Top Issues Facing Families

In 2025, one issue stands out above the rest when it comes to American perceptions of the most important problem facing families: the costs associated with raising a family. Half (49%) select it as one of the top three, almost double the second-most selected response, violence and abuse within the family (28%). Rounding out the top three issues is the high work demands and stress on parents, identified as a top-three problem by 25% of Americans.

Concern about the cost of raising a family has been on the rise over the last two years, from 33% selecting the issue in 2023 to 49% in 2025. The rise is especially steep among Democrats and (perhaps surprisingly) among those with higher incomes, though all partisan and income groups report higher levels of concern than they did in 2023. Just 27% of Republicans selected the cost of raising a family as a top-three concern in 2023, but by 2025, that figure increased to 40%. The persistence of concern among Republicans over the last two years is notable, given that it spans both the last years of the Biden administration and the first year of the Trump administration.

Among income groups, those making more than $80k per year showed the largest increase in concern about costs, from 33% selecting the issue in 2023 to 55% in 2025. Meanwhile, concern among other income groups seemed to level off this year, though neither returned to 2023 levels. This widening gap suggests that what had once been a broadly shared concern may be becoming especially salient for higher-income families—possibly reflecting inflationary pressures, housing costs, or broader economic uncertainties that are beginning to affect family expenses even at the upper end of the income spectrum.

To examine broader patterns of public concern, we group individual survey items into three overarching categories: family, cultural, and economic issues. This analysis shows that between 2023 and 2025, economic concerns, which once were on par with cultural and family issues, have now become dominant.

In 2023, Americans expressed essentially equal levels of concern about family, economic, and cultural challenges. In 2024, economic concerns predominated, and in 2025, the percent selecting at least one economic issue exceeded those selecting family challenges by 11 percentage points and cultural concerns by 16 percentage points. Cultural concerns, by contrast, dropped sharply in 2025, with only 57% identifying at least one cultural concern among their top three. This nearly ten-point decline in a single year may suggest that cultural anxieties are yielding to more material or pragmatic worries about economic stability. Family-related concerns have also trended downward slightly, but at a much less dramatic rate, falling from 65% selecting a cultural issue in 2023 to 62% in 2025. The combination of these trends means that this year marks the first time over the three-year period that both economic and family concerns outpaced cultural concerns.

Patterns of concern differ noticeably between homeowners and non-homeowners. Among homeowners, concern about cultural and family issues has dropped over the last two years while concern about economic issues increased substantially. This pattern suggests that homeowners, once somewhat more focused on cultural and family matters, are now increasingly preoccupied with economic pressures. Rising housing and other living costs may contribute to that shift. For non-homeowners, the drop in concern for cultural and family issues was even more precipitous, indicating that many placed more than one economic issue in their top three.

Similar patterns are seen across income groups, with family and cultural concerns generally declining across the board and economic concerns becoming dominant across all income brackets. Higherincome respondents show the greatest increase, from 63% in 2023 to 77% in 2025, while lower-income respondents have also increased, but only slightly — from 64% in 2023 to 67% in 2025. Together, these patterns suggest that economic pressure is felt across traditional class divides and perhaps even most keenly among the highest earners. At all income levels, economic concerns are chosen by the highest percentage of Americans. In this sense, what once separated higher- and lower-income families now appears to unite them: a shared sense that financial strain, rather than cultural or relational problems, poses the most pressing challenge for American families today.

Across party lines, the percent choosing cultural issues has declined for all groups, with the drop sharpest among independents, falling from 60% selecting at least one cultural issue in 2023 to 49% in 2025. Cultural concerns remain most pronounced among Republicans, though they too have declined over time. Roughly three-quarters of Republicans cited a cultural issue in 2023 and 2024, but that figure dropped to two-thirds in 2025. Family concerns have remained steady among Republicans, seven in 10 of whom cite at least one, while they have declined somewhat among both independents and Democrats. Overall, Republicans tend to focus on family and cultural challenges, while Democrats emphasize economic challenges.

Economic concerns have risen for nearly everyone over the last three years. Among Democrats, the percent selecting at least one economic concern has climbed from 74% to 84% in 2025. Economic concern has also risen by 10 percentage points among independents. Republicans saw an 11-point jump between 2023 and 2024 —rising from 55% to 66% — before dipping slightly to 64% in 2025. Thus, while Republican levels of concern about the economy lag 20 points behind that of Democrats, they have also largely retained the previous year’s increase despite the change in control of the White House.

Our analysis to this point has focused on the randomly chosen half of the sample who answered questions about “the most important challenges facing families today.” But the other half of the sample focused on the most important challenges facing their own family. Comparing the two response patterns, we observe some important gaps in perception vs. experience.

Americans continue to view economic pressures as the most pressing challenges facing families, both in general and within their own households. Yet while nearly half (49%) select the costs associated with raising a family as one of the top three issues facing families in general, only one in four (25%) say the same when thinking about their own family.

Conversely, when asked about their own household, Americans are more likely to highlight mental or physical health struggles (31% for their own family versus 21% for families generally) or tension or disagreements between family members (21% versus 9%). Mental or physical health struggles are the most-selected issue when it comes to Americans’ own families, outpacing the cost of raising a family by six percentage points.

Respondents were much more likely to attribute problems such as violence and abuse within the family, children growing up without two parents in the home, and the widespread availability of drugs or alcohol to other families than to their own. For example, 28% said violence and abuse was a major problem for families broadly, compared to only 4% who said it was an issue in their own family.

In short, Americans perceive structural and moral problems such as family instability and violence as challenges affecting other families; they are more inclined to view daily relational or health-related struggles as relevant to their own. Still, concern about costs was the second-most chosen category among those asked to consider their own families. Economic concerns thus remain at the forefront for both, underscoring the continued and widespread sense that the financial demands of family life are a defining challenge for modern families.

Importantly, the pronounced party differences that emerge when Americans consider the challenges facing families generally nearly evaporate when they are asked instead to focus on their own families. As we showed above, Republicans tend to focus on family and cultural issues when assessing the concerns for families generally, while Democrats emphasize economic stresses. But the pattern looks much different when Americans think about their own families. Democrats are slightly more concerned than Republicans about family-related issues, but the partisan gap is less than 3 percentage points, and it is less than 1 percentage point for both economics and culture. When asked to consider their own families — the situation they know best — Republicans and Democrats basically agree with each other.

Overall, the 2025 American Family Survey paints a clear picture of a nation increasingly united by shared economic anxieties. Across social, economic, and political divides, Americans identify the rising costs of raising children, work-related stress, and financial insecurity as the defining challenges of modern family life. Cultural and structural concerns, once central to national debates and the subject of heated dialogues, have faded to the background, replaced by worries about family affordability, work demands on employed parents, and the lack of good jobs or wages. While Democrats and Republicans differ in how they frame these problems, those differences quickly fade when we ask them their concerns about their own family, where daily financial and emotional strains overshadow partisan perspectives. For policymakers, these findings highlight the urgent need for family-oriented economic policies — addressing costs of childcare, housing, healthcare, and education — that can ease the financial burden on parents and strengthen family well-being. For the public, they offer a reminder that beneath ideological divides, Americans of all stripes share a desire for economic security, time with loved ones, and the means to build strong and stable families.

METHODOLOGY NOTE

Between August 6-18, 2025, YouGov interviewed 3317 nationally representative respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file).

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region, and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 and 2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (four categories), race (four categories), and education (four categories) to produce the final weight. The overall margin of error is +/- 2.1%.