In Red America, Families Form Adults; in Blue America, Adults Form Families.

I found this via ontd_political and thought it would be of interest to people on my friends list:

Cultural conservatives revel in condemning the loose moral values and louche lifestyles of "San Francisco liberals." But if you want to find two-parent families with stable marriages and coddled kids, your best bet is to bypass Sarah Palin country and go to Nancy Pelosi territory: the liberal, bicoastal, predominantly Democratic places that cultural conservatives love to hate.

Naomi Cahn and June Carbone -- family law professors at George Washington University and the University of Missouri (Kansas City), respectively -- suggest that the apparent paradox is no paradox at all. Rather, it is the natural consequence of a cultural divide that has opened wide over the past few decades and shows no sign of closing. To define the divide in a sentence: In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.

Which is to say, the norm in red-America is to marry early, when still (comparatively) emotionally-immature and grow into the role of adulthood. Forming a family marks the first stage of adulthood. Blue-America OTOH get married later, feeling that it is irresponsible to form a family before one is fully mature. For them, forming a family marks the final stage of becoming an adult.

In 2008, when news emerged that the 17-year-old daughter of the Republican vice presidential nominee was pregnant, traditionalists were reassured rather than outraged, because Bristol Palin followed the time-honored rules by announcing she would marry the father. They were kids, to be sure, but they would form a family and grow up together, as so many before them had done. Blue America, by contrast, was censorious. Bristol had committed the unforgivable sin of starting a family too young. If red and blue America seemed to be talking past one another about family values, it's because they were.

Source

A somewhat interesting analysis of the higher red-state divorce rates and earlier marriage/childbirth rates. Albeit a bit of a simplification (as was pointed out in the ONTDP thread, red states have a bigger problems with poverty and unemployment, which are major stresses on marriage).