (moderately) miserable existence to have to deal with raising kids. I have never come up with an upside to it, but tons of downside. Fortunately my spouse has also seen the light and has remarked many times what a wise decision that was. I also have no interest being anywhere near any kids, though my spouse enjoys them.

It is an interesting topic, and my local observations would say it does seem like anyone that has four or more kids does seem to maybe be more conservative. However, I rarely know where anyone in real life is on the political spectrum.

[Weisass]

Finding these stereotypes fascinating. I’m liberal, religious, and have four kids. I can think of multiple liberal families with 3 to 5 kids in my middle class suburban neighborhood, and plenty of childless people too. They all seem to get on fine. And the number of kiddos seems to correlate in my neighborhood, as much as anything, to economic security, with the financially well off having more kids. So there’s that.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Obvious click bait trolling thread title but hey, it got people, including myself, to click so mission accomplished.

Firstly, if any significant number of your friends and the strangers you meet, regardless of their political affiliation, dislike your children, I can only suggest you take a long hard look at your children and how you are raising them.

Secondly, it is my understanding, that education correlates very well with number of children.  ie:  the higher the level of education, the less number of children.  So if your Conservative friends are having more children than your Liberal friends perhaps it is just that they are less educated and more ignorant? (ok, that's my obvious trolling response so please don't take it too seriously.)

My wife and I have no kids and no plans to have kids.  We are "Liberal" (though in Australia it is the Liberal Party that is the right wing conservative wanna be Trump ass licking GOP like party).  We both thoroughly enjoy spending time with our nieces, nephews, and friend's children though.

And I'll end by seconding the experiences of Metalcat and others that have pointed out the horrendous behaviour of some people, generally Conservative folk, when they find out we don't want children of our own.  Really despicable in some cases. I can't think of a single instance of a Liberal leaning person acting in such a way.  Perhaps a thread titled "Has anyone noticed Conservatives tend to raise despicable human beings?" should be started?  (ok, I admit, that was another bit of obvious trolling, not to be taken seriously)

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

[PKFFW]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

[Metalcat]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

That makes sense, and I don't doubt you're right. The problem with any of these generalizations is who knows why people are being crappy. Maybe it's ideologically based. Maybe they're genuinely concerned and expressing it poorly. Maybe they're just nosy, pushy jerks.

I'm confident many more people are directly criticized for not having children then having them because it goes against the status quo and also because it's a roughly irreversible decision after a certain point and yet changeable in the moment and people always love to chime in on those. Having a lot of kids in general has already happened when criticism can be leveled and thus tends to be snide comments more indirectly because at that point there's no decision to be made.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I disagree with this. Not that you might get more criticism for having no kids. Again, going against the"norm" and all.

Parents with large numbers of kids do get crap and not just once or twice over years. It's often not as direct for the reasons listed above. It's more of overhead snide comments or semi veiled insults in direct interaction.

One or two kids - sure this wouldn't happen. Get much above three or four, it's not a unicorn scenario.

[Morning Glory]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I disagree with this. Not that you might get more criticism for having no kids. Again, going against the"norm" and all.

Parents with large numbers of kids do get crap and not just once or twice over years. It's often not as direct for the reasons listed above. It's more of overhead snide comments or semi veiled insults in direct interaction.

One or two kids - sure this wouldn't happen. Get much above three or four, it's not a unicorn scenario.

It especially happens to people who are not white or middle class or English speaking.  I remember when the whole Republican party platform was to try and convince people that the social safety net was causing poor black single moms to have more babies than they could afford.

The reason why the US is so shitty for parents conpared to other countries is rooted in racism. 

[Metalcat]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I disagree with this. Not that you might get more criticism for having no kids. Again, going against the"norm" and all.

Parents with large numbers of kids do get crap and not just once or twice over years. It's often not as direct for the reasons listed above. It's more of overhead snide comments or semi veiled insults in direct interaction.

