(Prof, it might be downloading the BBC news app, it works for me?)VD's thinking, 'oh no the left wokerati are only having 2 children. How can I win the argument? I know let's (procreate) like rabbits until we've (procreated) enough to win the argument..
"It gives me a headache, just trying to think down to their level." Marvin, the Paranoid Android)
The problem with that argument is that is assumes that children think exactly like their parents, so persuading conservative parents to have more children will swell the numbers of conservatives in the next generation.
But it doesn't necessarily work like that - a prime example being religion. I've hear a similar argument in relation to religion in the UK - effectively that because religious parents tend to have more children than non-religious parents that the proportion of the population who are non-religious will slowly dwindle as they are overtaken by the offspring of the religious (who those making these arguments will assume will also be religious).
But big spanner in the works - only about 50% of children brought up in religious households end up religious as adults. So all that happens if religious parents have more children is that they swell the numbers of religious and non-religious next generation equally. But the same isn't true for non-religious, where about 95% of the children of parents brought up in a non-religious household end up non-religious as adults.
So effectively no amount of addition procreation by religious parents will swell the numbers of the religious in the next generation.
Now I don't know how this will equate to political positions in the USA, but certainly children have a fairly sizeable propensity to kick back against the political views of their parents. And also there tends to be a generation by generation shift towards liberalism - with many liberal elements considered absolutely accepted, normal and mainstream (e.g. the rights of women, gay people and ethnic minority) while those would have been considered extreme back 2-3 generations ago (e.g. in the 1950s). That there is a short-term kick back against liberalism doesn't alter the long-term trend.
