Full Comment - Get hitched. Have kids. Save society from anti-marriage progressive elites

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00:01:12.320 Ready for you.

00:01:13.220 There was a time when it seemed everyone wanted to get married.

00:01:22.700 Getting married was what was expected of you.

00:01:25.220 Then marriage became less popular over the years.

00:01:29.000 Divorce became very popular throughout the 1970s and 80s.

00:01:32.200 Now, that's fallen off.

00:01:33.620 But is it partly due to fewer people getting married?

00:01:37.040 There's a new book out called Get Married While Americans Must Defy the Elites Forge Strong Families 0.98

00:01:41.920 and Save Civilization.

00:01:43.600 It's by academic Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia.

00:01:47.240 And he joins me now on the Full Comment podcast.

00:01:49.820 Brad, thanks for the time.

00:01:51.480 Good to be with you, Brian.

00:01:54.420 So, I know this is a book directed to Americans.

00:01:58.380 Our numbers are going to be somewhat similar as we talk about statistics.

00:02:02.660 Not exact, but somewhat.

00:02:05.000 Why do you say that people should be defying the elites?

00:02:08.860 And what do you mean by that?

00:02:11.000 Who are the elites and are they telling us not to get married?

00:02:14.660 Yeah.

00:02:14.880 So, I think when I first kind of released the title on the internet, and the book wasn't out yet,

00:02:21.400 there was a prominent journalist in the States called Matt Iglesias who was like,

00:02:24.920 what do you mean defy the elites?

00:02:26.080 The elites are the ones who are doing a pretty good job at marriage in America.

00:02:31.260 And he's right in terms of practice.

00:02:33.660 So, there's no question that Americans who are college educated and more affluent are more likely

00:02:38.560 today to get married, stay married.

00:02:40.260 Same is true in Canada as well.

00:02:42.160 But what I think he missed was the way in which a lot of the messaging coming from cultural elites,

00:02:47.540 ironically, including Matt Iglesias, is often not very marriage friendly or even kind of

00:02:52.540 anti-nuptial in its content.

00:02:54.580 In fact, he had written a piece for a prominent platform called Vox, something to the effect of,

00:03:00.880 you know, marriage is in decline and that's not a big deal, right?

00:03:03.940 So, the point I was getting at in the book is kind of making the argument that elites in journalism,

00:03:09.260 in the academy, in terms of Hollywood, even C-suites nowadays, often will kind of publicly

00:03:16.340 discount the importance of marriage or even sort of, you know, attack marriage in some kind of way,

00:03:20.620 talk about it as patriarchal or as kind of like a, you know, an infringement on people's freedom,

00:03:25.700 even as they're often in their own private lives benefiting from marriage for themselves,

00:03:31.780 for their, you know, their spouse and for their children.

00:03:34.080 And so, it's a kind of way in which a lot of our elites are talking left, if you will,

00:03:38.760 and then walking right, thinking about this in terms of just sort of marriage or family.

00:03:42.900 And that's a problem because they're not kind of using their influence, their power,

00:03:47.080 their authority in their public capacities to kind of share the benefits of marriage and to

00:03:52.840 encourage stronger marriages and families for the country as a whole, for the society as a whole.

00:03:57.620 So, that's kind of the message that I was giving in part in the book.

00:04:01.920 So, as you look at the statistics, and I know you've looked at the Canadian ones as well,

00:04:05.720 and you were recently in Ottawa, speaking to my old friends at Cardis, but as you look at the stats,

00:04:12.200 is there a shocking difference between, you know, if we take it out of the culture war,

00:04:17.840 we put it into the class war, between upper income and lower income?

00:04:22.360 If you're at the bottom of the economic ladder, is there a difference between how you live in

00:04:28.420 terms of family structure than if you're at the top?

00:04:32.640 Yeah, no, there's definitely a class war, in a sense, going on when it comes to marriage. 0.80

00:04:36.380 Talk about the marriage divide.

00:04:38.860 And what we do see is that college educated and, you know, folks who are in the upper third

00:04:43.860 of the income distribution are much, much more likely to be married compared to folks who are

00:04:49.320 in the bottom third of the distribution economically, or who are not college educated.

00:04:55.180 And that divide has really kind of opened up since the 1970s.

00:04:59.900 What I think people don't realize, don't recognize, is there wasn't really a divide

00:05:03.820 when it comes to, like, race or ethnicity or class in marriage and family in the middle of the last century.

00:05:11.320 But in the last, really, 60 years, that divide has opened up in part along class lines

00:05:16.980 in ways that your question, I think, suggests.

00:05:20.520 Which is ironic, because the whole marriage is the patriarchy.

00:05:27.080 We should live free.

00:05:28.660 We should, that, where do you hear that the most?

00:05:32.060 On college and university campuses across this continent.

00:05:35.680 You know, what's striking is that we've been looking at some polling lately on kind of whether

00:05:39.960 or not people think that, you know, married parents are important for kids.

00:05:43.320 And the group that's the least likely to embrace that idea, that's the most kind of likely to resist

00:05:51.400 the idea that kind of in the abstract marriage matters for kids are liberal college educated

00:05:57.360 Americans.

00:05:58.960 And there's basically almost a 60 percentage point gap between conservative college educated

00:06:05.640 Americans and liberal college educated Americans on that particular question.

00:06:10.200 But, you know, the irony is that, you know, the vast majority of those liberal college educated

00:06:15.760 folks, if their parents, are stably married.

00:06:19.640 So this is kind of the tension that we see is a lot of elites, again, are talking left but

00:06:24.140 walking right.

00:06:26.140 And, you know, they're not using their authority as professors and teachers and school

00:06:30.280 superintendents, for instance, to kind of share the message about the value of marriage,

00:06:35.480 but also not just some kind of like preaching, but even kind of sharing kind of just their

00:06:39.620 own life experiences with people who may not have grown up with married parent families

00:06:44.260 and might want to actually know, like, well, what do you do when, you know, you're having

00:06:49.300 some kind of disagreement with your wife about something?

