While Elon Musk was chainsawing at CPAC, his ex-girlfriend, the singer Grimes, pleaded with him to attend to their child’s medical crisis. This dustup followed a claim by the conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair that she had given birth to Musk’s 13th child. Musk’s complicated family life, combined with the admiration for Musk among many conservative writers, seem to indicate that the Republican Party has strayed far from the family values that once defined it
Indeed, Musk’s rise in the Trump administration is but one sign that the post-religious right has assumed a newly prominent place at the Republican table. And certainly, some members of the secular right—from “barstool conservatives” rejecting Covid excesses to anti-woke Americans reacting to the cultural excesses of the left—are indifferent or even hostile to social conservatism. They think Americans should do as they please in private—to live and let live—including how they form and raise families. Looking at these trends, it’s easy to conclude that the GOP has given up on family.
But the data tell a different story. More than 80 percent of prime-aged Republicans (18-55) say that having sex with someone besides your spouse is “always wrong.” By contrast, over the last 10 years support for this norm fell more than 20 percentage points among Democrats; only 52 percent of Democrats now embrace the classic norm that husbands and wives should forswear all others, according to my research at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).
“Elon is the exception, not the new Republican norm.”
Today most Republicans marry, have their kids in marriage, and are raising their children in a stable, married family. And they do all this more than Democrats. The gap, for instance, between the share of Democrats and Republicans aged 25-64 who are married grew from 10 to 15 percentage points from 2000 to 2022 to the point where 65 percent of Republicans are married compared to just 50 percent of Democrats, according to IFS. When it comes to marriage and family life, Elon is the exception, not the new Republican norm.
Reinforcing this Republican support for marriage is a good thing. Studies show that children (even rich kids), adults, and the country as a whole are more likely to thrive when marriage is strong. For instance, young men are more likely to land in prison or jail than graduate from college if they grow up apart from their own married parents. By contrast, young men raised by married parents are four times more likely to graduate from college than be incarcerated. No adults in this country report happier and more meaningful lives than married mothers and fathers. Almost no factor better predicts state trends in child poverty than the breakdown of marriage. And the classic American pursuit of happiness has proven more elusive of late—with reports of happiness falling across the nation in recent years—because fewer men and women are married, according to a recent University of Chicago study.
Indeed, my own research indicates that a big reason that Republicans are happier than Democrats is that they are more likely to be married—and happily married at that—than Democrats.
A big challenge facing Republican leaders who appreciate the value of our most fundamental institution will be to educate the new arrivals to the party how much marriage still matters. Strong marriages benefit Republicans. More importantly, they benefit all Americans. In fact, because marriage has lost ground in recent decades, even among Republicans, nothing matters—not immigration reform, not trade policy, not streamlining government—for the future of our civilization more than renewing this institution. Let’s hope that marriage-minded leaders in the Trump administration can convince their fellow Republicans who don’t yet feel likewise that the success of their ambition to make America great again will depend in no small part on our nation’s ability to make marriage the place where the vast majority of our children have the privilege of being born and raised.