It’s been a depressing six months or so for the left. Aside from Covid’s persistence and the resultant chaos, the progressive agenda beyond infrastructure and re-regulation of business seems stalled; the Supreme Court is charging rightward; and anti-democratic (as well as anti-Democratic) moves are afoot in many states. Savvy political analyst Ron Brownstein wrote in December, “Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars.”
Lee statue to be melted down (NBC News)
Yet, over the last couple of generations, the left has pulled American culture in its direction. Social conservatives, feeling cornered, have reacted ferociously to defend their world views and their way of life. They have won some of the resulting battles, but their winning the cultural war is another matter.
Sociologist Michael Hout of NYU has recently canvassed over 45 years of polling data from the General Social Survey, looking at how Americans’ views on dozens of topics have changed. The answer is clear: In the overwhelming majority of cases, Americans’ opinions have moved to the left. Moreover, when we look at Americans’ actions, not just their words, we see the same, dramatic shifts leftward. I am referring throughout to left-right on the cultural spectrum, not left-right on economic issues, which is a different topic. (Thanks to Mike for helpful comments on this post.)
Whatever the to-and-fros of the present day, the long run still seems to belong to the cultural left, based on how the young generations feel. But that is no guarantee; history can be turned.
Words
Hout, extending work by James Davis published 30 years ago, analyzed 283 questions, each of which had been asked at least four times between 1972 and 2018 by the General Social Survey. These questions tapped respondents’ attitudes on topics from tax rates to sex, identities–like having ever married or being a homeowner–and some behaviors. For each item, Hout assessed the political lean of the answers[1] and then calculated whether there had been any noteworthy change in Americans’ answers over the years and, if so, in what direction.
Hout concluded that, holding constant demographic changes, Americans had become more liberal generation by generation. The most notable break was between the Baby Boom generation and its predecessors; generational change has continued but more slowly. In addition, each generation has typically moved left over its lifetime:
Specifically, Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s are more liberal than those born before 1930 were on 60 percent of the 283 [questions or question combinations] and more conservative on only 5 percent. Within-cohort trends leaned liberal for 48 percent of variables and conservative on only 11 percent.
The remaining GSS questions either had no political leaning or the average answer to them had barely changed.
The attitudes that changed the most in the last roughly half-century involved support for gays, civil liberties, marijuana legalization, equalizing women’s roles, lowering racial barriers, and other social topics. On some topics–for example, marijuana, gay sex, and whether mothers of young children should work for pay–leftward movement within the generations (what researchers call “period effects”) stalled or reversed during the 1980s and early ‘90s. This was the era of Reaganite retrenchment. It was a brief pause; emerging generations kept being more liberal and the leftward trend within generations resumed.
A few conservative shifts did emerge in the analysis. Hout highlights rising support for the military and eroding confidence in the media. But they were rare.
Interestingly, the issues that changed the least include ones that generate political heat today, notably abortion and gun regulation. It may be that the open struggles around those specific issues, especially as Americans have become increasingly polarized by partisanship, have stalled their leftward movement. (More on this below.)
If Hout’s analysis is even roughly accurate, changes in national attitudes have increasingly challenged, perhaps threatened, the shrinking group of Americans holding more conservative social values. And there is yet more evidence in that vein.
Actions
The shift Hout documents is evident not only in attitudes but also in GSS respondents’ reports of behavior: less likely to be married, having more sex partners, attending church less often and so on. Here are six arenas of substantive leftward movement in the last half-century, observable in survey answers but also in many material changes.
Christianity. The proportion of Americans who declare themselves Christian has been steadily dropping. In the 1970s and ‘80s, about 90% of Americans identified as some kind of Christian; in the 2010s, it’s been about 75%.[2] While the fuss about a “War on Christmas” is laughable, the symbolic hegemony of Christianity has weakened. In 1962, the U.S. Post Office started issuing Christmas stamps; about 35 years later, it started issuing “holiday stamps” for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Eid. In the 1950s and 1960s, “Merry Christmas” was the nearly universal greeting of the season; since 2000, “Happy Holidays” has become a noticeable alternative.[3] Add these seemingly minor but culturally potent developments to substantive ones, for example, the 1962 ban on school-sponsored prayer in public schools, and one can see that the cultural ground has shifted.
