The American Family Survey, created by the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University in partnership with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, the Deseret News and YouGov, annually samples 3,000 adults whose characteristics mirror those of the general population.

Since 2015, respondents have been asked about the basic structure of the American family, the role of government policy in family and attitudes toward marriage and family.

Led by principal investigators Jeremy Pope and Chris Karpowitz, the 2024 survey was released last week and found consistency across the past decade in Americans’ attitudes toward marriage, how people value parenthood and how families spend time together.

“We tend to overestimate how public opinion might be changing, because a Republican wins an election, and the next time around, a Democrat wins an election,” said Pope, a BYU professor. “And superficially, I can understand why somebody would say, ‘Oh, that must mean public opinion has changed.’ No, it was really close before, and it’s close now. … The actual sweep of public opinion is pretty much the same on most issues, most of the time.”

Levels of optimism surrounding respondents’ own marriages remained high in 2024. Data showed 47% of married people said their marriage grew stronger in the last two years as opposed to 5% who said it grew weaker. In 2015, those percentages were 49% and 6%, respectively.

However, people remain pessimistic about the state of marriage across the United States. In 2024, 34% of respondents said marriage grew weaker as an American institution and just 11% said it grew stronger in 2024. Those numbers were 43% and 5%, respectively, in 2015.

The study also found that people still value their children and partners more than their career and politics, with nearly 9 out of 10 parents saying raising children is “one of life’s greatest joys” in 2024.

While there are differences between Democrat and Republican families — Republicans attend church at a higher rate and are more likely to get married, according to Pope — there are more similarities, he argues. 

The study found both right-leaning and left-leaning families eat dinner together, attend family activities and are argumentative with one another at similar rates, and have across the decade.

“There is sort of this idea out there that there’s kind of a red model of families and a blue model of families. And though it would be too much to say there’s no difference between Democratic and Republican families, by and large, they look really similar,” Pope said.

As for issues that changed most drastically over the course of the decade, Pope said people are more concerned about the economy and less concerned about cultural issues.

The study found 71% of respondents identified economic challenges as one of the most important issues affecting American families, an increase from roughly 51% in 2015. On the other hand, less than 50% of respondents in 2024 listed cultural issues, down from 70% in 2015.

In addition, 55% of 2024 respondents said inflation was their top economic worry.

Pope acknowledged some Republicans were likely to be more critical of inflation because they disliked President Joe Biden, but he said it was still a bipartisan issue. Over 80% of Democrats said they were very worried or somewhat worried about inflation.

Pope’s hypothesis is that the government aid given out during the COVID-19 pandemic was followed by economic challenges for many families.

“All of that aid, whether it was the right amount or not, did cushion people’s economic lives quite a bit,” Pope said. “We ask about a series of economic crises that people could have. Those abated during the pandemic, but they’ve kind of come back recently.”