Our children - at least the marrying and birthing age ones - are smarter than we were.
News stories in recent days about polls and surveys on social issues such as marriage, abortion and income inequality prove it. Some of the findings were surprising, especially, most likely, to conservatives.
Take the marriage trends chronicled Sunday by the Associated Press. Among college-educated, relatively affluent couples, marriage is doing pretty well. But there's a class gap: Where education and income levels are lower, there is less marriage, higher divorce rates and far more children being born out of wedlock to single mothers. Those trends have been dubbed the "marriage gap."
Scholars say the gap stems in part from the loss of stable, well-paying industrial jobs - a loss that sent many young adults into precarious, low-paying jobs, and prompted some to put off marriage even while having children out of wedlock. In contrast, college-educated young adults have been more likely to wait until marriage to have children, offering them the prospect of raising them in a household supported by two good incomes.
But that delay has become a long, drawn-out process. Pew Research Center says the share of American adults who've never married is at a historic high - 20 percent of adults 25 and older in 2012 had never been married, compared to 9 percent of adults in 1960. In 1960, according to Pew, the likelihood of being married didn't vary according to level of education, but now men with advanced degrees are far more likely to have married than those who didn't go beyond high school. As for women, unmarried mothers account for 40.6 percent of children born in the U.S., according to recent Census data. In the African-American community, the percent is 71.5.
That brings us to abortion. An Associated Press survey and analysis found the number of abortions nationally are down about 12 percent since 2010. But this phenomenon apparently isn't due to the gyrations the GOP has engaged in to create tomes of anti-abortion legal snares: Abortions also are down in states where abortion rights are still protected, and down in both blue states and red states.
The theories of why, however, are still quite partisan.
Liberals and abortion-rights advocates say expanded access to effective contraceptives and a drop in unintended pregnancies are making the difference. (Planned Parenthood - the largest abortion provider in the U.S. - says its health centers report a nationwide 91 percent increase since 2009 in the use of IUDs and contraceptive implants.) Conservatives and abortion foes attribute it to shifting societal attitudes, with more women deciding to carry their pregnancies to term.
Well, there clearly is a shift in attitudes - about marriage and contraceptives and abortion and equality of all kinds, including income. Especially among younger Americans. It's just not the shift that conservatives seem to think it is.
Americans aren't abandoning marriage. In fact, in March, a Wall Street Journal poll found that 59 percent of Americans favor same-sex marriage. Around the same time, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found 58 percent of Americans in support gay marriage, and noted that the most sizable support - 81 percent - came from those ages 18-29. The support in all instances was up more than 20 percentage points since 2004.
In May, a Gallup poll found that 51 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances and 29 percent said it should be legal only under certain circumstances. Only 19 percent said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
Overall, marriage and abortion issues pretty clearly appear to be influenced by our economic means, or at least our perceptions of those means.
At the end of May, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe just a few people at the top have a chance to get ahead and 66 percent feel the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed. Some 67 percent think the income gap is getting larger, 65 percent think the gap needs to be addressed, and 57 percent say the government should do more to reduce the gap. A whopping 71 percent favor raising the minimum wage to $10.10, and 68 percent support raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year.
Yes, attitudes are changing, especially among young adults. But not toward the conservative and Republican point of view.
Is it any wonder that Republicans in our Congress want to limit voting rights and early voting? Last week in Nashville, the Davidson County Election Commission voted to trim metro Nashville early voting sites from 11 to one, citing funding considerations. The vote, by the way, broke along partisan lines: Four Republicans would cut 10 early voting sites, while two Democrats opposed the cuts.
Our children are smarter than us. We just have to get them to vote - even while conservatives work furiously to place hurdles in front of those votes.