These results are interesting to me because they challenge certain prevalent ideas about American society. People discuss political polarization as a monolithic force, with the growing divide between a red and blue America. History tells us this is not a new phenomenon (the Civil War, 1890s populist movement, 1960s/70s counterculture, etc.), even if it has exacerbated in recent decades. However, religious attendance bearing more explanatory power in a behavior as important as having children than political affiliation suggests a flaw in contemporary discourse. Ideas about religion and philosophy, which often are traced back thousands of years, reflect something important about the human condition. Your personal beliefs, as well as those in your social sphere, on these topics probably reflect your worldview more than your opinion on the president’s latest controversial comments.

    The results also contest other widely held superficialities in 2020s America. The regions with the highest and lowest fertility rates, the Great Plains and New England respectively, both contain the highest proportion of white residents in the country. Our society obsesses over race as a monolithic concept to explain people’s behavior, when race is often better understood as a conduit for more meaningful social or cultural affiliations. Suggesting similarities solely on racial grounds is condescending, white farmers in Vermont and South Dakota stand opposite on almost any social metric. People are dynamic forces, not machine-like products of their environments.  

   From that final point, it would be misinterpreting the data to think there would be exactly 3.4 more kids per 1000 women if 10% more Americans started going to church. The main value from this information is its suggestion that religion plays a more important part than political affiliation or rural residency in predicting the decision to have kids. This raises interesting questions about human psychology and cultural dynamics.