The Art of Manliness - Busting the Myths of Marriage — Why Getting Hitched Still Matters

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.240 the marriage rate has come down 65 since 1970 there are multiple factors behind this decrease

00:00:17.860 but one of them is what we might call the poor branding that surrounds marriage in the modern

00:00:21.920 day from all corners of our culture from both ends of the ideological spectrum come messages

00:00:27.320 that marriage is an outdated institution that it hinders financial success and personal fulfillment 0.86

00:00:32.120 that it's even unimportant when it comes to raising kids my guests would say that these ideas about

00:00:37.280 marriage are very wrong and he doesn't come at it from an emotionally driven perspective but from 0.99

00:00:41.540 what's borne out by the data dr brad wilcox is a sociologist who heads the non-partisan national

00:00:47.060 marriage project at the university of virginia which studies marriage and family life he's also

00:00:51.780 the author of get married today in the show brad discusses the latest research on marriage and how

00:00:56.900 belies the common narratives around the institution we dig into the popular myths around marriage and

00:01:01.700 how it not only boosts your finances but predicts happiness in life better than any other factor

00:01:05.920 brad also shares the five pillars of marriage that happy couples embrace after the show's over check

00:01:11.260 out our show notes at awim.is marriage all right brad wilcox welcome back to the show

00:01:26.720 brett it's great to be here so you are a sociologist who spends a lot of time researching and writing

00:01:32.160 about marriage particularly the benefits of marriage and family life you got a new book out

00:01:37.500 called get married and you start out the book saying that the impetus behind this book is to

00:01:42.680 counter what you see as an anti-marriage narrative in popular culture what are some examples of this

00:01:48.080 narrative that you're seeing yeah brett you know it's actually funny when i was finishing up kind of

00:01:52.900 the last minute touches on the book one article came across my twitter screen it was trending on

00:01:59.760 twitter it was an article in bloomberg that said women who stay single and don't have kids are getting 0.59

00:02:06.240 richer and so the headline was kind of giving the impression that you know steering clear of marriage

00:02:11.300 and motherhood was kind of the way to go from and financially but also gave us lots of stories of

00:02:15.540 single women who were childless kind of living their best life and so i think both the financial

00:02:21.980 story told in this story in bloomberg and the emotional story being told were kind of encouraging

00:02:28.000 women to steer clear of marriage and motherhood for a bunch of reasons we've seen articles like the 1.00

00:02:34.260 case against marriage published in the atlantic articles like divorce can be an act of radical

00:02:39.860 self-love published recently in the new york times so these are just kind of some of the examples

00:02:44.580 that we see in you know in the media for instance that give us you know what i would call kind of a

00:02:49.160 profoundly anti-nuptial or anti-marriage message you kind of think about the pop culture more generally

00:02:54.940 and you know mainstream television shows and movies i think what you often see in everything from you

00:03:01.740 know that show friends sort of back in the day to a lot of the chicago like you know series on nbc

00:03:08.460 is a kind of message that your 20s are your years to sort of have fun and focus on career and then

00:03:14.020 maybe as you kind of approach 30 or 35 you would begin to think about settling down and getting

00:03:19.580 married and having kids but there's kind of an implicit message too i think in the you know in

00:03:24.620 the pop culture and certain precincts in the elite culture that are encouraging in adults to kind of

00:03:28.340 just postpone marriage or forego marriage and focus instead on career and having fun in your free

00:03:35.140 time so that's also i think part and parcel of what i'm i'm worried about in terms of giving people

00:03:39.600 kind of the wrong idea well you mentioned some of these articles in these magazines they focused on

00:03:44.080 women staying single and the benefits of that but you're also seeing the same sort of thing about men

00:03:49.400 men shouldn't get married yeah so what's striking here i think is when i began this project i was

00:03:54.380 thinking about being conversation primarily with kind of more elite voices on the left that tend to

00:03:59.520 dominate a lot of mainstream media and academia and pop culture to some extent but now we're getting

