Key Takeaways

• The Daily Signal covered a new Institute for Family Studies survey of 7,000 Americans, finding that family formation is declining across the board — but the gap between more and less religious Americans is widening, and families are migrating toward communities that support them.

• Since 2000, states with stronger family cultures saw a 7% increase in their child population, while states with weaker family cultures experienced a 7% decline. Hundreds of thousands of families are relocating toward communities that are culturally, educationally, and economically more hospitable.

• J.P. De Gance argued in the Daily Signal that housing policy directly affects fertility: states that make it harder to build homes and skew policy toward high-density communities are discouraging family formation at a structural level.

• Even among those who want children, the ideal family size among all respondents averages above 2.1 — meaning the fertility gap is not primarily about desire. It is about the conditions that make family formation feel possible.

• The local church is the most capable institution in any community to create those conditions — by building a culture of hope, strong marriages, and genuine relational support for families at every stage.

The Story: A National Data Set With a Local Implication

The Daily Signal published a feature by Kevin Stocklin on June 22, 2026, drawing on a new Institute for Family Studies survey of 7,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 54 to examine why fertility rates are diverging across communities — and what is driving the gap.

The headline focuses on the ideological dimension of that divergence. But the most important data in the piece for pastors and church leaders isn’t political. It is geographic and behavioral, and it points directly to the local church as the most capable institution to address what the numbers reveal.

Families are not just having fewer children. They are moving toward communities where having children feels more possible, more supported, and more culturally normal. And the data on where those communities are located — and why families choose them — has direct implications for every local church thinking about its role in its community’s future.

The Core Finding: Families Move Toward Community, Not Just Policy

Since the year 2000, states with stronger family cultures have seen a 7% increase in their child population, while states with weaker family cultures have seen a 7% decline. Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies told the Daily Signal that hundreds of thousands of families are migrating toward states like Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Idaho, citing cultural, educational, and economic factors.

The reasons families give for these moves are telling. Lower taxes and housing costs matter. Better job prospects matter. School choice matters. But beneath those practical factors is something more fundamental: people are looking for communities where their values are shared, where family life is celebrated rather than treated as an eccentric lifestyle choice, and where they feel genuinely supported in the demanding work of raising children.

J.P. De Gance pointed to housing policy as one concrete structural factor. States that make it harder to build homes, skewing toward high-density and mixed-use development, are directly discouraging family formation at a structural level. “Parents don’t need a huge home,” he told the Daily Signal, “but people want to have their own place.” The physical environment of a community shapes the family decisions made within it.

But policy alone does not explain the migration. People are not just moving toward better zoning laws. They are moving toward communities that feel like places where their families belong.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Fertility Gap Is Not a Desire Gap. It Is a Conditions Gap.

Here is the finding in the IFS survey that changes the entire conversation, and that the Daily Signal piece surfaces clearly.

When respondents were asked not how many children they had, but how many they ideally wanted, the numbers looked very different. Across the full survey, the average ideal family size was above the 2.1 replacement rate. Conservatives averaged 2.71 ideal children. Even among more secular respondents, the average was 2.16.

People want families. The gap between the families people want and the families they are actually forming is not primarily a gap in desire. It is a gap in conditions — in hope, in support, in the sense that family formation is achievable, meaningful, and worth the sacrifice.

This is precisely the gap the local church is built to close.

The IFS survey found that the barriers most frequently cited by those not having children were not primarily financial. They were existential: doubts about being a good parent, mental health concerns, anxiety about the future, and uncertainty about whether bringing a child into the world was a responsible act. These are not problems that tax credits or parental leave mandates can address. They are problems that require a community with a coherent, hopeful vision of human life — and the relational infrastructure to make that vision tangible.

The families migrating toward certain states and communities are not just looking for lower taxes. They are looking for exactly that kind of community. And in many cases, the local church is the most natural place to find it.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Daily Signal data points to something we see confirmed in every community where churches are doing this work well: when a congregation takes marriage and family formation seriously, it becomes a community anchor that shapes who moves in, who stays, and whether families feel equipped to build the lives they actually want.

Think about the young adults and young couples in your congregation. Many of them have an ideal family size that looks like the national average — two, three, or more children. What stands between that ideal and reality is rarely a lack of desire. It is a lack of hope, stability, community support, and the practical formation that makes family life feel sustainable rather than overwhelming.

The church that builds strong marriages is the church that produces stable households with the margin to welcome children. The church that invests in young adults is the church where family formation happens naturally, supported by a community rather than attempted in isolation. The church that cultivates genuine belonging is the church that families choose, recommend to others, and stay in for generations.

De Gance’s point about housing policy applies at a local level too. The conditions that make family formation possible are not set only by state legislatures. They are shaped by the culture of the communities people live in — and the local church has more influence over that culture than any other institution in the neighborhood.

The families that are already moving toward communities that support them are telling the Church something important: what they are looking for, they believe exists somewhere. The opportunity in front of every pastor is to make sure it exists here, in this congregation, in this community, right now.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches to build marriage and family ministry that creates the conditions where family formation flourishes and communities grow stronger.

► Read the full Daily Signal article → dailysignal.com

► Explore Communio’s resources for churches → communio.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are families migrating toward certain states and communities? According to the IFS data covered by the Daily Signal, families are relocating toward communities that offer lower taxes, better housing costs, stronger school choice, and a cultural environment more hospitable to family formation. Since 2000, states with stronger family cultures have seen a 7% increase in their child population while others have seen a 7% decline. The migration reflects both practical and cultural factors.

Is the fertility gap primarily about how many children people want? No. The IFS survey found that when respondents were asked their ideal family size rather than their actual family size, the numbers were significantly higher — above the 2.1 replacement rate across all groups. The gap between desired and actual family size is not primarily a desire gap. It is a conditions gap, driven by existential barriers including uncertainty about the future, doubts about parenthood, and a lack of the community support that makes family formation feel achievable.

How does housing policy connect to family formation? J.P. De Gance argued in the Daily Signal that states which make it harder to build homes and skew policy toward high-density, mixed-use development directly discourage family formation. Families do not need large homes, but they want their own space. Physical environment shapes family decisions, and communities that prioritize single-family housing and accessible homeownership create more favorable conditions for family formation.

What role can the local church play in addressing the fertility gap? The local church is uniquely positioned to address the conditions gap that underlies the fertility decline. By building strong marriages, cultivating genuine community, investing in young adults, and creating a culture of hope and family formation, a church becomes the kind of community that families are actively seeking. Communio helps churches build exactly this kind of relational culture.

Why do more religious communities tend to have higher birth rates? Religious faith provides a framework in which family formation is understood as vocation rather than lifestyle choice. As J.P. De Gance noted, religious parents are more likely to be grounded in a sense of purpose found outside themselves. That orientation toward meaning beyond the self — combined with the community, support, and hope that religious communities provide — produces the conditions in which welcoming children feels natural and meaningful rather than burdensome.

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Kevin Stocklin for the Daily Signal, published June 22, 2026, and data from the Institute for Family Studies’ ideological fertility divide report. Read the original Daily Signal article here.