One or two kids - sure this wouldn't happen. Get much above three or four, it's not a unicorn scenario.

It especially happens to people who are not white or middle class or English speaking.  I remember when the whole Republican party platform was to try and convince people that the social safety net was causing poor black single moms to have more babies than they could afford.

The reason why the US is so shitty for parents conpared to other countries is rooted in racism.

Ah, see, I don't live in the US, so perhaps I'm just not seeing this.

[ender]

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I'm not sure if this is equivalent to what you've experienced, but it's a not uncommon sentiment (even on these forums) to describe having kids in some capacity as environmentally irresponsible/etc.

And the sentiment @Morning Glory describes is definitely true in the USA.

[rothwem]

Damn, so I didn't mean for this to be a thread that I just drop and see what happens, but I got busy in the afternoon and forgot to check on this thread.  Holy yeouch, this thing blew up.  Lots of stuff to unpack here. 

First,

I think your sample is too small to be valid.  Here is one study I found: "Over the entire sample (1972-2010), family variables have quite a small effect.  Being married made you 2.3 percentage-points less likely to be a Democrat, and 1.8 percentage-points more likely to be a Republican.  The effect of children was statistically insignificant – .3 percentage-points less Democratic per child, .1 percentage-points more Republican per child."

That study is using data 13 years old.  I wonder if among adults ages 20-35 more liberals are so concerned about climate change that they worry about any future for their children.  This comment is based solely on my conversations with some liberal young adults...not nearly a large enough sample to reach a conclusion.

Interesting study, but I do think its a bit old and doesn't reflect current polarization, and also I think that these days there are a lot of people that are left leaning Democrats that probably wouldn't be Democrats if the current Republican party insanity wasn't occurring. 

The climate change theme is interesting though, I didn't realize that people were that actively concerned about their children having a crazy carbon footprint.  It seems to reflect a sense of defeatism that's pretty disheartening.  I'm trying to raise my children to be part of a solution to the problem, not make it worse, it seems like not having kids is a pretty "Skynet-style" solution to a problem.  By the same token, suicide is pretty strongly discouraged by both liberals and conservatives, but its not really seen as an admirable solution to climate change. 

Has it occured to you that perhaps it's not Liberals who hate kids, but perhaps more that Liberals tend to be more tolerant of folks who don't want kids, so the kid-free folks tend to end up in the Liberal camp because we feel unwelcome in the conservative camp?

Oh, it definitely has.  It doesn't really explain the reason that its actively "not cool" to have kids though, it seems like this is a thing a lot. Maybe my local area is just not really particularly child friendly, but I've definitely heard the terminology stated below:

... refer to children as "crotch goblins" or "spawn," which is routine among a certain sub-set of my liberal friends.

People who hold more traditional gender attitudes can often be incredibly judgemental and harsh towards folks who don't want kids. And traditional gender norms are traditionally the territory of the conservative side.

I've been told absolutely hateful things about my lack of desire to have kids, particularly by religious gender-norm conservative folks.

Evidently I'm selfish, greedy, and incapable of real love.

Meanwhile, I've dedicated much of my life to actually helping kids whose "loving" parents neglect them. So...yeah...

I don't hate kids. If anything, I hate parents.

I mean, jeez.  That sucks.  I'm sorry people said that stuff to you, its shitty.  The "other side" can be just as shitty though, and hating parents is the same thing as hating kids, you don't get one without the other.  Parents may be the problem, but you aren't fixing any kids if you're not fixing the adults. 

My hypothesis is that it has more to do with where liberals and conservatives eventually settle.

People who are more liberal are more likely move away from where they grew up (and to end up in HCOL areas), meaning they may not have a support network, which is super helpful when having kids. You have to make sure you have your sh*t on lock if you are having babies with no support network, making it likelier that you put off having kids or forgo them.

