Conservatives Must Know What to Conserve

Recently, in an article for the Institute for Family Studies, Patrick Brown highlighted the notable decline of marriage and married parenthood among Republican voters. The GOP has long enjoyed larger support from married parents. However, in the most recent election, Brown writes,  

[T]here was essentially no political advantage in 2024 for Republicans in congressional districts with higher shares of births … to married parents. In fact, some of the Congressional districts with the highest share of births within marriage are wealthy Democratic strongholds: New York’s Upper West Side, the Boston suburbs, Northern Virginia, and Silicon Valley. Compare this to 2012, in which Republicans dramatically outperformed Democrats in counties where higher shares of babies were born to married couples. This suggests in years to come—if current trends persist—the GOP advantage with married parents may not be rock-solid. 

One reason for this shift is the Republican base has shifted from college-educated, upper-and-middle-class voters to more working-class voters without a college degree, a group in which marriage rates have cratered in recent decades. In 1990, over half of working-class American adults were married. By 2017, that number had dropped to 39%, prompting some to declare marriage a “luxury good.” By contrast, Brown estimates that, today, 67% of college graduates in their thirties are married.  

Over the same period that working-class Americans grew ambivalent toward marriage, they trended Republican. The Wall Street Journal reported in November that those without a college degree shifted red by eight points in the last election. The result, Brown writes, is “a Republican party that has boosted its appeal in parts of the country where out-of-wedlock births are relatively higher, while losing some of its appeal to college-educated parents.”  

This does not mean the political left is shifting more pro-family, or that its policies are good for married parents. Quite the opposite, in fact! As sociologist Brad Wilcox argued in his book, Get Married, progressive elites tend to “talk left but walk right.” Educated, affluent voters in blue regions promote sexual “freedom” and “diverse” parenting arrangements but tend to wait until marriage to have kids and stay married. 

On the other hand, the party known as the home for “family values” has drawn voters for whom family is more theory than reality. For many of these voters, being on the political right is not about being conservative, at least not socially conservative. The result is significant lack of clarity on the political right about what social conservatives hope to conserve. 

Social conservatives must again make the case for the pre-political institutions designed by God that are worth conserving, and why. As Brad Wilcox wrote, “The science could not be clearer: On average, the children of married parents are more likely to experience happier, healthier and more successful lives.” Among innumerable benefits, marriage more than halves the likelihood children will grow up poor or end up in prison and doubles the likelihood that they will graduate college. Marriage also vastly cuts the odds of a child falling victim to or witnessing domestic abuse. 

We may want to see America great, but it won’t happen if marriage rates continue to spiral and with broken homes the normal context in which the next generation is raised. At the heart of conservatism is the idea that there are mediating institutions, including churches and especially the family, that are more important than the state. These “little platoons” are vital to a healthy society, because they are society at the most fundamental level. As such, they contribute to the lives of citizens in ways that the government cannot.  

This is why religious conservatives should be deeply concerned about the decline of marriage on the left as well as the right. As Brown concluded in his article, it’s time for some soul-searching in the movement, including “prioritizing pro-family efforts, from eliminating marriage penalties and expanding the Child Tax Credit, to offering a ‘Baby Bonus’ to new parents and more.” 

For Christians, the most important political engagement will be in the years between elections. It will take more than voter registration drives and righteous anger at progressives to make America great. Only a full-scale effort to rebuild and reprioritize marriage, starting in our own communities, can accomplish that. Because if being “conservative” means anything, it means recognizing that who we are in our own houses is even more important than who is in the White House.