Liberal Women Are The "Least Happy And Loneliest" In America

According to the 2024 American Family Survey, young liberal women are significantly less likely to report life satisfaction compared to their conservative peers. The numbers don’t lie. 

Findings reveal that 37% of conservative women and 28% of moderate women aged 18–40 reported being "completely satisfied" with their lives. However, for liberal women, that number shrinks to a measly 12%. Liberal women are almost three times more likely than conservative women to experience loneliness multiple times a week, about 29% compared to 11%.

Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told Fox Digital, "We've seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces." He added, "They're also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns," and "more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate."

40% of liberal women reported being single, while 31% were married, Wilcox found. Among conservative women, 33% reported being single, while a more sizable 51% were married. Conservative women again took the lead for religious attendance, with over half reporting attending church weekly, compared to just 12% of liberal women.

The Institute for Family Studies concludes that these two factors, marriage and church attendance, account for about half of the happiness gap between liberal and conservative women. "Liberal young women are less likely to be integrated into core American institutions—marriage and religion—that lend meaning, direction, and a sense of solidarity to women’s lives," their report stated. 

Experts like Jonathan Haidt, Jean Twenge, and Matthew Yglesias believe that social media has led to "catastrophizing" thinking. This pattern of processing neutral or ambiguous events with a negative spin is, as Yglesias bluntly put it, "just what depression is." It seems liberal women, who tend to spend more time online than their conservative counterparts, might be consuming too much doom-and-gloom content. 

To summarize, conservative women are more likely to be married, attend religious services, and report fewer feelings of loneliness. Liberal women, on the other hand, report less connection to these traditional institutions and, thus, higher rates of loneliness and dissatisfaction.

Family Studies says, "Any efforts to bridge this ideological gap in young women’s emotional well-being will seemingly require not only a change in thinking but also a renewal of young liberal women’s connection to America’s core institutions—family and faith."

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