00:06:51.900 And how do you kind of navigate that successfully?

00:06:54.320 And, you know, because you've obviously done it.

00:06:56.360 And so I think that's the challenge is that we need to kind of share the benefits and the

00:07:02.580 value, but also kind of some, you know, some strategies for successfully navigating relationships

00:07:07.780 and marriage and family life across, you know, our society to bridge this marriage gap.

00:07:13.160 Well, you say it will save civilization.

00:07:15.960 If we put that out there in a public forum, there'd be a whole pile of people who say,

00:07:21.680 well, marriage doesn't matter to civilization. 0.99

00:07:24.000 Marriage is just between two people.

00:07:25.440 What does it matter to the greater society?

00:07:28.580 What does your research show?

00:07:30.500 Yeah, I think a lot of contemporary folks do believe that marriage is just a private affair.

00:07:36.220 It just matters for you and your partner and maybe your kids.

00:07:40.120 They don't appreciate that because we are social animals, as Aristotle said, that what happens

00:07:45.620 in our own families matters for our neighborhoods, our cities, our provinces, and for the country

00:07:51.460 at large.

00:07:51.940 And we see, for instance, in the States that there's been a marked decline in happiness in

00:07:57.460 the last few decades in the United States.

00:07:59.200 And as one recent University of Chicago economist found, the number one factor that he found

00:08:05.520 in his models that helped to account for that was the decline in the share of Americans who

00:08:10.020 are married.

00:08:11.080 We know from the work of Raj Chetty at Harvard and his colleagues that the number one factor

00:08:15.140 they found that predicted mobility for poor kids, that is, rising from sort of rags as a

00:08:21.120 child to riches as an adult, was the share of two-parent families in a community.

00:08:27.940 So the point is, is that-

00:08:28.860 So is that for the kid as they're growing up or when they're an adult?

00:08:34.300 As they're growing up.

00:08:34.800 No, no.

00:08:35.100 So what his work is showing us is that children who grow up in communities with a lot more

00:08:41.140 two-parent families are much more likely to experience economic success as they move into

00:08:49.500 adulthood compared to kids who have lots of single-parent families in their communities.

00:08:54.980 So in the United States, for instance, what he sees is that a community like the San Francisco

00:09:00.760 metro area or Salt Lake metro area, both of which actually have high rates of two-parent

00:09:06.460 families, are much more likely to generate that upward mobility for poor kids in their

00:09:12.780 communities than kids growing up in, for instance, the Charlotte or the Atlanta metro areas that

00:09:18.240 have a lot more single-parent families.

00:09:19.880 And this is controlling for things like race and ethnicity and school quality and income

00:09:25.340 inequality.

00:09:26.460 So it's just kind of showing us there's something about family structure per se that matters,

00:09:31.640 not just at the individual or the household level, but actually at the community level.

00:09:35.820 That we haven't really paid attention to in our thinking and our discussions and debates

00:09:41.200 about marriage and family.

00:09:43.920 And so, yeah, I think when marriage is strong, you see less child poverty, you see more mobility,

00:09:49.180 you see more safety in your communities, less violence, less crime.

00:09:55.780 And all this, you know, there's a lot of like collective benefits that flow from strong families

00:10:00.060 that we don't tend to recognize and realize in a lot of our public debates.

00:10:03.480 This is something that economist Thomas Sowell has been talking about in the African-American

00:10:09.880 community for decades now.

00:10:11.800 And he describes the difference between when he was young and growing up in Harlem, going

00:10:18.240 to school there and what it's like now in black communities across the United States.

00:10:23.440 But you've taken what he observed a long time ago and you've looked at it countrywide.

00:10:29.440 Right.

00:10:31.240 And it's important, again, to stress, I think all people don't realize this, but there have

00:10:34.760 been times in American history when African-Americans, for instance, black Americans were more likely

00:10:39.060 to marry than white Americans.

00:10:42.000 And Sowell's, you know, life history is kind of emblematic of the point that I was getting

00:10:46.980 at earlier.

00:10:47.400 And that is that, you know, there was a time in American life when there wasn't really a

00:10:50.880 big racial divide or big class divide when it came to marriage. 1.00

00:10:53.680 But there is now, and that's important both because it reinforces this class divide in

00:11:00.840 terms of it just is perpetuated.

00:11:02.840 And then also on the racial divide, you see work from John Iceland at Penn State showing

00:11:09.360 us that kind of the biggest factor now accounting for gaps in poverty and affluence between blacks

00:11:14.720 and whites is family structure.

00:11:17.420 And this has kind of been increasingly so compared to previous decades.

00:11:20.600 Um, so when the family breaks down, what we've seen in the United States is working class, 1.00

00:11:25.880 poor and African-American, uh, you know, communities have been hit hardest and this kind of marriage 1.00

00:11:32.700 divide only reinforces a lot of other divides that, you know, give us cause for concern.

00:11:38.120 If you were to bring this up in a political context today though, and say, we need policies that are

00:11:49.740 beneficial for families and keeping them together or in strengthening families, you would be pilloried.

00:11:56.680 I mean, there's all kinds of so-called family friendly policies aimed at making life more affordable

00:12:01.980 or a tax credit here, a tax credit there, but to say that while we're doing this to strengthen

00:12:08.800 families, that would be seen as, um, social conservatism that would not be welcome in the

00:12:17.980 mainstream of, of many political discussions in the mainstream of much of the media.

00:12:23.260 Yeah.

00:12:23.680 And that's one of the points I touched on both in the book and some of the commentary that

00:12:27.100 I've done lately.

00:12:28.320 And again, I mean, I, we're living in a world now where unfortunately marriage has become

00:12:31.720 a partisan or an ideological issue.

00:12:34.560 Even though, as you say that, like the, the, uh, college educated liberals are living that

00:12:39.880 life.