00:04:04.600 this from the online right as well and pearl davis is one figure that's got a big following online she 0.85

00:04:10.560 has said that marriage is a death sentence for men and then you have of course andrew tate is kind

00:04:17.020 of a very big voice in the manosphere who's also arguing that marriage has no roi you know no return

00:04:23.520 on investment for men he says quote the problem is there is zero advantage to marriage in the western

00:04:29.820 world for a man and then he goes on to say it's very common that women divorce their husbands you 0.98

00:04:36.860 know so what the left has been kind of telling us is that really marriage and motherhood can be a bad

00:04:40.380 deal for women we're now hearing though from kind of the opposite end of the the ideological spectrum 1.00

00:04:46.020 that marriage is a bad deal for guys and of course the common takeaway sadly i would say you know for

00:04:54.620 young adults is that maybe i should just kind of steer clear of opening my heart to uh to love to

00:05:00.760 marriage and family and as a sociologist you this you actually research what happens when people get

00:05:07.040 married and we're going to talk about actually there's a lot of benefits when you get married and

00:05:11.320 settle down but one thing you talk about what both of these strains of thought have in common these

00:05:16.660 anti-marriage anti-family life strains of thought whether it's coming from the left or the right

00:05:21.980 is that they both have what you call a midas view of life what do you mean by the midas view of life

00:05:29.180 so brett i gotta give all credit to my wife you know i was you know asking her like what how can i

00:05:34.800 kind of think about us you know some kind of fable or story that would kind of convey the way in which

00:05:38.600 people can become too attached to you know work or money or whatever else just like what about you

00:05:43.940 know the king midas story and of course it's great you know a great example i've updated the midas story

00:05:49.500 for a you know public lecture on the book but the idea here is that people are thinking that you know

00:05:55.580 they should be sort of searching for gold and trying to build their own brand you know it's about

00:06:00.940 education money and above all career we've got a lot of data from pew especially telling us that

00:06:07.040 americans even parents brett unfortunately are prioritizing for their children you know education

00:06:12.860 and career over marriage down the road it's just you know very short-sighted i think they're going to be

00:06:17.820 really you know regretting that emphasis when they're 75 years old and there are no grandkids

00:06:23.740 on the horizon so we see though but again in a lot of data from pew that americans think that

00:06:29.600 money and education especially work are the way to go so a recent pew study found that 71 percent of

00:06:37.840 americans thought that having a job or career they can enjoy is the path to fulfillment only 23 percent

00:06:44.340 said that being married was the way to go so it just gives you a sense of this minus mindset where

00:06:51.060 all the action is kind of in in work and money and building your own brand and the sort of idea is

00:06:58.260 that investing in marriage and family is you know the wrong path and you should instead kind of be free

00:07:06.060 free of all the encumbrances that you know come from settling down putting a ring on it yeah so the idea

00:07:11.880 out there both in the culture and in the media is that marriage will hurt your financial life like

00:07:17.980 that's the message that's out there but that's that actually isn't the case yeah so there's i mean so

00:07:23.740 that you know that bloomberg headline was just completely bananas it was so so wrong i mean there

00:07:31.420 was um they were relying upon data of just you know taken from singles you know fed study on singles

00:07:37.580 and somehow they got to this conclusion that somehow that marriage is a bad thing for women

00:07:41.400 but what we actually see is that women who are married and men of course too are more likely to 0.62

00:07:45.680 be flourishing financially in fact in their 50s both women and men have about 10 times the assets

00:07:52.240 you know heading towards retirement compared to their single peers so you know ironically both

00:07:59.620 andrew tate and bloomberg should be discounted for folks who are worrying about financial security

00:08:04.340 because for the average american the path to prosperity tends to run through marriage and

00:08:10.500 not away from it but you know my point of course is that there's a lot more to life than money

00:08:14.600 and so what we see is that marriage again more than career is a much stronger predictor of