Marriage. Marriage is probably the, central institution in traditional American life. In 1970, 64% of Americans 15 or older were married, but in 2019, just before Covid, only 52% were. Indeed, in 2012, more adults under 45 had cohabited out of wedlock than had ever married. In 1970, the average American woman who married did so before she turned 21; in 2019, she hadn’t married until age 28. And to top it all off, gay marriage was impossible in 1970, but in 2019, about a half-million households contained married same-sex couples and about another half-million cohabiting same-sex couples.
Women’s Roles. Becoming a homemaker mother was long the aspiration of American girls. That changed radically. In the early 1970s, fewer than half of mothers with minor children at home worked for pay; since 2000, it’s been over 70%. Working women have increasingly taken an increasing share of the best and most skilled jobs. For example, women were 25% of managers in 1980, but 40% of managers in 2018. They sharply reduced the income gap. Indeed, “by 2018 there was earnings parity [of women with men] among the those who were not married and without children.” Women’s career advancement followed their rapid takeover of colleges. Men were once far likelier to attend and graduate from college than were women; but starting with the cohorts born in the 1960s, women surged past men. In the past Covid year, women comprised 60% of undergraduates, while men comprised 70% of those who dropped out of college. Accompanying women’s educational and economic rise has been increasing political power. In the 1950s and ‘60, women were fewer than 5% of the House of Representatives; in the 2010s, they were about 25%; they are now about one-third.
In a 2011 post, I referred to these developments as forming “the biggest change in the American way of life in the last 50-60 years.” True. And it has been a leftward change.
Manliness. Patriarchal manhood has long been the norm almost everywhere almost always around the world, but it has been in retreat in western cultures for several generations. Some Americans read the advances for women just described as insults to male honor. The traditional reaction to such insults has been, especially in the South, aggression. It is consistent, then, that some Republican politicians have made defending manliness part of their brand.[4]
Other developments besides women’s advances have challenged macho forms of manliness.For example:
– Military service is in steep decline. In 1970, 44% of adult men were veterans (and about 70% of congresspersons were); in 2018, 14% of adult men were (about 20% of congresspersons). Men’s military experience keeps dropping.
– Hunting has been in steep decline: The percentage of Americans who hunted dropped from 7% in 1980 to less than half that in 2016. And so with gun ownership as well: down from half of American households owning a firearm in the 1970s to one-third owning one in the 2010s.[5]
– Sexual frequency has declined (at least for married men), as have testosterone levels and sperm production overall.
Probably the biggest manliness problem for conservative Americans is how many fewer men are now sole family breadwinners. In the 1960s, about two-thirds of couples with children were supported by father alone; in the latter half of the 1980s, it was down to one-third and by 2019-2021 to under 30%. Whether driven by changes in the economy or in the culture, this revolutionary transformation undermined manliness as traditionally understood. The weight of the change is yet more apparent when we include not just the husbands but also the growing number of unmarried men in our calculations (see endnote 6 below); they, too, fail to play the breadwinner role that was expected of men 50 years ago.
As a final injury added to insult, death rates among White men have been rising since 2000 (see also this 2021 post). Which brings us to race.
Race. Racial hierarchy was a fundamental dimension of American culture for centuries. Whatever a White person’s economic position, just being White meant superiority over others, particularly Blacks. That status security has come under challenge in the last couple of generations, challenged by numbers–non-Hispanic Whites comprised over 80% of the population in 1970 and under 60% in 2020–and challenged in deeper ways as well.
Blacks, though still well behind Whites economically, have caught up some. They have narrowed the life-expectancy gap by about half and even narrowed the gap in reporting happiness [7]. And Blacks have gained political power, Obama aside. In 1965, one percent of congresspersons were Black; in 2021, 13% were, equal to the Black proportion of the population.