00:12:40.800 Yeah.

00:12:41.200 That's the tension is that, again, they're often kind of living a relatively, you know,

00:12:46.280 a neo-traditional family lifestyle in private, a marriage centered way of life in private and

00:12:51.800 they're benefiting, you know, uh, people who get married as I show in my book are about

00:12:56.920 twice as likely to be very happy with their lives.

00:12:59.220 Um, they accumulate way more assets across the course of their lives than they're never

00:13:03.740 married or, or divorced peers.

00:13:06.540 Um, you know, they're, uh, more likely to in the face of a cancer diagnosis to, uh, to

00:13:14.060 survive because they have the benefit of a spouse in their corner, you know, navigating,

00:13:17.240 you know, hospital realities and doctors offices and all that stuff.

00:13:20.720 So there's just no question that I think most people who have kind of are wise to the world

00:13:26.240 at some level, either explicitly or implicitly recognize that getting married and staying

00:13:33.100 married benefits them, benefits their partner, benefits their kids, you know, benefits their

00:13:37.000 long-term, you know, um, their long-term, um, interests.

00:13:42.740 And yet there has not been a willingness, unfortunately on the left to kind of articulate any of this in

00:13:48.420 a kind of public way or context.

00:13:50.480 You know, I've been, uh, we just had a by-election or as you might call it in the United States,

00:13:55.100 a special election here in Toronto.

00:13:56.960 It's made a lot of news and I've been spending a lot of time looking at the demographics of

00:14:02.380 that particular district.

00:14:04.260 And, uh, it was, uh, striking when I, you know, when, when we said that we're going to have

00:14:11.260 this discussion, I said, okay, well, let's go back and, and test Brad's theory based on

00:14:16.180 some of the electoral districts here and the, the wealthy one in Toronto, St. Paul's, where

00:14:21.040 we had the election, it's, uh, married or living common laws, the stat, and it's more

00:14:27.600 than two thirds are married and less than a third are common law.

00:14:31.800 If you go to a poorer district, uh, those numbers change dramatically and, and the, uh,

00:14:39.360 the number of, uh, common law goes up.

00:14:42.800 Actually, I got those wrong.

00:14:44.360 Well, it's less than a quarter in the wealthy district and it, it's much higher in the poorer

00:14:50.080 district.

00:14:50.400 So there does seem to be some of that, but is there, you know, is common law different

00:14:56.060 than being married?

00:14:57.240 Do you find different outcomes?

00:15:00.100 So I haven't investigated the Canadian, um, pattern recently, but we have looked at the

00:15:05.600 difference between cravitation and marriage in the States and then also in Europe, um, and,

00:15:10.520 and countries too, where it's, it's quite, you know, kind of, uh, common, quite conventional

00:15:16.240 to have, you know, people living as a, um, as a cohabiting or common law in a sense, couple

00:15:21.520 with kids in places like, you know, uh, Scandinavia and France and whatnot.

00:15:25.980 And we still found that even, um, in Europe and of course also United States, that kids

00:15:31.900 who were born to married parents were markedly more likely to be still living with their

00:15:36.980 parents compared to kids born to cohabiting parents.

00:15:40.000 And this is true also in Finland and France and other European countries that we've looked

00:15:44.820 at typically.

00:15:45.780 So we, we do tend to see that there's a kind of stability premium when it comes to marriage,

00:15:51.140 where, um, kids who are, who are born and raised in married households are more likely to be

00:15:57.060 still with their parents as they move through, you know, childhood and kids who are raised

00:16:02.460 in common law or cohabiting households are more likely to see their parents split.

00:16:07.020 And of course, the big question here is how much of this is kind of about marriage per se

00:16:10.140 versus a kind of selection effect where the kinds of people who get married today might

00:16:13.880 be more educated, affluent, religious, conservative, whatever.

00:16:17.380 Um, I think it's certainly part of the story, but I'd also would suggest, uh, to your audience

00:16:22.920 that, you know, the terms of entry when it comes to marriage and just living together are

00:16:29.040 very different.

00:16:29.760 Um, that there's a public ceremony, even in secular, you know, marriage ceremonies where

00:16:34.800 people are kind of standing in front of family and friends standing before their intended

00:16:39.420 making public commitments and that this is consequential for kind of, you know, uh, the

00:16:45.240 behavior and the orientation.

00:16:46.600 So that's, that's my view.

00:16:48.620 Brad, you talk about things like, uh, which segments of American culture thrive most in

00:16:54.180 marriage, uh, whether kids are a disaster for marriage or make you happier.

00:16:59.100 I want to talk about those issues when we come back more in moments.

00:17:02.040 Brad, in your book, you talk about how some parts of American society are the masters of

00:17:08.320 marriage, that they do better.

00:17:10.560 Who are they and why specifically do, do these groups perform better?

00:17:16.300 So we see in the data, Asian Americans, religious Americans, uh, conservative Americans and college

00:17:23.680 educated Americans.

00:17:25.000 Of course there's overlap between some of those groups, but if you kind of look at those different

00:17:28.420 four categories, you see, they're more likely to get married in the first place and then to be

00:17:33.400 either happily married or stably married in the second place.

00:17:36.020 So I call them the masters of marriage because they kind of stand out in comparison to other

00:17:39.980 groups in the country.

00:17:42.960 And so have you been able to account for that, that certain types of people are more likely to

00:17:48.920 be married than, or get married than others?

00:17:51.380 So yeah, I argue in the book that there are kind of five pillars to, uh, strong marriages today.

00:17:57.020 And those pillars are, uh, communion, children, commitment, cash, and community.

00:18:03.620 And I think those groups in different ways, um, sometimes in common ways and other ways,

00:18:08.780 um, you know, often kind of rely on some of those pillars to kind of support their marriages.

