A new survey reveals a wide partisan divide on the issues of marriage, LGBT education in schools, government support for families and parental rights as political polarization is increasingly affecting the public’s views on more aspects of American life.
The 2023 American Family Survey is a collaboration between Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and American Democracy, the Wheatley Institute, Deseret News and YouGov.
Released last week, the data is drawn from a survey conducted between Aug. 3-15 of 3,000 American adults and had a margin of error of +/-2.1 percentage points.
“[A]s we explore a sampling of the topics from this year’s American Family Survey, we simultaneously seek to call attention to the wide divide between marriage and The Family as objects of social evaluation, on the one hand, and the practical, day-to-day experience of relationships and family life, on the other,” the researchers wrote in the 57-page report.
“Curiously, many of our family-related partisan divides are, if not quite mirages, focused on factors that are not central to how real families live and function in the United States.”
This year’s AFS compared the responses of Republicans and Democrats on whether they viewed marriage “as a path to stable, committed relationships.”
“Support for marriage as a path to stable, committed relationships is declining among those on the left. With a few exceptions, the right generally does not see a strong need to provide public support to families confronting economic trouble and vulnerability,” the report states.
“The way Americans perceive challenges facing The Family as an institution has less to do with the actual challenges families face and more to do with differences in partisan worldviews.”
While Republicans’ approval of marriage has budged very little from 2015 to 2023, hovering above 75% in both years, Democrats’ approval of marriage dropped from about 38% in 2015 to over 25% this year.
“The political left is clearly souring on marriage as an institution,” the report states. “Many regard it as more of a burden than a benefit to people. And this declining support has occurred despite the fact that the nature of marriage as an institution has moved in the direction favored by liberals.”
At the same time, the report noted that “Republicans are the most hesitant to support marriage and families with government spending.” Statistics from last year’s survey, cited in this year’s report, found that “half of Democrats wanted child tax credit payments to continue for families” compared to 16% of Republicans.
Data collected in the previous survey measured opposition to “any kind of family support” such as “institutions or direct payments” provided by the government at 30% among Republicans and 5% among Democrats. Similarly, a majority of Democrats (55%) thought it was “very important” for the U.S. Congress to “provide additional assistance for families,” while just 19% of Republicans said the same.
Partisan divides also manifested in Americans’ views on challenges facing American families.
There was a 25.1-point gap between Democrats and Republicans in agreement with the view that “children growing up without two parents in the home” constituted a challenge for “families generally,” with Republicans far more likely to see the absence of a two-parent household as a problem than Democrats.
There was a partisan difference in what educational content respondents viewed as concerning.
Eighty-three percent of Republicans described themselves as “very” or “somewhat” concerned that schools would teach their children about LGBT-related content in a “biased or incomplete way” compared to 59% of Democrats.
Seventy percent of Republicans and 56% of Democrats expressed concern that schools would teach about sex education in a “biased or incomplete way.” The differences between Republicans’ (67%) and Democrats’ (61%) level of concern on lessons about “racism and the nation’s history of race relations” was less notable, while roughly half of Republicans (51%) and Democrats (48%) worried about school lessons about drugs and alcohol.
By nearly 50% difference, Republicans were more concerned about schools having books that discuss “gender identity” that they believe should not be included in schools than Democrats. Republicans were also more concerned about the presence of books with trans-identified characters (44%), books with gay and lesbian characters (37%) and books that had sexual content (35%).
When asked if students should be able to read books or “other materials” in schools that highlight “diverse family structures, including same-sex parents,” 55.4% of Republicans said schools should never include such materials compared to 17.7% of Democrats.
“Republicans and Democrats strongly disagree about which books should be available in school libraries and the topics that should be required as part of the school curriculum,” the researchers wrote. “When it comes to the process by which those decisions should be made, most Americans prefer to empower school administrators, though conservative Republicans are outliers in preferring that parents have the final say.”
The only area where Democrats were significantly more concerned about the presence of certain books in schools was on “religious scriptures,” where a 13% gap between the parties was measured.
Respondents were also asked to weigh in on what topics they thought should be taught in sex education in schools. A majority of Democrats (53%) believed that sex education should teach about sexual orientation compared to 14% of Republicans, while a plurality of Democrats (49%) and a much smaller share of Republicans (9%) thought sex education should include lessons on gender identity.
There was a 23.8% gap between Democrats and Republicans in their concerns about the impact a “lack of religious faith or church attendance” is having on their families, with Republicans being more concerned about this than Democrats.
Areas where Democrats were more concerned than Republicans were “mental or physical health struggles,” with a 17.3% gap between the parties, “high work demands and stress on parents,” with a 13.3% difference, and “the costs associated with raising a family,” which had a 13.1% disparity.
When asked if declining fertility rates were good or bad for the U.S., 55.1% of Republicans categorized the phenomenon as “negative” as opposed to 26.9% of Democrats.
Nearly one-third (32.1%) of Democrats viewed declining fertility rates as a “positive” for the U.S. compared to only 15.4% of Republicans.
Researchers conclude that despite the existence of “real areas of common ground, much of the debate about key institutions — such as schools — hinges on people’s worries over political biases.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