00:08:22.380 americans happiness in ways i think that a lot of people would be surprised by so what's the state

00:08:26.560 of marriage today in america are people marrying less so yeah so i mean i've got bad news in the

00:08:32.320 report and good news and the good news as i was kind of just hinting at is that when it comes to

00:08:36.260 loneliness when it comes to meaning when it comes to happiness americans who are married both men and

00:08:42.500 women are markedly happier they're less lonely they report more meaningful lives especially if they

00:08:47.180 have children in the picture when it comes to meaning that's kind of part of the good the good news

00:08:51.680 but the bad news brett is that we've seen the merit rate come down by about 65 percent since 1970

00:08:58.600 and what that means practically for young adults today like in their 20s is we're projecting that

00:09:04.860 about one in three of them will never marry and we've never been in this territory where so many 1.00

00:09:10.920 americans will be permanent bachelors and permanent bachelorettes and that's you know cause for concern for 1.00

00:09:19.480 me just because again what we see is that for ordinary americans you know typically they're just more

00:09:25.600 likely to be thriving if they have you know co-pilot to uh travel through life with so one thing you talk

00:09:32.880 about in the book is that while there's been a big decrease in marriage overall and for a lot of people

00:09:38.440 marriage isn't thriving your research has found that there are four groups where marriage is still

00:09:44.160 thriving what are those four groups yeah in terms of again the good news we we do kind of see some

00:09:49.460 groups in america today who are generally speaking you know flourishing in their marriages who

00:09:53.860 more likely to get married stay married often and be happily married and those four groups are

00:09:58.920 asian americans religious americans i call them the faithful in the book college educated americans

00:10:05.200 they call them strivers in the book folks can have more of that focus long-term work profession career

00:10:10.500 etc and then the fourth group is is conservatives and to be frank but i didn't anticipate having

00:10:16.360 conservatives a separate category i thought we kind of crunched the numbers i'd find that you know

00:10:20.160 being asian american being religious being college educated that these sort of three groups in their

00:10:27.720 own ways would be kind of more likely to be married in america today among other things but i found in

00:10:33.040 crunching the numbers that when you included ideology in the statistics you still found that there's a net

00:10:38.200 effect a unique effect of being conservative ideologically speaking that boosted your odds of being

00:10:44.840 being married and also being happily married even controlling for factors like religion so that's

00:10:51.080 why i have four groups in the book and each of those four groups brett a majority of them you know

00:10:56.140 if you compare them to kind of the alternative groups are married so for instance a majority of

00:11:00.700 college educated americans 1855 are married only a minority today of less educated working class and

00:11:07.160 poor americans are married a majority of conservatives are married only a minority of moderates and liberals

00:11:13.640 are married asian americans and whites are typically majority married and then black and hispanic americans

00:11:21.460 only a minority of them are married okay and then for the the ideology aspect like how do you define like

00:11:27.100 what is conservative so there's just on social surveys like the general social survey which we use a

00:11:31.540 lot for this book project people are just asked you know are you like very liberal liberal you know

00:11:37.540 moderate conservative very conservative and we all said a question like that in a yougov survey that we

00:11:43.500 did for the book of about 2 000 husbands and wives and so we were just going to categorize people

00:11:50.220 as liberal or conservative gotcha and we found that conservatives are more likely to again to be

00:11:55.720 married and to be happily married compared to moderates and liberals now what's interesting about

00:11:59.060 the ideology story there is it's a little bit complicated so it turns out that very liberal americans

00:12:05.100 and i did a piece in the new york times a little while ago are relatively happier looking at women

00:12:09.980 so very liberal women are relatively happier than sort of ordinary wives in america like in that 1.00

00:12:14.640 sort of like you know in the liberal to moderate category but conservative and very conservative

00:12:20.340 women are even happier so there's what i call a j curve in in marital happiness when it comes to 0.84

00:12:27.180 women's marital happiness and where again the very liberal women are a little bit happier than kind 1.00

