When women marry, Democrats lose

[blackice]

When women marry, Democrats lose
Dennis Prager (archive)


September 23, 2003

It takes a particularly noble Democrat to promote marriage and family. The strengthening of these institutions is not in the Democratic Party's self-interest. The more people marry, and especially the more they have children after they marry, the more likely they are to hold conservative values and vote Republican.

That is why it is inaccurate to speak of a "gender gap" in Americans' voting. The gap is between married and unmarried women. Single women, especially single women with children, tend to vote Democratic, while
married women, especially married women with children, tend to vote Republican.

Why is this?

There are two primary reasons.

One is that women's nature yearns for male protection. This is a heretical idea among the well educated whose education is largely devoted to denying the facts of life. But it is a fact of life that can easily be proven:
Extremely wealthy women almost always seek to marry men who are even wealthier than they are. Actress Jane Fonda had more money than almost anyone in America, yet she married Ted Turner, a man who had even more money than she. Though fabulously wealthy and a feminist, Ms. Fonda nevertheless could not shed her female nature.

Given women's primal desire to be protected, if a woman has no man to provide it, she will seek security elsewhere -- and elsewhere today can only mean the government. In effect, the state becomes her husband. This phenomenon has frequently been commented on with regard to the breakdown of many black families. The welfare state simply rendered many black men
unnecessary and therefore undesirable as spouses: Why marry when you can get more benefits from the state while remaining single (and get even more money
if you have children while remaining single)?

Once a woman does marry, however, her need for the state not only diminishes, she now begins to view the state as inimical to her interests.
For the married woman, especially if she has children, two primal urges work against her having a pro-big government attitude. Her urge to be protected,
which is now fulfilled by her husband, and her primal urge to protect her nest are now endangered by the government, which as it grows, takes away more and more of her family's money.

Once a woman marries and has children, therefore, her deepest desires -- to be protected and to protect her family -- work as strongly on behalf of conservative values and voting Republican as they did on behalf of liberalism and the Democratic Party when she was single.

The other reason married women are less likely to be liberal and vote Democratic relates to maturity and wisdom.

Just about everyone -- a man as much as a woman -- is rendered more mature and wiser after marrying. This is not an insult to singles. It was as true of me as of anyone else. If you're single, ask any married person -- happily or unhappily married -- whether or not marriage has matured them.

The single biggest change induced by marriage is that you can no longer think only about yourself. "I" becomes "we." Narcissism becomes far less
possible in marriage than in the single state. And just as marriage decreases narcissism, it increases wisdom. Having to relate to another human
being (especially of the opposite sex) to whom you have made a lifelong commitment (even if it ends in divorce) vastly increases your wisdom. And if you have children, your wisdom increases exponentially. Again, ask any parent if they are wiser since becoming a parent.

Am I implying that increasing one's maturity and wisdom works in favor of the Republicans and against liberalism and the Democrats? Absolutely. Wisdom
and contemporary liberalism are in conflict. That is why the vast majority of people who change their politics as they get older (and presumably wiser) change them from liberal to conservative.

For all these reasons, the Democrats know how important it is for them to expand dependency on government and to promote "alternative families" rather
than the family that consists of a married man and woman with children.

The Democrats know where their votes are.

2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Heh ok I am not American nor do I pretend to be, but does this ring one bell of truth?
Do not slam it with the "hate" etc. tittle, that is too easy. Besides we all have the right to an opinion and free speech right?

So break down the retoric and ask one's self how much truth is thier to this article.

As society progesses both genders and mixed... can fall into this train car. Now who is the engineer?
Can we say all parties like this social engineering?
Is it social engineering?

If so where are the conductors leading us?

Food for thought/

[Shi Huangdi]

I've agreed with lots of the stuff you have posted blackice, but this is BS

[Ned]

It may not be that women become conservative and vote Republican after they get married. Rather, it seems that conservative women get married and liberal women prefer to stay single.

Also, for generations, poor women had to stay single and have lots of babies to make enough on welfare to live well. Thus created a class of unmarried women raising children by themselves.