00:18:14.540 And so when it comes to like religious Americans and conservative Americans, for instance, they're

00:18:19.200 particularly likely to embrace ideas about commitment in terms of like they're committed to marital

00:18:23.860 permanence as an ethic, or they're committed to fidelity as an ethic in ways that are, you know,

00:18:29.000 somewhat more exceptional compared to the average American.

00:18:32.040 Or talk about community, for instance, as well, and find that people who are kind of embedded in

00:18:36.440 communities that give honor to family, um, and emphasize family are more likely to, you know,

00:18:42.000 to be flourishing in their marriages.

00:18:43.320 And I would say that Asian Americans and, uh, religious Americans tend to be embedded in social

00:18:48.940 networks that, you know, are more likely to sort of either explicitly or implicitly stress the

00:18:53.720 importance of, uh, of marriage and family stability.

00:18:57.540 Um, or when it comes to, um, to cash, what we see is that, uh, a lot's changed obviously between

00:19:04.360 women and men when it comes to working family in the 21st century. 0.59

00:19:08.880 But it's still the case that men's stable employment is more important for getting married 0.60

00:19:15.740 and staying married than women's, uh, employment. 0.98

00:19:18.800 There's a new study from Sasha Killwald, for instance, at Harvard showing that when women 1.00

00:19:22.280 lose their jobs, uh, wives lose their jobs, no effect on divorce.

00:19:26.760 When husbands, when men lose their jobs in the family, um, divorce goes up by 33%.

00:19:32.740 That's a, that's a big effect.

00:19:33.980 And it's kind of tells us that, you know, for kind of communities where men are stably 0.99

00:19:38.500 connected to full-time employment, you're more likely to see marriage in a good, uh, position.

00:19:44.980 And we see, I think for all four of these groups, for conservatives, for religious, for, um, college

00:19:51.180 educated and for Asian American, uh, men that they're more likely to be employed, uh, full

00:19:56.600 time.

00:19:57.200 So these are some of the factors.

00:19:58.280 So why is it, do you think that that, uh, jumps out?

00:20:01.400 Is it because, um, of the psychological impact on, on the man, on, on the husband?

00:20:07.500 Is it a, a, you know, a, a deep seated, uh, need by the wife to say, no, I, I need a man 0.82

00:20:15.180 who is gainfully employed, who is stable.

00:20:17.680 Is it the psychology of both at play?

00:20:20.400 I think it's both.

00:20:20.980 So what we see when it comes to men's unemployment is just, um, it's, it's, I think it's psychologically

00:20:26.720 devastating for guys when they're not working, um, for on average, obviously there are exceptions.

00:20:31.600 We know that there, you know, there's some decent stay-at-home dads, but I'm just saying

00:20:35.540 that for the average guy, the average Joe, um, there was a New York times piece not too

00:20:41.060 long ago showing, for instance, that when women were unemployed, you know, they increased

00:20:44.420 their, their kin care, they're volunteering and they were like, they were doing stuff,

00:20:48.620 you know, men who are unemployed were much more likely to be staring at a screen, um, in

00:20:52.940 this New York times, uh, piece.

00:20:54.660 And so there's just something I think about the men's self-worth that's more closely connected

00:20:59.960 to, um, to employment that continues to this day.

00:21:04.440 Um, and so we've seen some research, for instance, is that, uh, husbands who are unemployed do less

00:21:09.700 housework than husbands who are employed full-time, which of course is just, I'm sure, infuriating

00:21:14.880 to the wife.

00:21:15.660 I mean, here you have a guy who's at home, um, not bringing any money in and not doing much

00:21:22.380 around the house.

00:21:22.900 Right.

00:21:23.080 So that's kind of a, that's a, that's a, that's going to be a stress fact.

00:21:26.400 Yes.

00:21:26.980 Um, and then for the wife, I think, you know, um, and what I found is it's sort of the,

00:21:31.840 on the marital happiness side, the, the, really the effect is for married mothers. 0.52

00:21:36.240 Um, so I didn't find a big story for women in general, when it came to husbands being employed

00:21:41.540 full-time in terms of marital happiness, but there was a marked difference for married

00:21:45.880 moms with kids in the household.

00:21:48.200 And so I think for married moms, the issue there is that, you know, they want to have some 0.98

00:21:52.720 flexibility.

00:21:53.460 Maybe, maybe they want to work full-time and they want to work part-time.

00:21:57.460 Maybe they want to be at home.

00:21:58.900 And if their husband is employed full-time and they've got kids in the house, so it gives

00:22:04.280 them, you know, the latitude, the flexibility, the options, you know, and they can kind of

00:22:09.740 rely upon him to provide a financial secure foundation for the family.

00:22:14.000 And so I think that's why in part, you know, um, when he loses a job, you know, it's much

00:22:20.420 more likely to lead to, uh, you know, to divorce court than, uh, when she loses a job. 0.99

00:22:27.560 So we've been talking about the financial side.

00:22:29.260 Let's go back to previously.

00:22:31.620 We were talking about how some groups get married.

00:22:33.640 Some don't.

00:22:34.120 The class difference is part of the reason that, uh, people are lower on the income scale

00:22:40.840 aren't getting married at as high a rate.

00:22:44.540 Is it due to cash?

00:22:45.920 Is it due to the fact that they may feel, well, I don't have the economic wherewithal.

00:22:51.700 Uh, I don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on what's expected of a wedding today.

00:22:57.280 You know, a bachelorette in Nashville, a bachelor party in Vegas, all this crazy stuff, $120,000,

00:23:03.680 uh, reception.

00:23:05.740 Is that part of what's driving it?

00:23:08.460 Yeah, I think definitely.

00:23:09.620 I mean, part of the, part of the challenge is that there is kind of like this really super

00:23:14.200 high threshold that's been set for weddings today.

00:23:16.620 And so, which is crazy, which is great.

00:23:18.740 It's part and parcel of sort of seeing marriage as a capstone.

00:23:21.700 Not as a cornerstone.

00:23:23.040 So when my mom was married, she got married in her early twenties.