00:12:32.160 of the norm and then the conservative americans are women are even are even happier we see a similar

00:12:37.620 trend actually it's fascinating looking at a new gallup study that we published in family studies

00:12:43.040 a few months ago when it comes to teens reports of the quality of their parent child relationship so

00:12:48.260 teens in very liberal households are a little bit happier than kind of the norm

00:12:52.140 and then teens in conservative especially very conservative homes are even happier and it's just kind

00:12:58.240 of surprising and this gallup study suggests that maybe the story there is that conservative

00:13:04.020 parents tend to be a bit more authoritative you know have clearer rules and expectations and

00:13:09.360 consequences for their kids and that actually teens are more likely to thrive in a context where

00:13:14.400 you know maybe there's a clear curfew you know maybe there are clearer consequences for

00:13:20.340 you know getting your chores done your homework done in conservative homes and actually you know those

00:13:27.420 kinds of boundaries as long as they're coupled with an affectionate and engaged style tend to

00:13:31.640 work out well for for kids can these demographics cross over so for example yes imagine you're

00:13:37.360 college educated or highly educated tend to be you know i don't know if the survey says that the

00:13:42.720 research shows this tend to be more liberal is that true so yeah they're they're cross-cutting yeah

00:13:47.600 that's a great question there are cross-cutting pressures here and then they're overlapping so i

00:13:50.700 talked to a conservative religious indian american you know well-educated guy for the book so he would

00:13:57.300 kind of you know checking all the boxes and he and his wife are doing well and they've got three kids

00:14:02.200 who've done really well as well so there are examples like that and then we also see a lot of

00:14:08.120 the discussion around marriage is focused on sort of class and education kind of the assumption has

00:14:12.160 been that college educated americans are more likely to be killing it when it comes to marriage and

00:14:17.300 my you know my friend and colleague richard reeves brookings he's got a new group focusing on boys and

00:14:22.420 men he's kind of made the argument that sort of like college educated americans have like these

00:14:27.500 marriage-minded you know sort of norms and ideas but they're also kind of more progressive on gender

00:14:33.380 and so that kind of is like the for him like the sweet spot but what i actually find in my own research

00:14:38.400 is that when you separate up the college educated americans who are conservative from those who are

00:14:43.260 moderate and liberal it's the ones who are conservative who are most likely to be stably married

00:14:48.400 and happily married so it kind of calls into question some of richard's ideas about how this is all

00:14:53.420 playing out so the bottom line is it's sort of the most educated most religious and most conservative

00:14:58.900 couples in america are the ones who are most likely to be stably married and happily married

00:15:04.000 well it's similar to what richard reeves was saying an argument that i've heard about marriage

00:15:08.640 is that it all comes down to class and money right so if you have lots of money and you're

00:15:14.780 upper to middle class you're going to do fine if you're poor you're not going to do fine what is

00:15:18.740 your research to show yeah so i'm saying there's both a cultural story and a class story and so

00:15:24.820 you know i think like richard and i would tell very similar stories but kind of a general class

00:15:28.380 story and there's just having more education and more money is one big reason why we are seeing

00:15:33.780 that more educated americans are much more likely to be getting married and staying married and to be

00:15:38.680 reasonably happy married but i think where my sort of story diverges from the one that richard

00:15:43.680 reeves would tell us is that culturally what we're seeing is that more religious and more

00:15:48.320 conservative couples asian american couples are more likely to be getting married and staying

00:15:52.500 married oftentimes and are happily married and so i think what they have is oftentimes a deeper sense

00:15:59.900 of commitment to marriage as an institution and to kind of like the norms of marriage norms like

00:16:04.240 fidelity and kind of not using the d word when things are tough in your marriage obviously divorce

00:16:09.000 marriage and they're also more likely to be kind of surrounded by peers who value marriage as well

00:16:15.780 and we know that that's a big predictor of succeeding in marriage too if you're surrounded by people who

00:16:19.720 value marriage and are living more what i call family first you know lifestyles that's going to