Conversely, conservatives are more likely to settle close to where they were born (and it is like within 15 miles or something?), making it likelier that even if you aren't sure you are financially "Ready" that you go ahead and do it, because you are likely to have help nearby.

My background is a religious liberal who has had kids (and has also lived/worked in MD and NC).

If we had stayed in MD we would have been less likely to have 2 kids just from daycare costs. We still would have probably had at least one because DH and I have both always wanted children. When we got married we said we wanted 4. We ended up with 2 because we couldn't swing more than that. But if we had lived nearer to either of our families we would have been more likely to go for a third.

Interesting points. 

Re: the lack of support network, I'm right there with you.  Our families are 500 miles and 900 miles away and fuck yeah its tough.  We've considered moving back to MD, but the place where my parents live is so goddamn expensive. And my parents drive me nuts if I'm around them for more than ~4 days.  Its cheaper where my wife's family is, but they're not in great shape and they're not physically capable of caring for our children for more than a couple hours at a time.  Well and they drive me nuts too, maybe me an Taylor Swift are onto something here (I'm the problem). 

As for the actual cost of having kids, I have a theory that its somewhat of a "prisoner's dilemma".  I know that's an insensitive term, but bear with me.  The more people that DON'T have kids, the more money there is in the economy to buy things that aren't daycare, which means those things are more expensive than they would be otherwise.  If you break from the "prison" of having kids, its easier for you, but now instead of paying an extra mortgage for daycare, you can now spend 2x a much on your house, driving up housing and making it worse for the other "prisoners".  A HCOL area seems the perfect place to observe chickens and eggs rolling around...are people having less kids because its too expensive or is it expensive because people have less kids?  I need to write to Stephen Dubner, maybe he can do a Freakonomics podcast about it.

Especially if the brunt of it falls to women.

Ugh.  Yeah, I wonder about this, this is a frustrating problem.  Our family is pretty traditional, I make more money than my wife because she's in a chronically underpaid female job role, so when she had the opportunity to go 3x a week to spend more time with our kids, she jumped on it.  As a result, she does way more child-rearing than me.  If she made more money though, I'd probably try to get a shorter week to spend more time.  Or would I?  The "mom gangs" at the park on mid-day weekday are pretty exclusive.  My kid will play with their kids but I'm sitting on a bench by myself while they have their exclusive sense of community.  I'm not offended, but I was joking about it to a male friend whose wife is a doctor and he's a stay at home dad (one of my few liberal couple friends with children) and its a real thing.  I'm not sure I'd enjoy it if I was in his position. 

[Metalcat]

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I'm not sure if this is equivalent to what you've experienced, but it's a not uncommon sentiment (even on these forums) to describe having kids in some capacity as environmentally irresponsible/etc.

And the sentiment @Morning Glory describes is definitely true in the USA.

Yes, I've heard this sentiment of course, but I've literally never seen a single person say to another person's face that they're immoral because they chose to have children. Meanwhile I've heard it more times than I can count.

[economista]

@rothwem - we have that issue with a stay at home dad too. I make more than my husband ever could so he is a stay at home dad. However, he is also blind so he cannot drive (or do about 1/2 of the other stay at home parent tasks). The Denver area actually has a stay at home dad group and they meet up at parks and such but he cannot attend because he can't drive. He does a lot of stroller pushing to walk to the closest parks to us but has definitely experienced the "mommy" groups who don't want to talk to him.

[Metalcat]

Damn, so I didn't mean for this to be a thread that I just drop and see what happens, but I got busy in the afternoon and forgot to check on this thread.  Holy yeouch, this thing blew up.  Lots of stuff to unpack here. 

First,

I think your sample is too small to be valid.  Here is one study I found: "Over the entire sample (1972-2010), family variables have quite a small effect.  Being married made you 2.3 percentage-points less likely to be a Democrat, and 1.8 percentage-points more likely to be a Republican.  The effect of children was statistically insignificant – .3 percentage-points less Democratic per child, .1 percentage-points more Republican per child."