00:23:26.180 Um, you know, and you know, that was sort of the norm in her, her set back in the late

00:23:31.320 1960s.

00:23:32.160 Right.

00:23:32.740 And so, you know, people didn't have as big weddings and they moved into very modest,

00:23:37.500 you know, apartments typically.

00:23:39.160 And, you know, wasn't a, there wasn't a big kind of economic threshold to jump over.

00:23:44.060 Whereas today, a lot of people think you have to have, you know, uh, a destination wedding

00:23:49.400 and spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on the reception and all this kind

00:23:53.920 of stuff, which obviously makes marriage more inaccessible to working class and poor 0.98

00:23:59.020 couples.

00:23:59.560 I think that's part of it.

00:24:00.160 But I think the other piece though, is that we do see, um, and this is again, kind of the

00:24:04.760 irony is that our elites tend to discount the importance of male breadwinners in theory,

00:24:09.680 right?

00:24:09.960 In theory, but not in practice.

00:24:12.960 Right.

00:24:13.560 So we do see, you know, upper income folks are much more likely to have stable male breadwinners,

00:24:18.860 including liberal upper income folks.

00:24:20.920 Right.

00:24:21.740 Um, and unfortunately, if you go down the class ladder, you just see that working class and 1.00

00:24:25.960 poor couples are much more likely to have situations where she's earning more money, where 1.00

00:24:29.900 she is employed full time and he is not.

00:24:32.100 And that is not, again, not a recipe for, you know, getting married, um, and kind of getting

00:24:37.600 off on the right start.

00:24:38.620 And I think couples and women recognize that.

00:24:41.240 So that's one reason why they're not putting a ring on it.

00:24:43.340 Just because the guy for any number of reasons is, you know, not employed full time.

00:24:49.420 And that's, you know, that's a barrier, uh, for them when it comes to putting a ring on

00:24:54.620 it.

00:24:55.920 So you deal with a number of different things that you say, okay, well, here's this myth.

00:25:00.220 Here's why it doesn't matter.

00:25:01.120 Here's this myth.

00:25:02.280 Let's talk about some of those.

00:25:03.500 Um, the soulmate myth and the idea that I love you for as long as it makes me feel happy.

00:25:13.540 So the soulmate myth is this idea that what kind of marriage and love are all about is

00:25:17.920 kind of that intense emotional, that intense romantic connection between two people.

00:25:22.400 I kind of like the butterflies in the stomach that you first have when you meet someone

00:25:25.360 oftentimes and kind of like the sense like we are perfect.

00:25:28.440 We're like the perfect fit for one another.

00:25:30.200 Like this person completes me.

00:25:32.700 This is an amazing relationship.

00:25:34.620 And that's, I think, pretty typical for a lot of us at the beginning part of our, you

00:25:38.160 know, of our dating relationship or even, you know, the honeymoon period in life.

00:25:42.120 But the, you know, the fact of the matter is, is Jonathan Haidt wrote in a previous book

00:25:47.660 on happiness is that, you know, for the average couple, there's going to be a shift away from

00:25:52.860 kind of like this intense emotional connection towards a more companionate model, more of a kind

00:25:57.360 of a, you know, long-term friendship.

00:25:59.420 And if you don't kind of recognize that marriage is about more than intense feeling, more than

00:26:04.100 intense romantic or emotional feeling, if you don't appreciate too, that every couple

00:26:08.620 has problems and challenges, if there's no perfect soulmate out there for you. 0.92

00:26:12.860 I know.

00:26:13.360 No.

00:26:13.700 Then you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

00:26:16.260 And you still see, you know, as I talk to ordinary couples, there are folks out there

00:26:19.640 who still have this idea that if marriage takes work, if there is conflict, if there

00:26:27.160 is, you know, disconnect on some major issue or personality, you know, fit, then you're

00:26:33.700 not really meant to be together.

00:26:35.640 And of course, my view is that, you know, marriage is a commitment, you know, that you're

00:26:39.760 supposed to love your spouse through thick and thin, and there are going to be tough times

00:26:44.580 and conflicts and compromises that are part and parcel of that.

00:26:47.060 So there's a kind of a mindset, I think.

00:26:48.580 And some people are still sort of stuck in the soulmate mindset, which is just not very

00:26:53.480 realistic for any long-term, you know, friendship or marriage.

00:26:58.500 There used to be a play that was persistently put on here in Toronto and it's called, I love

00:27:03.880 you, you're perfect, now change.

00:27:05.100 Uh, we all change over time and, and, and things happen and relationships change.

00:27:11.520 If you think it's going to be butterflies the entire, first off, I think that would

00:27:15.360 be awful to live that way forever, but it's, it's just not going to last.

00:27:23.300 Correct.

00:27:23.920 And I think, you know, there's also something that's kind of beautiful about being with,

00:27:27.060 you know, someone who's imperfect and of course you're imperfect as well and kind of, uh,

00:27:31.880 navigating challenges and growing together as a couple.

00:27:34.140 And, and, you know, there's something, you know, beautiful and powerful about building

00:27:38.520 a long-term marriage, um, that has, you know, difficult chapters and moments.

00:27:43.740 You've kind of been able to work through these things and see your, your marital friendship

00:27:47.260 deepen.

00:27:47.940 So, yes, I just think people need to realize that marriage is about more than just intense

00:27:52.000 emotional feelings.

00:27:54.380 It's about financial security.

00:27:56.780 It's about having someone in your corner when you do get sick with cancer at age 59

00:28:00.360 or, or 73.

00:28:02.320 Um, it's about kind of being part of a larger kinship network.

00:28:05.940 Um, it's, I think for many, many of us about kind of having kids and raising them together

00:28:11.540 and sort of seeing, you know, a new generation unfold in your own home and then grandkids.

00:28:16.620 So, um, people have kind of what I call more of a family first mentality.

