A significant shift in American attitudes toward personal behavior is underway. New polling data reveals that fewer citizens now view birth control, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and gambling as morally acceptable compared to just a year ago, marking a notable departure from recent years of expanding social tolerance.
The decline is striking on birth control specifically. The share of Americans who deem it morally acceptable has fallen to 83 percent, down from 90 percent in the previous year. This represents the lowest approval rating in Gallup's tracking data stretching back to 2012.
Attitudes toward having children outside marriage dropped even more sharply. After climbing to 70 percent approval in 2022 and 2023, support collapsed to 58 percent. The shift reverses years of steady gains on the issue that had seemed to settle into broader acceptance.
Gallup senior editor Megan Brenan attributes the swings largely to independents, suggesting the broader electorate may be reconsidering its recent tilt toward liberal social positions. She frames the movement as either a natural pendulum correction toward moderation or potentially the start of something more fundamental in how Americans evaluate their own behavior.
Gambling's moral acceptability also hit a new low, a development that coincides with the explosive growth of prediction markets. These platforms now allow betting on news cycles, political outcomes, and business developments, blurring traditional lines between speculation and gambling in ways that polls suggest Americans don't quite trust.
The broader picture reveals a population that has turned markedly conservative on a range of social questions. Eight specific behaviors now register as morally wrong to majorities: teenage sex, affairs, human cloning, polygamy, suicide, animal cloning, pornography, and gender transition.
The retreat on gender issues is particularly pronounced. Support for the moral acceptability of changing one's gender has declined alongside eroding backing for same-sex marriage itself. These movements track together, suggesting Americans are reconsidering not just isolated behaviors but entire categories of social change.
Sharp partisan divides emerge when drilling deeper into the data. Democrats and Republicans now occupy almost opposite moral universes on abortion and gender identity, while agreement exists across party lines only on subjects like animal cloning, which neither side endorses.
Republicans show notably stronger approval for capital punishment, wearing fur, and animal testing, while Democrats concentrate their moral concerns elsewhere. The fragmentation points to a country increasingly sorting its values along partisan lines rather than seeking common ground.
The polling was conducted May 1-17 with 1,001 adults nationally, carrying a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Author James Rodriguez: "The data suggests Americans aren't becoming more permissive on anything anymore, and that's a sea change from the last decade of cultural expansion."
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