That study is using data 13 years old.  I wonder if among adults ages 20-35 more liberals are so concerned about climate change that they worry about any future for their children.  This comment is based solely on my conversations with some liberal young adults...not nearly a large enough sample to reach a conclusion.

Interesting study, but I do think its a bit old and doesn't reflect current polarization, and also I think that these days there are a lot of people that are left leaning Democrats that probably wouldn't be Democrats if the current Republican party insanity wasn't occurring. 

The climate change theme is interesting though, I didn't realize that people were that actively concerned about their children having a crazy carbon footprint.  It seems to reflect a sense of defeatism that's pretty disheartening.  I'm trying to raise my children to be part of a solution to the problem, not make it worse, it seems like not having kids is a pretty "Skynet-style" solution to a problem.  By the same token, suicide is pretty strongly discouraged by both liberals and conservatives, but its not really seen as an admirable solution to climate change. 

Has it occured to you that perhaps it's not Liberals who hate kids, but perhaps more that Liberals tend to be more tolerant of folks who don't want kids, so the kid-free folks tend to end up in the Liberal camp because we feel unwelcome in the conservative camp?

Oh, it definitely has.  It doesn't really explain the reason that its actively "not cool" to have kids though, it seems like this is a thing a lot. Maybe my local area is just not really particularly child friendly, but I've definitely heard the terminology stated below:

... refer to children as "crotch goblins" or "spawn," which is routine among a certain sub-set of my liberal friends.

People who hold more traditional gender attitudes can often be incredibly judgemental and harsh towards folks who don't want kids. And traditional gender norms are traditionally the territory of the conservative side.

I've been told absolutely hateful things about my lack of desire to have kids, particularly by religious gender-norm conservative folks.

Evidently I'm selfish, greedy, and incapable of real love.

Meanwhile, I've dedicated much of my life to actually helping kids whose "loving" parents neglect them. So...yeah...

I don't hate kids. If anything, I hate parents.

I mean, jeez.  That sucks.  I'm sorry people said that stuff to you, its shitty.  The "other side" can be just as shitty though, and hating parents is the same thing as hating kids, you don't get one without the other.  Parents may be the problem, but you aren't fixing any kids if you're not fixing the adults. 

My hypothesis is that it has more to do with where liberals and conservatives eventually settle.

People who are more liberal are more likely move away from where they grew up (and to end up in HCOL areas), meaning they may not have a support network, which is super helpful when having kids. You have to make sure you have your sh*t on lock if you are having babies with no support network, making it likelier that you put off having kids or forgo them.

Conversely, conservatives are more likely to settle close to where they were born (and it is like within 15 miles or something?), making it likelier that even if you aren't sure you are financially "Ready" that you go ahead and do it, because you are likely to have help nearby.

My background is a religious liberal who has had kids (and has also lived/worked in MD and NC).

If we had stayed in MD we would have been less likely to have 2 kids just from daycare costs. We still would have probably had at least one because DH and I have both always wanted children. When we got married we said we wanted 4. We ended up with 2 because we couldn't swing more than that. But if we had lived nearer to either of our families we would have been more likely to go for a third.

Interesting points. 

Re: the lack of support network, I'm right there with you.  Our families are 500 miles and 900 miles away and fuck yeah its tough.  We've considered moving back to MD, but the place where my parents live is so goddamn expensive. And my parents drive me nuts if I'm around them for more than ~4 days.  Its cheaper where my wife's family is, but they're not in great shape and they're not physically capable of caring for our children for more than a couple hours at a time.  Well and they drive me nuts too, maybe me an Taylor Swift are onto something here (I'm the problem). 

