Asked by a Mongol general, “What is best in life,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1982 rendition of Conan the Barbarian replies: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”
A surprisingly large percentage of people appear to agree with Conan.
Commissioned by the conservative think tank American Compass, YouGov asked 1,000 parents last year: “If you had to choose one of the following courses for your child’s life to take by the time they reach age 40, which would your prefer: happily married with children but just getting by financially, or financially well-off but single with no children in the household?”
While a firm majority of parents surveyed (60%) chose “happily married with children,” a substantial minority (40%) chose “rich, single, and childless.”
Now maybe it is unfair to label the “rich, single, and childless” crowd barbarians, but a society in which 40% of the population prioritizes wealth over family is not a society that will survive for very long. There simply won’t be enough children for new generations to sustain it.
This mercenary ethos comes through in other questions in the poll too. Respondents were asked: “In thinking about the type of educational program that your could pursue, which would you prefer: one that offers the best possible career options but was far from home, or one that offers good career options close to home?” Just 56% chose “good career, close to home,” while 44% chose “best career, far from home.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the wealthiest parents chose “best career, far from home” while middle- and working-class parents both chose “good career, close to home.” But there was no partisan difference in the results.
The same was not true for the “happily married with children” vs. “rich, single, and childless” divide. Almost half of Democrats (46%) chose “rich, single, and childless” over “happily married with children,” while a supermajority of Republicans (74%) chose family over wealth.
As the Republican Party seeks to rebrand itself as the Parent Party, it probably helps that the vast majority of them actually want their children to become parents.