00:28:20.920 Um, I think have a richer and thicker understanding of what marriage is about.

00:28:26.060 And therefore they're less likely to be worried about the ebb and flow of particular, uh,

00:28:30.880 feelings, you know, which will ebb and flow in any given marriage.

00:28:35.700 I, uh, I know many, uh, married couples who for various reasons don't have children, including

00:28:42.680 not being able to have children.

00:28:44.780 I thankfully don't know many of the folks that you talk about in chapter seven, the parent

00:28:49.140 trap.

00:28:50.220 Um, I've met a few of them.

00:28:52.160 I can't say I'm, you know, they're in my social circle, thankfully, but the idea that

00:28:56.540 kids are just kids are the problem and they're going to make your life and marriage miserable. 0.98

00:29:01.200 So don't even think about having them.

00:29:03.000 I can't understand that mindset.

00:29:06.680 So I think the issue with kids today is multifaceted.

00:29:11.740 I think that there is, um, people are concerned about, you know, uh, finding decent housing,

00:29:17.660 you know, for having kids, they're concerned about the, you know, the environment, uh,

00:29:22.900 they're concerned, I think about the way in which having kids was going to affect their

00:29:26.440 lifestyle, you know, their, their ability to kind of travel and eat out and all this

00:29:30.900 kind of stuff.

00:29:31.500 So, um, they're in fact, they're worried about how it's going to affect their career.

00:29:34.520 Um, and so I think all these things kind of coalesce and, uh, help to explain why we've

00:29:41.820 seen dramatic declines in fertility in Canada.

00:29:43.840 It's down depending upon the, you know, the demographer 1.3, 1.2, um, fertility rate, which

00:29:51.020 means that, you know, across Canada right now, you know, the average woman is going to have 0.84

00:29:56.100 1.3 kids.

00:29:57.500 Um, and of course the replacement rate is about 2.1.

00:30:00.360 So, you know, absent immigration, of course, you're getting a lot of immigration recently

00:30:04.040 in Canada, but absent immigration, what that tells us is that Canada would be shrinking

00:30:07.340 pretty dramatically in this century.

00:30:10.440 Um, and it just also tells us there's some, there's some, you know, set of factors, probably

00:30:15.480 both rising cost of housing in Canada, but also kind of just a certain set of cultural

00:30:20.800 assumptions about childbearing that have made, um, you know, parenthood a lot less attractive

00:30:27.400 and in some ways accessible to, uh, to Canadians.

00:30:30.720 But what I think people don't realize is that, you know, uh, what we find is that there are

00:30:35.700 no group of, um, both men and women.

00:30:38.360 And I think a lot of this sort of revolves around how does this affect women, but no group

00:30:41.960 of men and women who are happier in the United States, for instance, than married fathers

00:30:47.320 and married mothers. 1.00

00:30:48.980 Just take women because we've seen the polling data is that women are more skeptical about 1.00

00:30:53.160 marriage and motherhood today, um, than men are.

00:30:56.400 And so when, let's just look at the women, what you see is that, you know, 40% of married 1.00

00:31:01.100 moms are very happy with their lives in the United States today, compared to just, um, 22%

00:31:07.500 of single childless women ages 18 to 55.

00:31:11.960 And then when you look at who's the least happy, um, the groups of women who are the least happy

00:31:17.260 got 25% of single childless women versus just 13% of married mothers. 0.95

00:31:25.360 So on both ends of kind of a happiness continuum, what we're seeing is that married moms are 1.00

00:31:29.840 the happiest and married moms are the least likely report that they're not too happy.

00:31:36.180 Um, they also, married moms also report more meaningful lives and less lonely lives than 0.97

00:31:42.720 their single and childless peers and markedly.

00:31:45.260 So, so we just have kind of a challenge.

00:31:48.320 And that is that kind of, I think the reputation in public, especially for women of marriage

00:31:53.860 and motherhood is not great right now.

00:31:55.940 And yet the reality is that at least, um, and looking at the survey data, you know, married

00:32:02.960 moms more likely to be flourishing than their single and childless peers. 0.69

00:32:05.900 So with all this data, why are so many people, including so many in media, in the academy,

00:32:18.740 why publicly they're down on marriage?

00:32:21.740 If, if their own life experience says one thing, if the data says the same thing as their

00:32:29.020 own life experience, then why are they down on, on the institution?

00:32:32.980 A couple of things here.

00:32:35.620 Um, number one is obviously there's been a lot of family instability over, you know,

00:32:39.060 the last couple of decades.

00:32:40.480 And so, you know, many, I think men, women have seen, you know, their parents get divorced,

00:32:46.040 their best friend, their older sibling get divorced.

00:32:48.880 And so, you know, understandably clouds their view of marriage.

00:32:51.740 I think that's part of the story here.

00:32:52.920 Um, I think another part of the story here is, you know, we still live in an age when

00:32:57.360 in the average married family, even progressive families, women tend to do more of the housework, 1.00

00:33:02.500 more of the childcare, more of the kind of family management.

00:33:06.960 And, you know, if, if you're committed to kind of a 50, 50 model of, of doing everything,

00:33:12.200 that's going to look, you know, less appealing, um, than, you know, what you would have maybe

00:33:18.140 hoped for in your marriage and family life.

00:33:20.520 And so you might be more inclined just to sort of, you know, I don't want to have a

00:33:23.160 situation where I'm, you know, the wife and mother and I have a, you know, uh, an extra

00:33:28.720 burden when it comes to, um, you know, caring for the kids, managing the household, you know,

00:33:34.480 all that stuff.

00:33:35.140 So I want to, I want to kind of focus more on my career, you know, I think that's, that's

00:33:38.960 part of the story as well.

00:33:41.160 Um, and then I think too, and this is, this is a harder thing to say, but it's true.

00:33:46.220 So progressives are less likely today to get married.

00:33:51.820 They're less likely to be happily married.

