Is the current generation of boys becoming more conservative? And what of girls?
Maybe. According to this article:
In annual surveys over the last three years, roughly one-quarter of high school seniors self-identified as conservative or “very conservative” on the Monitoring the Future survey, a scholarly endeavor that dates to the 1970s. Only 13 percent of boys identified as liberal or very liberal in those [last three] years.
The chart there is especially interesting. I tried to download it to put it here, but I had a lot of trouble and finally gave up. Follow that Hill link and go to the chart entitled “Political identities of 12th-grade boys,” and you’ll see that in the mid 1970s it was the reverse – significantly more liberal than conservative for the boys. Then the two numbers stayed closer – although conservatives predominated – for many decades, until in the last few years the gap widened again with conservatives much more strongly in the lead.
Other things of note: most boys of that age don’t identify as anything, politically. So this really just measures those with strong feelings. But if there is a higher percentage of conservative boys these days, it makes perfect sense. The left has warred on boys in general and white boys in particular. Why wouldn’t boys see them as the enemy? In addition, men tend to vote more conservatively than women. And lastly, if a boy wanted to be rebellious in earlier years, liberalism or leftism were the ways to go. Nowadays it’s a revolutionary act – especially when in school – to be conservative.
Not so for the girls. If you look at the chart labeled “Political identities of 12th-grade girls,” you’ll see that more girls have identified as liberal rather than conservative for the entire time the surveys have been done, and in the last few years the gap has only widened. The widening seems to have occurred from the fact that more girls identify as liberal (around 30% now) rather than any big change in the percentage who identify as conservative.
More:
But the leftward drift of young women alone has sufficed to move the needle on young adults as a whole …
The rightward drift of high school boys is comparatively subtle. Indeed, when it comes to politics, most boys seem reluctant to pick a side. In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.”
Apathy? Ignorance? Annoyance at being asked questions by pollsters? Fear of negative repercussions if the answer is non-woke? Acknowledgment that they are growing and changing and that today’s answer might not be tomorrow’s?
And lastly, if a boy wanted to be rebellious in earlier years, liberalism or leftism were the ways to go.
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That was not true in the NY suburbs where I grew up. It was already “unorthodox” to be conservative. And of course, in college in the 1970s it was more so.
Actually, Chesterton noticed this when he came out with Orthodoxy in 1908. It was already a rebellious act back then.
I write this as someone who was once a high school girl, though a looooooong time ago: High school girls are nuts. I was nuts in high school.
I wonder where all that survey was taken.
I grew up in a small rural town. The only girls in my high school who were nuts were the ones who were conservative. They were from more religious families, usually farmers, though not always. They had a better direction on what they wanted to do: Most went to college and majored in something useful, like nursing, engineering, or computer science. They got married at a reasonable age and had children. I envy them. In a good way.
Did the pollsters limit their sample to kids who accepted their biological sex and the gender binary? Given the transmania of recent years, that’s a reasonable question.
If we have youths committed to learning a trade, earning a living, being a father, being a husband, taking care of their property, saving money, not wishing for more than you can afford, controlling one’s appetites, having gratitude for the efforts of their ancestors and the gifts they have in the here and now, the politics will follow.
At least we now have a snap shot of what the yutes are thinking. (Nod to My Cousin Vinny)
Men have typically been the risk-takers in society. Your last paragraph hints at self-preservation/reluctance to be open. If that’s the case, then perhaps the feminization of Men is complete. We can expect the Gods of the Copybook Headings shortly.
Many high school boys have other things on their mind. Others probably were annoyed by the question. Also, a lot of conservative young people don’t want to be seen as “Young Conservatives.” Their “conservatism” is expressed by not buying into the progressive orthodoxy and by not being overtly political. Activist young movement conservatives can be embarassing even to others who might share their beliefs but don’t attract attention by expressing them. I don’t know if you have the same phenomenon on the left. The most embarassing activists and politicians don’t seem to get much pushback from other progressives or liberals. The cringe factor doesn’t seem to be there.
Chesterton may have been thinking of his own milleu — the literary and intellectual “chattering classes.” If you were growing up in a farm town in his day, you could get a lot of rebelliousness out of your system by being a socialist, atheist, anarchist, or revolutionary. Today, we’re all living in the world of the chattering classes, and being conservative is a way of rebelling. That was noticeable even in the 1950s when William Buckley was becoming a cult figure. It is true, though, that plenty of today’s young socialists grew up at a time when Communism and socialism were assumed to be dead forever. They probably considered themselves to be rebels and non-conformists, whether they really were or not.
“…in the mid 1970s it was the reverse – significantly more liberal than conservative for the boys.”
In the mid 1970s, “Liberal” didn’t mean what it means now. Now it means “Progressive”, which is a different thing altogether.
60’s and 70’s. Never mind the fancy talk.
Just mention modern art, civil rights, or primitive cultures and you’re in like Flynn!