The same thing about personal fulfillment through work. I think if that's your focus then you may choose to not have children but if you choose to have a family you're going to work to provide for them. My wife graduated from Smith with a double major but we're both from families with a lot of kids and there was never any question about what our priorities were. I know there's some lack of personal fulfillment, or least going out to lunch and shopping in town, from not working but I'd say that hardly compares to the lack of personal fulfillment people who have no families experience. But that's just IMHO.

NC-17 was introduced in 1990. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17

Are you suggesting it's pure reactionary, with no real logic to it at all?

I submit that one reason boomer +1 generation swing so far right was they were first-hand witnesses to the damage the liberalism held, caused.

So, (apologies to Mr. Smith) the invisible hand works in things cultural, too, and the culture moves to protect itself. All without governmental intervention. Indeed, in SPITE of it.

What is new now is that where before "liberals" and "conservatives" (which in ways have exchanged each others positions in the political dance) would likely have the same number of children. They would each recruit from the others rebellious children and nurture their own conforming children. Since the technology of controlling the number of children born was limited, the birth rates remained relatively he same. But now the technological advances in birth control and the legality of abortion allows a great deal of autonomy on selecting the size of the family. Check out the CDC rates on births and abortions. You can almost pick out red and blue states from that alone.

Since roughly 1/3 of the children rebel against how they were raised, the "conservatives" will be recruiting from a smaller pool of "liberal" off spring, but that will be more than made up for by their larger pool of conforming children.

This is likely to play out over several generations (with the first generation showing the least effects being those born in ~1950). But the evolutionary numbers are inevitable. Look at it in terms of evolution, take any trait and reduce those who carry that trait's birth rate. See how long it takes for that trait to disappear.

There's no doubt there are political trends in the country shifting right. But few of those are on the "values" front that Longman's piece addresses.

Something can be both a choice and a sacrifice. Raising children is one example. Sure, people can view their duty to their children as the most important thing in their life and very much worth it. There's little doubt, though, that doing so sacrifices a lot of personal freedom and, in the case of the educated woman who stays home with the kids, some degree of professional fulfillment as well.

One other comment 'Itâ??s probably true that somewhat more of them who can afford to do so make the sacrifice of staying home and raisingâ??or even home schoolingâ??their children than their progressive peers.' - It's a choice not a sacrifice. This may be the one distinction that is more responsible for the differences in birth rates than any other. If one group thinks that children are a burden then they're probably not going to have so many. If another group thinks of children as the basis of a family and that's their focus then that's probably going to lead to a lot more little kiddies for that group. If that's the conservative/secularist divide then I'm pretty sure I know who's going to procreate.