Discrimination against Blacks continues (and is easily documented). Yet, the country has moved left, away from the explicit, blatant racism of the Jim Crow sort. The front line on racial issues now is whether structural, institutional, and legacy racism persists and needs active remediation. Most Whites reject the notion that slavery still weighs on Blacks, say that there is little or no discrimination against Blacks (only 19% of Blacks say that), and are willing to say (in some surveys) that there is discrimination against Whites.[8]
And then there is the big taboo of American race relations. Circa 1960 virtually no Americans polled by Gallup approved of marriage between Blacks and Whites; by 2021, virtually no Americans disapproved. Actual interracial marriage rates soared, from 3% of all new marriages in 1967 to 17% of new marriages in 2015. Nowadays, about 10% of married Black men have White spouses (about 5% of married Black women have White spouses).
The recent history of race in America might give most Americans a sense of progress, but for the culturally conservative, it raises the threat of “replacement.”
Discourse. The Fox network and its allies have ginned up “wokeness,” “cancelling,” and “political correctness” as existential threats to American society. However hysterical the claims, it is true that the our conversations, media, and symbols have moved leftward. For example, one sees more racial minorities as leads on television, now almost proportional to population (and one reads complaints about that from Whites). Confederate monuments are being dismantled–from five before 2015 to at least 170 since. Norms about language have changed. Since 1970, “Negro” has largely disappeared and “black” or “Black” risen. The title “Ms.,” unknown in 1960, took off after 1970.[9] Linguist John McWhorter has recently made a persuasive case that the words western culture considers obscene were once sacrilegious expressions, then they were words about the body, but now they are the words that insult groups, like the “N-word” for Blacks and the “F-word” for Gays. The language rules keep shifting left.
Most Americans, not just Fox News aficionados, are worried about pc-ness, “upset that there are too many things people can’t say anymore” (see here, here, and here). Our very conversation has been pulled to the left.
Recent history in these six domains (and others) reinforces Hout’s depiction of a wide and deep leftward trend that is not just about the answers on surveys. It is is evident in Americans’ daily lives.
Reactions
Americans attached to earlier world views and ways of life, say, those dominant in the 1950s, understandably feel threatened. And many of them have mobilized politically–in the Tea Party, in the Trump movement[10], and in the January 6 Capitol riots (whose participants disproportionately came from counties with declining White populations). These mobilized restorationists have had victories–the Trump presidency, the takeover of the Supreme Court (with its implications for abortion, religion, and guns), clamp downs on the southern border, “critical race theory” bans, for example. (Their victories have been helped by a constitution that empowers conservatism and also on occasion by factions of the left providing them ammunition, as in the “de-fund the police” fiasco.)
Political mobilization may help explain why there are has been no or little leftward movement of American opinion on a few, select issues, notably abortion and guns, even while–as Hout shows–there has been pretty steady leftward movement on a wide range of issues from motherhood to sex, drugs, and (surely) rock-n-roll. By successfully elevating a few specific issues to matters of partisan conflict, conservatives may have slowed shifts to the left. For much of American history, abortion was not a hot-button issue; it was a common practice for centuries and after being made illegal persisted underground. Then, after Roe v. Wade it got politicized. Similarly, for most of its history, the NRA favored governmental control over firearms; it wasn’t until the 1970s that conservatives insisted that gun control violated the constitution and individual rights and it has been a strong, winning political formula ever since.
