A tweet from the researcher Brad Wilcox recently caught my attention. “Liberals,” he wrote, “are about 15 percentage points less likely” to be truly satisfied with their lives. On the same day that he tweeted out this compelling piece of information, Wilcox, a researcher studying family growth and economic trends, wrote an enlightening article expanding on this topic.
Liberals, he wrote, “are about 18 percentage points less likely to be ‘completely satisfied’ with their ‘mental health’ than conservatives.” Interestingly, he added, the issue of satisfaction, or lack thereof, appears to be especially “acute” for liberal women. According to the author, only 15 percent of liberals are “completely satisfied” with their lives and mental health. On the other hand, 31 percent of conservative women are “completely satisfied” with their lives, and 36 percent with their mental health.
As Wilcox noted, two family-related factors help explain this “ideological gap.” They are marital status and family satisfaction. In short, conservatives between the ages of 18-55 are “about 20 percentage points more likely to be married” than their liberal peers, “as well as 18 percentage points more likely to be satisfied with their families.” Marriage and family are directly associated with happiness, psychological and spiritual growth, and fewer mental health issues. Marriage is a key predictor of party identification; it’s also a key predictor of satisfaction.
The problem — one that is growing in size, I might add — facing liberals involves fully embracing a false narrative. Wilcox argued that too many on the left “have embraced the false narrative that the path to happiness runs counter to marriage and family life, not towards it.” Wrongly, they believe independence from the supposed shackles of domestic life will make them happier. They fall for the harmful narratives being pushed by mainstream media outlets, celebrating the
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