Researchers looking at data from 10 countries including Australia have found that people become more conservative even if they only imagine themselves as a parent.
Does having a child make you more politically conservative?Lead author Dr Nicholas Kerry, a psychology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, says the team surveyed people in 10 countries, including Australia, about their feelings towards kids, as well as conducted a series of experiments encouraging participants to recall or imagine certain parenting and childcare experiences.
“Because socially conservative values prioritise safety, stability and family values, we hypothesised that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing,” Kerry and his colleagues write. Wealth, too, is a strong predictor, with richer parents tending to stay progressive no matter how many children they have.
“We find that it’s more economically practical things that change people’s mindsets rather than their social outlook on life,” he says.“Parenthood didn’t make people more conservative on these [economic] issues – indeed, there is some evidence from other studies that parents can become more liberal on some economic issues, to the extent that these policies favour parents.”
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