00:33:55.300 And I think, and less likely to be happy in general, and they're more likely to kind of

00:34:00.660 dominate, you know, our public cultural organs of production, the media, you know, the academy,

00:34:07.720 our public schools, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:34:10.220 And so I think they're more likely to take a critical take on marriage, um, and family,

00:34:15.960 which then is kind of like distributed across the culture, given where there's, you know,

00:34:20.240 where they sit in the culture.

00:34:22.880 Do you have advice for, um, either for married couples or for, uh, uh, for policymakers?

00:34:30.520 I mean, maybe you've got advice for, for couples.

00:34:33.020 I see that you were, uh, endorsed by forgetting his name Chapman, that the guy behind five love

00:34:38.220 languages, he's one of the people endorsing your book.

00:34:41.040 Yeah.

00:34:41.200 So I mean, practical advice, what's, what's kind of, what's the takeaway for ordinary couples?

00:34:44.360 A couple of things.

00:34:44.880 One is regular date nights are really valuable for couples, especially couples with kids.

00:34:49.080 I would say just kind of connecting, you know, keeping that, um, I'm not saying that romance

00:34:54.260 is everything that's sort of the soulmate model, but it's really not nothing.

00:34:56.960 Right.

00:34:57.260 So it's important to try to cultivate that romantic spirit, um, you know, on a regular basis.

00:35:03.040 And I think, uh, date nights can be helpful there.

00:35:05.480 I encourage couples to steer clear of a me first approach and embrace a, we first approach.

00:35:10.780 So an example is like checking accounts.

00:35:12.640 We see is the couples that have got joint accounts are markedly happier unless divorce

00:35:17.360 prone than couples who have separate accounts.

00:35:19.620 Kind of just so it's an example.

00:35:21.200 That's an, that's an odd one.

00:35:23.960 I, well, I think, you know, money, what's behind that money is a big deal.

00:35:28.600 Right.

00:35:28.900 And, uh, marriage is, you know, about sharing a life together.

00:35:32.540 Right.

00:35:32.800 And so one way you share a life together is, you know, you put your money together, especially

00:35:36.380 because oftentimes, you know, both parties are not earning half their household income.

00:35:41.400 Right.

00:35:42.280 I talked for instance, to a colleague in my twenties when we were both in our twenties.

00:35:46.980 Um, and she was on a pretty minimum stipend.

00:35:50.440 Her husband was making a lot of money.

00:35:53.220 Um, and I asked her, Hey, you know, how's it going?

00:35:55.340 She's fine.

00:35:55.660 But she expressed some frustration that she couldn't buy a couch for their apartment.

00:35:59.720 And she had, you know, I think two kids at the time.

00:36:02.560 And I was like, uh, just, I didn't say this, obviously, but I was thinking, what's going

00:36:06.280 on here?

00:36:06.500 Cause I know your husband makes a good salary.

00:36:10.260 And, um, and she's, and she kind of like, Oh, we have kind of separate accounts and I

00:36:14.460 don't have as much money in my account as he has in his account and you know, all this

00:36:17.220 kind of stuff.

00:36:17.960 And I was just going to like flabbergasted because my wife and I had one account and if

00:36:21.760 she wanted a couch and there was enough money in the account, she'd get the couch. 0.93

00:36:25.640 Right.

00:36:25.820 There wasn't, there wasn't like some kind of like, you know, so I'm just saying that's,

00:36:28.160 that's the dynamic in play is that, um, in part, right.

00:36:32.500 You know, whereas if you have a sense of like, it's our money, it's our financial future.

00:36:36.340 We're gonna have to talk through some tough, you know, things.

00:36:39.500 We're building something together.

00:36:41.220 Yeah.

00:36:41.540 It's a future to find it.

00:36:42.700 And that's, that's, that's not unimportant.

00:36:44.300 You know, money matters and that is for marriage too. 0.52

00:36:46.040 So I think that's, that's an example of kind of more, do you take a, we first approach

00:36:49.940 to money and marriage or do you take a, me first?

00:36:51.880 And I think a, we first is much, much better, um, on commitment.

00:36:55.800 Can I recognize the importance of not using the D word in your thinking or your conversations

00:37:00.300 as a couple, don't talk about divorce.

00:37:01.980 You know, you've made a commitment, work through your, you know, your challenges for

00:37:05.120 all possible, obviously without, you know, um, opening up that Pandora's box, talk about

00:37:11.120 fidelity in marriage.

00:37:12.560 Um, you know, steering clear of attractive alternatives in the real world.

00:37:16.280 Um, but also, uh, nowadays steering clear of attractive alternatives in the virtual world,

00:37:20.860 you know, and that obviously relates to anything from, you know, social media to pornography,

00:37:26.400 whatever else.

00:37:27.220 Um, you know, the, the less of that, the better for your marriage, um, is kind of the takeaway

00:37:31.940 for an ordinary couples talk obviously about the importance of men being intentional about

00:37:36.720 work.

00:37:37.160 Not, I mean, I, a lot of the guys that I know have gotten divorced and, you know, in

00:37:41.340 their forties, fifties are guys that I know have a record of not being stably employed.

00:37:46.420 And I know that it's sort of undercut their wife's confidence in them and their sense of

00:37:51.860 financial security.

00:37:52.840 Right.

00:37:53.200 And so obviously some, you know, people are fired without, you know, through no fault of

00:37:58.380 their own, but, but it's also the case too, that there are some kinds of guys who just

00:38:02.660 don't fully take their financial and professional responsibilities with the requisite seriousness.

00:38:10.040 That's also the area where guys can step up.

00:38:13.120 Um, and then, and finally, if, if you've got a religious bone in your body, I would recommend 0.95

00:38:16.920 that you go to, you know, your church, your temple, your synagogue, your mosque, because

00:38:20.780 generally speaking, couples who are embedded in a religious community, um, for very sociological

00:38:26.740 reasons in part, you know, you're surrounded by a lot of families tend to get, you know,

00:38:31.200 messaging and encouragement that, you know, pushes you, I say, especially as a dad and

00:38:36.440 husband to be more intentional about, you know, um, being there for your family, for

00:38:44.660 your spouse, for your kids, um, and, um, you know, steering clear of things that can get

00:38:50.140 people into trouble, like, you know, drugs and, and alcohol and whatnot as well too.