00:16:26.380 you know other things being equal increase your odds of success so again the bottom line here is that

00:16:31.420 both culture and class are important understanding marriage today and so folks who have both

00:16:37.400 you know more income more education but also kind of an appreciation for a lot of those classic norms

00:16:43.300 and values around marriage are also more likely to be succeeding at marriage today so you spend a lot

00:16:49.120 of time in the book countering what you think are some of the myths that are keeping young people from

00:16:53.140 marrying or not investing enough in their marriage and one myth is what you call the flying solo myth

00:16:58.440 what is the flying solo myth so there's just kind of this idea that again kind of being free of

00:17:04.380 entanglements encumbrances you know family obligations is the path to happiness that you

00:17:10.880 know we want to kind of keep our options open keep our choices before us we want to focus on our 20s on

00:17:16.580 just having a good time and really investing in our career and i talked to a number of women and men

00:17:22.980 for the book who were in their mid-30s basically and you know regretting the fact that they had spent

00:17:29.220 their 20s focusing more on just career and and fun and now they're unmarried and they're these two

00:17:36.140 a woman in the rocky mountain west and a man in the dc far suburbs are um you know really unmoored in

00:17:42.900 some important ways they're kind of struggling with loneliness and a sense of meaninglessness

00:17:47.340 and just wishing that they had made different choices in their 20s and i should say like okay well

00:17:53.480 so i found i found two people you know in america who kind of you know conformed to my priors well

00:17:59.420 the the important point to make here actually is that we're we're seeing a decline in happiness in

00:18:04.800 america and this decline is concentrated among unmarried americans and the biggest factor driving

00:18:11.960 the drop in happiness america according to a recent study from the university of chicago

00:18:15.580 is the declining rate of marriage in america so a simple way to sort of say this is sort of like

00:18:22.840 less marriage equals more unhappiness for the country at large and i think our younger adults

00:18:28.540 should just be a lot more skeptical of the messages they're getting about the importance of

00:18:32.600 you know freedom and choice and building your own brand and steering clear of entanglements of the

00:18:39.200 opposite sex because the people are able to actually get married and build decent marriages are just 1.00

00:18:45.300 flourishing on so many more dimensions than their peers who are not yeah and a point you make in the

00:18:50.240 book is that the flying solo idea it could be great if you have lots of money and you can travel the

00:18:57.100 world but for average americans like you probably not you're not going to be able to do all these

00:19:03.120 things because you don't have access to money so if you really want flourishing and happiness

00:19:06.480 your best bet would be to get married correct right and there and i profile a professional from i think

00:19:13.640 new york city who was kind of like living the life as a single 30 something you know high flying

00:19:19.140 guy and he was perfectly happy you know but as you were saying there are a lot of americans who are

00:19:25.140 not traveling the world not making a lot of money and not you know killing it at work and without the

00:19:31.780 benefit of a spouse and family life can be pretty hard but again what's interesting too and about my

00:19:35.800 you know the guy that i profile in the other suburbs of washington dc is that he has graduate training

00:19:41.900 he has a good job he owns his own home he's making six figures and you know he basically says to me as

00:19:49.900 i interviewed him he says you know i've got degrees in my wall i've got accomplishments and certificates

00:19:54.720 but it doesn't mean anything in the end i have to get up every day and look in the mirror and realize

00:20:01.180 i'm alone i have nobody okay so for this guy the midas mindset is not worked out he's in his mid-30s

00:20:09.580 and he is not happy he's not a happy camper now again i know plenty of single folks are doing great

00:20:14.980 but i'm just saying on average single americans are more likely to be struggling and married

00:20:19.860 americans are more likely to be flourishing and that average story unfortunately brett is not being

00:20:26.100 told enough in the media and certainly on social media as well so we mentioned earlier kind of

00:20:30.880 reference that your research that you've done has shown that married people tend to have more money

00:20:34.800 they're happier they're more fulfilled is this a matter of causation or correlation does marriage

