Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism

Abstract

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun investigating their influence on social and political attitudes. Because socially conservative values ostensibly prioritize safety, stability and family values, we hypothesized that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing. Studies 1 (preregistered; n = 376) and 2 ( n = 1924) find novel evidence of conditional experimental effects of a parenthood prime, such that people who engaged strongly with a childcare manipulation showed an increase in social conservatism. Studies 3 ( n = 2610, novel data from 10 countries) and 4 ( n = 426 444, World Values Survey data) find evidence that both parenthood and parental care motivation are associated with increased social conservatism around the globe. Further, most of the positive association globally between age and social conservatism is accounted for by parenthood. These findings support the hypothesis that parenthood and parental care motivation increase social conservatism.

Is there a “childless vote” in Europe?

“…Across 20 European countries, people who in national elections cast their votes for parties closer to the Green/Alternative/Libertarian pole, as compared to the Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist pole of the GAL‐TAN dimension, were more likely to be childless. This is consistent with research from the US, according to which it is the “family values” conservatives that have more children than their compatriots (Vogl & Freese, 2020), as well as with research suggesting that parents have more socially conservative attitudes and values (Kerry et al, 2022; Kerry & Murray, 2018, 2020).…”

“…Two of the three studies that report such results have been run in the US and have included a measure of conservatism that has asked about attitudes towards ‘religion’, ‘traditional marriage’ and ‘abortion’ (Kerry & Murray, 2018, 2020). The third, more global study (Kerry et al, 2022), measured three aspects of social conservatism—sexual conservatism, tradition and ingroup preference. Again, all three indices of conservatism included items with religious connotations.…”

“…This means that either the economic left–right dimension or the cultural dimensions could underlie differences in birthrate between red and blue states. Research that has looked at self‐reported attitudes and values suggests that (a) it is particularly the “family values” conservatives in the US that have more children and more siblings than their compatriots (Vogl & Freese, 2020), (b) parents in the US have more socially and economically conservative attitudes than non‐parents, with the latter association being much weaker (Kerry & Murray, 2018, 2020), and (c) parenthood is globally associated with socially conservative attitudes, whereas the association with economically conservative attitudes can be found in very few countries (Kerry et al, 2022). These results suggest that if there is a “childless vote,” this vote would go to parties that are culturally, not economically, conservative.…”

Parenting motives: Validation of the Italian version of the parental care and tenderness scale

“…In addition, social conservativism is associated with a preference for anti-abortion attitudes and more traditional family structures, and, in turn, long-term mating preferences are associated with stronger parenting motivations ( Beall and Schaller, 2019 ). Importantly, previous empirical evidence strongly supports the presence of a strict interconnection between parenting motivations and conservative attitudes ( Kerry and Murray, 2018 , 2020 ; Kerry et al, 2022 ). Relying on this well-established finding, we will test the correlation between these two constructs in a different socio-political context as a further way to assess the predictive validity of the proposed scale and, more specifically, we will explore whether political orientation is more strictly connected to either nurturance or protection, as defined by Hofer et al (2018) .…”

“…Recently, the study of parental motives has been extended by investigating their link with political attitudes ( Kerry and Murray, 2018 , 2020 ; Kerry et al, 2022 ). The findings from Study 3 further corroborate the idea that higher conservatism is associated with stronger parenting motives.…”