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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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The surge of normie family women and Moral Foundation Theory

A lot has been written on how marriage and long term relationships, at least in the Anglo-saxon contest, move women right from the left. While I think this assessment is generally correct, anecdotic evidence that I gathered around tell me that is not exactly right.

Context: Every month I begin to see some of my female friends and acquaintances, generally middle-upper class women, getting married and having children (age=27 - 32). After the birth their social profiles become typical of a mother with a child; continuous social media posts of their children, mom's initiatives, kindergardens, lovely picture with their newly wed husbands etc But it was very curious to see that this sudden change of social media posting have not changed their past habit of "left-wing posting" about Palestine, gay marriage, feminism etc. Instead, it accelerated a lot.

Sometimes ago, someone here was talking about Moral Foundation Theory and how left and right (and men and women) are different from each other, and how mainstream marriage culture follows more the conservative moral framework than the leftists framework.

But I would like to add that, in my opinion, we are seeing a shift of moral mainstream and normie society going from following the Authority/Sanctity/Loyalty to the Care/Fairness framework. If this happen, the consequence is that people following the rightists moral framework will never find refuge in mainstream family-making society, because this society is becoming morally Leftists. I do not think that we have ever seen, in the history of humanity, a shift like this.

A lot has been written on how marriage and long term relationships, at least in the Anglo-saxon contest, move women right from the left.

I must have missed these discussions, because I've never seen this as far as I recall. How does this argument work?

If this happen, the consequence is that people following the rightists moral framework will never find refuge in mainstream family-making society

No, that's not necessarily the case. More left-wing women getting married and having children doesn't have an obvious bearing on whether right-wing women are doing the same.

Also, while I am familiar with the argument that gay marriage harmed the institution of marriage, I have never heard anyone argue that this marriage institution ever required holding right-wing social views on things unrelated to it. What prevents a right-wing woman from thinking Palestinians don't deserve what Israel does to them?

I must have missed these discussions, because I've never seen this as far as I recall. How does this argument work?

My understand was that this was based on a statistic that found married women are more conservative than single women. There are a few different reasons this might be/have been the case. I could see a social pressure, stronger in the past, expecting that a wife would adopt political views more in line with her husband/would vote in step with her husband. Married women will be older on average than single women so the basic older>conservative pipe line. The institution of marriage could change how someone evaluates a lot of different questions, putting priority on their children over welfare for strangers, etc. This is at least my vague understanding of the situation (but it could be a reference to something totally different?), and some possible arguments.

Also, selection effects, whereby more conservative women are more likely to get married.