As for the actual cost of having kids, I have a theory that its somewhat of a "prisoner's dilemma".  I know that's an insensitive term, but bear with me.  The more people that DON'T have kids, the more money there is in the economy to buy things that aren't daycare, which means those things are more expensive than they would be otherwise.  If you break from the "prison" of having kids, its easier for you, but now instead of paying an extra mortgage for daycare, you can now spend 2x a much on your house, driving up housing and making it worse for the other "prisoners".  A HCOL area seems the perfect place to observe chickens and eggs rolling around...are people having less kids because its too expensive or is it expensive because people have less kids?  I need to write to Stephen Dubner, maybe he can do a Freakonomics podcast about it.

Especially if the brunt of it falls to women.

Ugh.  Yeah, I wonder about this, this is a frustrating problem.  Our family is pretty traditional, I make more money than my wife because she's in a chronically underpaid female job role, so when she had the opportunity to go 3x a week to spend more time with our kids, she jumped on it.  As a result, she does way more child-rearing than me.  If she made more money though, I'd probably try to get a shorter week to spend more time.  Or would I?  The "mom gangs" at the park on mid-day weekday are pretty exclusive.  My kid will play with their kids but I'm sitting on a bench by myself while they have their exclusive sense of community.  I'm not offended, but I was joking about it to a male friend whose wife is a doctor and he's a stay at home dad (one of my few liberal couple friends with children) and its a real thing.  I'm not sure I'd enjoy it if I was in his position.

I'm sorry...what?

You started a thread with a massively inflammatory title pitting political factions against each other and you didn't expect it to be dramatic?

If anything, this thread has been really chill based on how it started.

Also, when I joked that I hate parents, I wasn't saying I hate people who reproduce. I was specifically shitting on the parents I've had to deal with who are wealthy, upper upper middle class, and refuse to provide necessary medical care to their children while hypocritically claiming to love them more than anything on earth.

When those hypocritical fuck faces shame me for being selfish because I don't have kids, I just take care of their neglected kids, it makes me a little ragey.

I didn't say anything about "fixing" kids, I don't even know what you mean by that.

[getsorted]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

[Kris]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Church and Walmart aren't really what I consider bastions of liberalism, though... did you go to a liberal church? Were the Walmart people clearly marked as left-leaning somehow?

[getsorted]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Church and Walmart aren't really what I consider bastions of liberalism, though... did you go to a liberal church? Were the Walmart people clearly marked as left-leaning somehow?

I went to a church that had been liberal, and then over the course of the 80s & 90s, got swept up in the evangelical movement and became (much) more conservative. So the older members tended to be liberal, and younger people tended to be more conservative. It was the older liberal members who made these comments. At one time, in a lot of mainline churches, it was not uncommon for pastors to counsel new couples about not overpopulating the earth by having more than one or two children.

The overpopulation lady in Wal-Mart that I remember best looked like Professor Trelawney... broomstick skirt and lots of scarves. This is a look I generally associated with being liberal in the 90s. And also, what conservative worries about overpopulation?

[sonofsven]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Church and Walmart aren't really what I consider bastions of liberalism, though... did you go to a liberal church? Were the Walmart people clearly marked as left-leaning somehow?

I went to a church that had been liberal, and then over the course of the 80s & 90s, got swept up in the evangelical movement and became (much) more conservative. So the older members tended to be liberal, and younger people tended to be more conservative. It was the older liberal members who made these comments. At one time, in a lot of mainline churches, it was not uncommon for pastors to counsel new couples about not overpopulating the earth by having more than one or two children.

The overpopulation lady in Wal-Mart that I remember best looked like Professor Trelawney... broomstick skirt and lots of scarves. This is a look I generally associated with being liberal in the 90s. And also, what conservative worries about overpopulation?

Haha, most all of them do when it comes to immigrant families: "anchor babies", and so on. Also the above mentioned conservative scorn for single black mothers and "welfare babies".

[dividendman]

Conservatives are collectivists who think of themselves as members of their groups (religion, family, tribe, club, nationality, ethnicity).

