Is Political Polarization Ruining Marriage?

Liberal women don't want to marry conservative men. That's a good thing for women, but it tells us something damning about right-wing men.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

US marriage rates are in steep decline. Fewer people are getting married; those who do are marrying later, which means that a smaller share of the population is married, and singles make up a larger share than ever. Two conservative researchers say this is a big problem, and one factor is politics: In our hyper-polarized political environment, conservatives want to marry conservatives and liberals want to marry liberals, but there are more liberal women than liberal men, while the opposite is true on the conservative end of the spectrum. As a result, they say, one in five American singles will have to marry across the political aisle — or not marry at all.

My advice? If you’re a heterosexual woman and your only option is to marry a right-wing guy, don’t get married. This is especially true if you’re a liberal woman, but even conservative women often don’t want what Republican men demand.

Yes, political polarization is a bad thing for marriage rates. And if you measure the health of marriage by the number of people who get married, this bodes poorly. But if you measure the health of marriages by the quality of marriages, this really isn’t a problem — except insofar as it reveals a growing problem with conservative men, whose views on gender are far out of step even with those of conservative women.