Posted on 07/12/2025 2:45:37 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Progressive politics may promise empowerment, but for many liberal women, the result appears to be rising misery and isolation.
A growing body of data points to a clear trend: liberal women are statistically the most dissatisfied and mentally unwell demographic in the country, and experts say it may have more to do with worldview than circumstance.
According to a 2024 survey from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), just 12% of liberal women aged 18-40 report being “completely satisfied” with their lives.
In contrast, 37% of conservative women in the same age group report full satisfaction, a difference that speaks volumes.
The findings come from the 2024 American Family Survey, which also shows that liberal women are two to three times more likely to say they are “not satisfied” with their lives.
Marriage and faith, two traditional anchors of community and stability, may play a key role in the satisfaction divide.
56% of conservative women in the study are married, while only 37% of liberal women are.
Church attendance reflects a similar gap: 53% of conservative women attend religious services weekly, compared to just 12% of liberal women.
That detachment from relational and spiritual communities may be fueling widespread loneliness.
Nearly 30% of liberal women report frequent loneliness, while only 11% of conservatives say the same.
“These women are lacking key support systems that help weather life’s inevitable challenges,” said Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at IFS.
“We’ve seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces.
“They’re also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns and more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate.”
This isn’t a new development. A 2020 Pew Research study found that 56% of young liberal white women had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, compared to fewer than 30% of moderate or conservative women.
Cognitive psychologist Jonathan Haidt traces the issue to a culture of “catastrophizing,” a mental habit of exaggerating negative outcomes, often amplified by social media and activist narratives.
“Once you equate words with guns, you’re closer to hell than salvation,” Haidt warned.
Journalist Matt Yglesias also noted the link between heavy social media use and negative cognitive patterns that mimic clinical depression:
“Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin mirrors depression,” he explained.
That tendency toward pessimism has implications for electoral politics as well.
Political analyst Nate Silver argued that the Democratic Party’s messaging, shaped by its increasingly anxious, predominantly female base, may be turning off male voters.
“I think an underrated factor in the ‘how can Democrats win back young men’ debate is the effects of personality, which differ especially among younger voters,” Silver noted.
A cultural rejection of traditional roles may also be contributing to the crisis.
A 2024 analysis by Evie Magazine argued that dismissing marriage and motherhood as “oppressive” leaves many progressive women isolated from relationships that offer meaning, support, and long-term joy.
Haidt has argued that modern feminism’s emphasis on systemic oppression may backfire, trapping women in a cycle of resentment and helplessness.
Feminism’s focus on systemic oppression can backfire,” he said.
“It may create a generation trapped in a cycle of entitlement and empathy deficits.”
The broader shift among Gen Z toward an external locus of control.
The belief that one’s life is controlled by outside forces has also been tied to rising anxiety and depression.
This has especially been the case since the explosion of social media in the early 2010s.
Progressive campus policies may only worsen the trend.
Greg Lukianoff, co-author with Haidt of The Coddling of the American Mind, has warned that safe spaces, trigger warnings, and ideological echo chambers act as “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy,” validating fear and fragility instead of fostering strength and resilience.
For liberal women, the data suggests that politics may be part of the problem, not the solution.
“liberal women are statistically the most dissatisfied and mentally unwell demographic in the country”
Fat, disgruntled and leftist is no way to go through life.
I thought the multiple nose and lip rings were supposed to fix that?
Liberal is so far from the original definition, it is meaningless.
They were just as unhappy (and shrill) when they had someone they voted for in the White House.
Young college women graduate
They get jobs usually from home
Parents subsidize nice condo etc
They have dogs often rescue mutts (I like mutts)
They may date or tinder F
Sometime 8-15 years after their mom grandma would they get the itch for a family and go hunting for sperm donor provider
They are simply postponing their natural instinct
There are obvious problems in this approach but I see it all around me
The problems I can elucidate if anyone cares
Poorer people of all races don’t wait but few marry anymore
I’m surrounded by this and had college daughters who avoided it and boys who are dealing with it
If my sons are mid 30s before diving in it’ll likely be with a younger woman who eschewed the brainwashing promulgated but women unlikely to procreate anyhow except with undesirable sperm droppers outside their tribe
They vote for scumbag psychos like Mamdani to force everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
Except that cats are usually more intelligent than that. I should know, I used to have cats.
I don’t claim to know anything about Judaism....all I know is what Jesus did for my wife and I......and the transformation is both ongoing and unmistakable.
About ten years ago I stopped using the term “Liberal” to define “Leftists”.
I still use the term “Liberal”, but I use it to refer to people who believe in the emotionally-based claptrap that Leftists spit out for the consumption by emotionally based and intellectually lazy proles, which the young susceptible ones lap up eagerly, especially in college.
I view them (when they are adults) as the kind of people whose kids at school bring home “Black Lives Matter” or “In This House We Believe” signs and ask if they can put them on the front lawn, and the parents (with barely a thought) say “Oh. Okay. Be back inside for supper.”
They are detached, vote Democrat because their parents did and they always have, but have emotionally based knowledge a mile wide and a nanometer deep, and no real conviction. There exists a portion of these people, however small, who can be awakened to the truth. I view them as intellectually lazy or simply “too busy” to engage.
Only a miniscule fraction of “Leftists” will ever see the truth, and if they do, it takes a life changing event of the kind that changed a full on Leftist at the top of the Leftist Food Chain like David Horowitz to a solid Conservative near the top of the Conservative Food Chain. And even for some of them, like the prisoners in the Gulag described by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn who cried tears of grief when Stalin, the man who put them there passed away, there is no hope for them.
I too make the distinction between “Liberals” and “Leftists”...I am of the opinion that nearly all Leftists pass through a “Liberal” phase (however short or mild that may be) but once they go full “Leftist” they rarely go back.
Additionally, there are people who are opposed to the use of the term “Liberal” because it used to mean “Conservative”, and after WWII the Leftists found a way to twist the meaning of the word to describe THEM and confuse people in the process, but I don’t go that far. That is territory lost that we will never get back, and I have never viewed the effort to reverse that as time well spent.
If it were not for liberal Democrat women, the nation’s therapists would be bankrupt.
Liberalism/leftism is a mental illness.
Great, so 44% of young white Leftist women didn't go in for diagnosis of their condition.
Maybe because most Conservative women are also Christians and are looking past this life into their eternal life of joy. I believe that any one that claims to be a Christian and supports abortion on demand cannot be a Christian and that in itself could be a very depressing weight to carry.
Wonder how this correlates with the number of abortions they’ve had.
Hummm, a "Study" that likely was done correctly!
Never trumpers on free republic maybe number 2
Ugly on the inside and out.
Yeah, nobody banging them ugly broads.
Amen to that!
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