Looking Ahead by Looking Back
For at least a half-century, nonetheless, the cultural trend has been decidedly leftward. Given generational replacement, the left probably still has the inertia. Will that trend last? From one point of view, the left is on the side of history, that being the side of greater human liberation and equality, while the right fights on behalf of hierarchy and privilege, a rearguard action covering retreat. This seems to be Mike Hout’s view.[11]
I am not as sanguine. We recently saw a brief cultural rightward turn in the Reagan years. More broadly, even its relatively short history, the United States has experienced generations-long cultural swings to the right. For example, from about the 1880s into at least the 1920s, white supremacy grew stronger, encoded in Jim Crow laws, symbolized by new bronzes of Confederate generals, and intellectually legitimated by the Progressive movement’s and the academy’s embrace of eugenics. Also, eras of religious revival in the United States such as the two Great Awakenings and the rise of fundamentalism about a century ago drove (again, with the Progressives) America to Prohibition. In the late 19th century as well, middle-class American women withdrew to the private sphere of the nuclear household as a key step in forming the breadwinner family culture (although most women probably saw that bargain as a material improvement in their lives; see pp. 114ff here). Also, it is hard to demonstrate that the arc of history bends toward justice when the history of justice is written by the winners.[12] All of which implies that leftward cultural movement is not to be taken as a given, but as still contested.
Update Oct, 2022:
“Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that ‘the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it’.” — per Larry Bartels (emphasis added).
Update November, 2022:
Now emerging on the right are commentators, scholars, and venues that are joining almost all these fears and resentments into an explicit “national [Christian] conservative” philosophy (e.g., here). As opposed to the conservatism that made individual freedom and free markets its core, this version puts the “nation”–a culturally-defined people with its particular religion, particular family traditions, and particular ethnic composition at its core. This American version of volkisch movements provides the rationale for reinvigorating the traditional positions that have been so much in retreat.
——————————————————END NOTES—————————————————
[1] To determine the political direction of each question’s answers, Hout examined the correlations between answers to the 283 items and respondents’ scores from their self-labeling as “extremely liberal” to “extremely conservative.”
[2] From the GSS, pooling self-identified Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and vaguely “Christian.”
[3] Counting phrases printed in The New York Times, during the 1950s and 1960s, instances of Merry Christmas outnumbered those of Happy Holidays by 87 to 4 (a 22:1 ratio); in the 2000s and 2010s, the first outnumbered the second by only 749 to 388 (2:1). (Update 2/2/22: See also Jay Livingston’s nGram analysis.)
[4] For example, “Missouri Senator Josh Hawley claimed the left was telling men their ‘masculinity is inherently problematic.’ He also told interviewer Mike Allen he would make masculinity a signature political issue.”
[5] Calculated from the GSS’s “owngun” variable.
[6] I used the GSS to calculate the number of men aged 30 to 64 who were married and full-time employed and whose spouses were not in the labor force as a percentage of all men aged 30 to 64. These are the classic breadwinners contrasted to the unmarried or underemployed or having a wife who worked for pay.
[Update, 2/1/22: A compliment to this graph and the discussion is this figure, generated by Kevin Drum, showing the trends (not the absolute values) since 1980 in median personal income of men and women: ]
[7] I used the GSS Happy question. In the 1970s, 36% of Whites said they were very happy and in 2010s, 32% did; in the 1970s, 23% of Blacks said they were very happy and in the 2010s, 26% did. The race gap remains, but has shrunk from 10 to 6 points.
[8] In the GSS, however, Mike Hout points out, the percentage of Whites who said it “very likely” that Whites were hurt by affirmative action has steadily dropped since 1994 to about 10 percent..
[9] I conclude this from an analysis of Google n-grams. The phrase “Negro people” has largely disappeared from American books since the 1970s, while “black people” almost never appeared until the 1970s. (“African-American people” has dominated throughout these years, however, and increasingly so.) The label “Ms.” emerged after 1970, but is still much less common than Mrs. or Miss.
[10] Many posts of this blog have reviewed the literature and data on the sources of Trump support: The latest are: March, 2021; December, 2020; September, 2020; and December, 2019.
[11] Personal communication.
[12] One might speculate that a 1922 version of this 2022 post, written by a sociologist of the day, might well applaud the greater justice for “civilized races” that restrictions on immigration were bringing.
MADE IN AMERICA 