00:38:56.560 So, um, those are some things that, you know, that are more practical that come out in the

00:39:00.260 book.

00:39:01.200 So the, uh, what about for policymakers?

00:39:05.520 Are there things that are politicians at any particular level of government could be

00:39:11.280 doing to, uh, to change some of these patterns that you've been watching and seeing?

00:39:17.740 So I think one thing is just being very clear that the financial incentives line up with

00:39:21.880 marriage and now parenthood, especially in Canada with your low fertility rate, we often

00:39:26.880 see it.

00:39:27.140 I don't, I don't, I'm not as familiar with the Canadian sort of, you know, policy regime

00:39:30.380 around supporting lower income families in Canada, but we know in the States that a lot

00:39:35.640 of working class couples are penalized when it comes to marriage, uh, because the way in 0.97

00:39:41.780 which we've structure our benefits basically means that if you earn above a certain threshold,

00:39:46.580 you don't qualify for something like free healthcare in the United States, um, or free childcare,

00:39:51.360 or, you know, what's called the earned income tax credit.

00:39:55.620 So just being attentive to the way in which, you know, as you look at kind of the, the different

00:39:59.880 benefits that are offered to families in Canada, that they're, you're not unintentionally making

00:40:04.180 it, you know, less financially attractive to get married or to have kids for that matter

00:40:08.200 as well.

00:40:08.580 So that's one issue that I would share with your Canadian eyes.

00:40:12.100 I think another issue is, is housing affordability.

00:40:14.760 I think people are reluctant to get married, especially to have kids if they don't have access

00:40:19.920 to, um, decent housing, especially single family homes.

00:40:24.420 And so I think just, yeah, that is our, our biggest issue in this country right now is,

00:40:30.240 uh, a housing bubble in especially Toronto and Vancouver that is out of control, but rising

00:40:35.780 home prices everywhere.

00:40:37.920 And the, a lot of the push for, uh, by policymakers is to say, great, we'll build giant condo towers

00:40:45.060 and that might be fine for, for some families with kids, but it's not the ideal that everyone

00:40:52.160 wants.

00:40:52.640 No, that's the challenge is that we see there's something about, there's been some really

00:40:56.400 fascinating research in Southeast Asia.

00:40:59.160 There's something about intense urban density.

00:41:02.160 That's not, um, conducive to family formation and childbearing.

00:41:07.160 Um, so unless you're Jim Gaffigan, well, he's, yeah, he's an exception.

00:41:12.080 Five kids in downtown New York.

00:41:13.760 That's right.

00:41:14.320 You don't want to, um, I mean, we've seen this obviously this, this, this, and it's East

00:41:18.160 Asia too.

00:41:18.660 I mean, we've, this story is played out in Seoul.

00:41:20.540 It's, uh, played out in Singapore.

00:41:23.240 It's played out in Taipei, right?

00:41:24.800 So when you build these massive urban centers and big towers, people don't want to have,

00:41:31.560 you know, kids in that, in that context, you need to figure out ways to, um, increase.

00:41:38.320 And I'm not saying big single family houses.

00:41:40.900 I'm just saying, you know, give people their own little, you know, their own little castle,

00:41:44.260 so to speak.

00:41:44.880 I think my parents, my parents' first home that I remember when I was a toddler, uh,

00:41:50.480 would have been maybe 1100 square feet, maybe, but it's a three bedroom home.

00:41:55.880 Yes.

00:41:56.380 And it was a single family home on its own little plot.

00:41:59.700 Yeah.

00:41:59.880 And that was my experience growing up too.

00:42:01.380 So we had, so I think, yeah, building a lot of modest single family homes would be,

00:42:04.940 would be really helpful if we could figure out a way to do that policy wise.

00:42:07.480 And I know that that's become part of your political conversation in Canada.

00:42:10.660 But the final piece is, you know, Canada has got better family policies.

00:42:16.080 Finland has got better family policies than the United States.

00:42:19.660 No question, for instance, that those two countries, for instance, you know, much better

00:42:23.680 in terms of just benefits, money, blah, blah, blah, for, you know, for families, more parental

00:42:28.280 leave, you know, pay parental leave, all this kind of stuff.

00:42:31.620 But both Finland and Canada, for instance, have markedly lower rates of fertility now than the

00:42:37.300 United States.

00:42:37.920 And I mean, we've got our problems down South in the US, obviously, but I think there still

00:42:42.960 is a kind of greater regard for marriage and childbearing South of the border than there

00:42:47.700 is North of the border.

00:42:50.040 And so there's also a cultural challenge here in question.

00:42:52.760 So I think you've got to figure out ways to, in the media, in your universities, in pop

00:42:59.460 culture, in your education system, to talk up the benefits of marriage and parenthood to,

00:43:06.500 you know, school age children and young adults.

00:43:10.660 Because absent that, you know, you're just going to see a precipitous decline in marriage

00:43:18.680 and family life in Canada, as is, you know, is sort of playing out in a lot of countries.

00:43:24.660 We'll all eventually look like Quebec.

00:43:26.960 Brad, we are out of time, but thank you so much for your time today.

00:43:31.320 And I encourage people to check out the book, Get Married.

00:43:34.460 Thanks so much.

00:43:35.880 Thanks, Brian.

00:43:36.220 Great to be with you today.

00:43:37.960 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:43:40.300 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:43:41.740 This episode was produced by Andre Prude.

00:43:43.920 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:43:45.440 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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00:43:56.260 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - August 12, 2024

Get hitched. Have kids. Save society from anti-marriage progressive elites

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