People who have children tend to become more socially conservative compared to their childless peers, according to a new study.

Researchers found that contrary to a popular belief that people adopt a more right-wing worldview as they get older, the decisive factor might be parenthood and not age, according to a study in Proceedings of the Royal Society.

The study was aimed at understanding the origins of differences in attitudes on such divisive social issues as abortion, immigration and sex.

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, led by Dr. Nicholas Kerry, hypothesized that people who are “more invested in parental care” would be more drawn to socially conservative policies.

As part of the study, experts surveyed 2,610 people from 10 countries and found evidence that people who already have children, or who want to become parents, “are associated with increased social conservatism.”

At the same time, the study found that childless study participants held more liberal views as they got older.

The findings appear to dovetail with the analysis of data from the World Values Survey, collected over a 40-year period and involving 426,444 participants from 88 countries, which suggested the more children parents had, the more socially conservative they tended to be, the Guardian reported.

However, in some countries, among them India and Pakistan, parenthood was not linked to more conservative views.

The authors of the study predicted that decreasing fertility rates in most of the world could lead to more liberal polices in the future.

“Specifically, our findings would suggest that global increases in childlessness could potentially contribute to a process of liberalisation on social issues,” they stated.

In 2020, the US had a birth rate of 55.8 births per 1,000 women, representing a 20% decrease since 2007.