Liberals are individualists who think in terms of "I" and resent the various infringements on their freedom that groups impose (religious commitments, dogmas, and behavioral restrictions, family obligations, club dues, government laws related to their reproductive behaviors, various discriminations).
<snip>

I'm not sure I buy this argument. I agree, ideally liberalism is based on the individual per the definition, and that's classic liberalism. But it's been morphed into group identity politics too. That's why today's "liberals" are always talking about how these races should get these things and this gender should get this and blah blah. The groups are just different ones from the conservatives. Todays "liberals" are actually very conservative in many of their views (censorship, group before individual).

[Michael in ABQ]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Now that our kids are older (4 - 14) we don't get as many random strangers coming up to us. When our kids were younger, we would almost always get some comments at Costco or the commissary (never Walmart though) or at church. They were always positive. Usually, it would be an older couple telling us they also had a big family and were happy to see another one, someone telling us they wish that they had more kids. We're mostly redheads so that also makes us stick out, especially here in NM where just being non-Hispanic is in the minority. I got the same thing growing up in a family of redheads, lots of random strangers want to tell you about the person in their family who had red hair. I've learned to just smile politely and nod.

In interactions with coworkers or other acquaintances the comments were rarely hostile or overtly negative - but very often the half-joking comment of "do you own a TV?" or "don't you know how that happens?". I could take it negatively, but I just shrug it off. The same as when people find out I have six kids and ask if we're planning on having any more. When I answer "we'll see" I get a mix of reactions - though rarely is anyone rude enough to say right to my face that we shouldn't have any more kids.

[Kris]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Church and Walmart aren't really what I consider bastions of liberalism, though... did you go to a liberal church? Were the Walmart people clearly marked as left-leaning somehow?

I went to a church that had been liberal, and then over the course of the 80s & 90s, got swept up in the evangelical movement and became (much) more conservative. So the older members tended to be liberal, and younger people tended to be more conservative. It was the older liberal members who made these comments. At one time, in a lot of mainline churches, it was not uncommon for pastors to counsel new couples about not overpopulating the earth by having more than one or two children.

The overpopulation lady in Wal-Mart that I remember best looked like Professor Trelawney... broomstick skirt and lots of scarves. This is a look I generally associated with being liberal in the 90s. And also, what conservative worries about overpopulation?

My conservative protestant grandparents and their friends had a strong anti-Catholic bias, and I remember throughout my childhood hearing them bitch about how Catholics had huge families of rugrats running around and just kept pooping out babies like an afterthought. I heard that morph in the 80s and 90s to include snide references to Black people too as well as Mexicans and (insert ethnic group of choice here) (Reagan's mythic welfare queen image worked on them like a charm). They did not give a single shit about overpopulation, but they were busybodies who had been fed the "we are being overrun" narrative and swallowed it like mother's milk. They judged people who were not like them like it was their hobby -- which it was.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Agree that this was a serious click bait title and with pretty much everything you said, except for the bolded. If you're meaning can't think of a liberal person acting like a jerk about people not wanting kids, then sure. If you mean you can't think of a single instance of a liberal leaning person acting that way about kids at all, I'm surprised. You've never seen/heard of a liberal leaning person giving someone crap about having too many kids and how it's bad for many of the reasons people expressed on here for their personal reasons for not having kids? It certainly does happen.

To clarify, I have never encountered a Liberal leaning person acting like a jerk towards people for choosing not to have kids.  Though I also do not know of any Liberal leaning person who has acted like a jerk towards people for choosing to have kids, I can accept that it has probably happened at some point.

With no statistical evidence to support my view, I'm still very comfortable believing the latter happens far less frequently than the former, even after accounting for the difference in population size of those who choose not to have children compared to those who do.

Yeah, I've personally heard really judgemental, downright cruel and hateful things my entire life about not wanting kids.

I've never once heard anyone, conservative or liberal say anything even remotely equivalent to someone for having kids.