[Nubclear]

More drivel from the same person who believes everyone is lying except for the one reporter....who, coincidentally, reports that the badhappenings in Iraq are all staged by liberals
Try again, Ned

[MichaeltheGreat]

Demographic info and exit polls over the last two decades do not at all corroborate these claims.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

One is that women's nature yearns for male protection. This is a heretical idea among the well educated whose education is largely devoted to denying the facts of life. But it is a fact of life that can easily be proven:
Extremely wealthy women almost always seek to marry men who are even wealthier than they are. Actress Jane Fonda had more money than almost anyone in America, yet she married Ted Turner, a man who had even more money than she. Though fabulously wealthy and a feminist, Ms. Fonda nevertheless could not shed her female nature.

How does Jane Fonda prove that bullshit theory? How about the demographics? Or does one person really represent the vast majority?

[Az]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I've agreed with lots of the stuff you have posted blackice, but this is BS

[Ben Kenobi]

blackice,

Would Jane Fonda, now that she is married, vote republican?

I think it's an interesting comparison. I just don't see any facts to back up the correlation between a woman's marital status, and her party affiliation.

Secondly, women who marry at a young will also be more likely to vote conservative, simply because they are already more conservative than the single women. If we saw a phenomenon of women changing their vote after they got married, then you might have a case.

[Berzerker]

Once a woman marries and has children, therefore, her deepest desires -- to be protected and to protect her family -- work as strongly on behalf of conservative values and voting Republican as they did on behalf of liberalism and the Democratic Party when she was single.

Aside from weeding out cause and effect, Prager ignores the fact that there ain't a dime's worth of difference between the Dems and the Repubs - and that was back in the 60's, so now there may be 2 cents separating them.

Would Jane Fonda, now that she is married, vote republican?

No kids, and I thought she divorced...

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Berzerker


Aside from weeding out cause and effect, Prager ignores the fact that there ain't a dime's worth of difference between the Dems and the Repubs - and that was back in the 60's, so now there may be 2 cents separating them.



No kids, and I thought she divorced...

of course there's a difference. one side hates republicans, the other side hates democrats!

[:) Smiley]

Now, do married people vote (for either party) more or less often than those who are single?

[Atahualpa]

Jane Fonda alone proves the theory

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Demographic info and exit polls over the last two decades do not at all corroborate these claims.

Please don't use facts in this argument it just spoils it

[Lincoln]

I don't know about the Democrat/Republican thing and the author's conclusions but he essentially has the basic difference between men and women exactly right. Women generaly desire security and a "nest" of some sort. The government is more and more providing that security and the man is not needed. The example of the deterioriation of the black and other poor communities is right on. Men simply help to make make babies and the women get a check from the government. Why keep the jerk around?

And I also agree with the overall theme of the article that stable maried life is an enemy of the Democrat party as it now stands. They thrive on poverty and keeping minorities stirred up. Any kind of family stability is their worst enemy.

[Kropotkin]

So called 'facts of life' is and has been used for all sorts of more or less stupid opinions. Particualry so when it comes to the position of women in society.

[Kropotkin]

Now, if I should elaborate about this so called 'fact of life'. That women might tend to chose a husband that earns a higher income than her can be explained with at least two reasons. If now this is the case, you cannot make statistics on one as the author of this so called piece of... article does.

First, men earn more than women on average. This would make it quite strange if women didn't tend to marriage men that earn more money than they do. Maybe the author would claim that women earn less than men because their main aim is to find a man to give them security, not make it on their own. That would be to argue in circles, it ignores the historical developement in for example the US when it comes to females and their position on the labour market .And it also leads us to my second point.

Second, there's a tradition in most parts of at least western society to look at a family with a provied and a houswife as some sort of normative norm. This is of cource fading away. It's also a norm that's not much older than industrialized society. Things that have been around for a couple of years has often been seen upon the 'facts of life'. That the idea of the woman as a house wife before wage labour became the main source of income amoungst people is somehwhat absurd is often, if not always ignored. Elementary knowledge in social history should tell anyone with half a brain that the situation is much more complex than that. Conditions cannot be taken from it's historical context and portrayed as eternal law.

