Ronald Reagan famously said:
“The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms.”
Whether you agree or not, there is no denying that American politics today certainly concerns itself with family matters. In 2014 there were over 30,000 state and federal bills and resolutions that mentioned family in their text. Of those, approximately 3,500 were primarily focused on family, marriage, or adoption, over 1,000 of which had passed as of May 30. Here’s a word cloud (thanks wordle!) of relevant terms in these bills so you can see the sorts of topics included:
Looking just at bills, and ignoring resolutions (of which there are about 1,000), here’s how many bills were introduced in each state in 2014 (You’ll note MT, ND, NV, and TX have no session this year):
Does one party have a monopoly on these kinds of bills? No, not really. Although Democrats introduced almost twice as many of these kinds of bills as Republicans, it really varies state by state (note the y axis, bill count, is logarithmic to better show the difference between parties):
The number of bills introduced each year does not have a clear trend:
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