I'm sure it happens, there are incredibly rude people out there, but ask anyone kid-free and you will hear endless stories of harsh judgement. Ask any parent and the overwhelming majority will have never been personally attacked for reproducing.

I disagree with this. Not that you might get more criticism for having no kids. Again, going against the"norm" and all.

Parents with large numbers of kids do get crap and not just once or twice over years. It's often not as direct for the reasons listed above. It's more of overhead snide comments or semi veiled insults in direct interaction.

One or two kids - sure this wouldn't happen. Get much above three or four, it's not a unicorn scenario.

It especially happens to people who are not white or middle class or English speaking.  I remember when the whole Republican party platform was to try and convince people that the social safety net was causing poor black single moms to have more babies than they could afford.

The reason why the US is so shitty for parents conpared to other countries is rooted in racism.

Ah, see, I don't live in the US, so perhaps I'm just not seeing this.

That is really interesting. As Morning Glory mentioned, it is more prevalent with racial minorities, but it's pretty universal in general at least where I'm at. I just recently heard this from some white, middle class, parents of four who were recounting the numerous incidents of "you're pregnan again?" and the like. I hear often the "don't they know what causes that" etc. Maybe it is just a US thing.

[getsorted]

I'm from a family even bigger than @Michael in ABQ 's. People were definitely rude right to my mom's face. People at church would ask her, "Haven't you figured out what's causing that yet?" People would accost us in Wal-Mart and talk to us about overpopulation. There was a general assumption that my mom had no control over having so many kids, but it was what she wanted to do with her life. Assumptions that we were on welfare, people saying you shouldn't have kids if you weren't going to pay for them to go to college.... Lots of face-to-face interrogations and disapproval. It definitely happens.

Church and Walmart aren't really what I consider bastions of liberalism, though... did you go to a liberal church? Were the Walmart people clearly marked as left-leaning somehow?

I went to a church that had been liberal, and then over the course of the 80s & 90s, got swept up in the evangelical movement and became (much) more conservative. So the older members tended to be liberal, and younger people tended to be more conservative. It was the older liberal members who made these comments. At one time, in a lot of mainline churches, it was not uncommon for pastors to counsel new couples about not overpopulating the earth by having more than one or two children.

The overpopulation lady in Wal-Mart that I remember best looked like Professor Trelawney... broomstick skirt and lots of scarves. This is a look I generally associated with being liberal in the 90s. And also, what conservative worries about overpopulation?

My conservative protestant grandparents and their friends had a strong anti-Catholic bias, and I remember throughout my childhood hearing them bitch about how Catholics had huge families of rugrats running around and just kept pooping out babies like an afterthought. I heard that morph in the 80s and 90s to include snide references to Black people too as well as Mexicans and (insert ethnic group of choice here) (Reagan's mythic welfare queen image worked on them like a charm). They did not give a single shit about overpopulation, but they were busybodies who had been fed the "we are being overrun" narrative and swallowed it like mother's milk. They judged people who were not like them like it was their hobby -- which it was.

I don't think my blond, blue-eyed family was part of anybody's Great Replacement fear, though.

I am the one who grew up in this family, and I am the one who had peers, teachers, and college professors react with alarm to the size of my family. I have a pretty good idea of what the conservative response was vs. the liberal response, and the liberal response was not a friendly one. My family are moderately conservative (never-Trumpers, thank God) and I am the crazy liberal black sheep; if there were anyone motivated to say we never got any grief from the libs, it would be me. But my mom was criticized for and questioned about her choice frequently by people who cited environmental and feminist concerns about large families.

One of my favorite teachers was never shy about his (liberal) politics, and even he once said to me, "I normally oppose having a bunch of kids, but your mom can keep right on. You guys are great." It's... not quite a back-handed compliment, but the implication is clear.

I don't recall anyone ever making those types of remarks to my dad. Not hard for me to guess why not.