[Q Classic]

this, i believe, is what you call a false correlation?

[chequita guevara]

The article's premises are all wrong.

[Arrian]

One is that women's nature yearns for male protection.

I started laughing here.

-Arrian

[Q Classic]

this yearning for male protection--are you sure that's not socially constructed?

[MrFun]

I saw that statement as nothing but based on blatant sexism.

[Japher]

This might piss some of you off

I've been saying it for years, and I have finally brainwashed someone else... Yeah!

For all these reasons, the Democrats know how important it is for them to expand dependency on government and to promote "alternative families" rather
than the family that consists of a married man and woman with children.

This is so true, but I think it extends even further. Democrats certainly do know how important it is for them to "expand dependency on the government" but not so much through destroying "traditional families" but by making it too easy for "alternative families" to exist through their social programs...

I think breaking it down into married vs. non-married is one thing, but they need to go further and analyze also whether they have been married, have kids, are gay couples, were gay, were straight, etc... before they can draw any conclusions from such a narrow address of relationship vs. party affiliation.

IMO, republicans tend to be people with more responsibility to a family and willing to work to give that to their family, while democrats tend to be wealthy and/or single people with little or no responsibility to others and desire to force their "mother insticnt" on others through policy and law.

Really, this is an incomplete study, but interesting none-the-less...

[Kropotkin]

Incomplete study? It's utter crap!

[Q Classic]

umm, that's strange. i've found many a "traditional family" voting democratic and not republican...

and quite a few republicans i know are single with little or no responsibility to others. heck, even one of your ideological windbags, coulter, is unmarried and single.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
this yearning for male protection--are you sure that's not socially constructed?

Since men are physiologically stronger and more suitably built for hand-to-hand combat than women on the average, this male protection could be an artifact of patriarchal society, when higher physical strength meant greater chance of survival.

Now that you have things like firearms, though, so this "male protection" is more or less a moot point.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My family's been in the US for 3 generations, and its women have always voted. It's a traditional family: kids, no divorces, and (until this generation) the men worked while the women stayed home. It has been progressively upwardly mobile: my grandparents were working class, my parents were middle class, my wife and I are middle- to upper-middle class.

And there's not a woman in my family who has ever, under any circumstances, voted Republican. In fact, the only woman in my family who doesn't consistantly vote Democrat is my wife, who sometimes votes Green. My mother has even occasionally written in her preferred Democrat when she feels that the party isn't running somebody liberal enough for her tastes.

I eagerly await an explanation for this strange behavior.

[Berzerker]

Kropotkin -

First, men earn more than women on average. This would make it quite strange if women didn't tend to marriage men that earn more money than they do.

Yes, everyone knows how women seek out poor men.

Cubed -

heck, even one of your ideological windbags, coulter, is unmarried and single.

Without husband and unattached too...

[Kropotkin]

Another note: The articles explanation for why women would change their voting habits from democrat to republican is that it would have something to do with psychiatry. This is, as most people now, not a vaild explanation, as psychiatry is not even close to science. It would be a much more obvious explanaition to try to find the reason behind this behavior (if there is such a behavior) in that if women marry men that have a higher income than they had before, their economic situation changes and it's more rational to vote republican in the hope for tax cuts.

[uh Clem]

And I also agree with the overall theme of the article that stable maried life is an enemy of the Democrat party as it now stands. They thrive on poverty and keeping minorities stirred up. Any kind of family stability is their worst enemy.

And a low crime rate is the worst enemy of law-n-order Republicans.

[Lincoln]

"... women's nature yearns for male protection. This is a heretical idea among the well educated whose education is largely devoted to denying the facts of life."

Well that statement (the last part) is certainly demonstrated here. I guess it is necessary to deny reality in order to be an intellectual now days. It is easier to call this guy a "sexist" than to actually travel the world and find that what he says is in most case exactly correct. So much for intellectual honesty when the golden calves of liberalism are under threat. Has it ever occured to anyone that western society with about 40 years of harping on femenism is not a representative sample that the rest of the world follows? Trying to make women into men is great for votes if you are a Democrat.