00:20:40.960 make you happier or do happier people or people who have those attributes that can lead to a flourishing

00:20:46.880 life tend to get married more often yeah that's i think really the the killer question right and so

00:20:53.680 yeah the smart critics of the kind of argument that i'm making in the academy and in the media would

00:20:59.800 talk about what we call a selection effect where the kinds of people who are selecting into marriage

00:21:05.120 are just different they're you know more educated they're more affluent they're more

00:21:10.320 may have better social skills right and so they would say it's brad is confusing correlation with

00:21:15.620 causation here yes married people are happier they're more affluent that's because they're already 0.85

00:21:20.960 happier and more affluent to begin with so like matt brunick for instance a progressive says married

00:21:25.380 people are less impoverished because people who are not impoverished are more likely to get married

00:21:30.300 he says with marriage you have an institution that attracts and retains more economically secure

00:21:35.540 and stable people not an institution that creates them so this is like a great summary of the sort of

00:21:40.840 selection perspective but what matt is missing though is just there's just a ton of research on the way in

00:21:46.960 which marriage is an institution that tends to transform our lives it doesn't just sort of like

00:21:51.560 vacuum up the elites and and and just put them together now there's some of that obviously

00:21:55.680 happening now but we know for instance of a study in minnesota looking at identical twins

00:22:00.640 and fraternal twins guys and the twins who got married earned about 26 percent more than their

00:22:07.400 twins who did not get married so kind of giving us a clear sense it's probably something about marriage

00:22:11.520 per se that is helping to make men and we see other evidence in the score too when it comes to men

00:22:17.400 and marriage and work married men work harder they work longer hours they're more strategic in their

00:22:23.140 job search they're less likely to be fired so these are all the kinds of things that would help us to

00:22:27.760 understand why marriage per se can be transformational and then on the happiness front there's work done

00:22:34.880 by the economists sean grover and john heliwell and they controlled for happiness prior to marriage

00:22:39.720 and then tracked happiness after people got married and after other people did not get married kind of

00:22:44.060 comparing them over time and they still found quote a causal effect on happiness at all stages of the

00:22:49.480 marriage from prenuptial bliss to marriages of long duration unquote and they found the biggest sort

00:22:55.660 of happiness premium was in midlife when people were in their late 40s and 50s and we often see adult

00:23:01.540 happiness at its nadir but and again like why is it that marriage is happiness inducing i think the

00:23:06.860 point is that we are as aristotle said social animals and so money and status ended up being

00:23:13.460 less important for us than our friendships and our family relationships which give us opportunities

00:23:18.620 to connect with others to be with and for others and i think importantly enough to really to to care for

00:23:26.000 others and for both women and men i think it's important not just to be cared for but to have

00:23:32.540 opportunities to care for others it gives our lives certainly i'll speak personally for a second i mean

00:23:37.240 you know caring for my wife and children is the most meaningful thing that i get to do so i just think

00:23:44.300 people are not factoring in the ways that marriage and family can be so generative on so many fronts for

00:23:50.800 ordinary women and men we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors 1.00

00:23:55.320 and now back to the show well couldn't you get these same benefits just by cohabitating like

00:24:05.800 companionship yeah great question so i think if you kind of do like just an immediate look at like

00:24:10.480 you know people's happiness cohabiting and married often not not a big difference right but the problem

00:24:14.700 is the cohabitation is much less committed and so what that means in practice is that couples who are

00:24:20.560 cohabiting just don't go the distance you know nearly as much as those who are married so you have

00:24:25.300 situations you know like a former neighbor of mine where she you know invested five years of her

00:24:30.340 life from ages like 28 to 33 in her cohabiting partner and then he just you know she kind of

00:24:35.280 made it clear she wanted to get married and have kids and he's like well i'm just not i'm not ready

00:24:38.220 for that you know and so he was gone and um you know that was pretty traumatic right because they hadn't

00:24:45.280 you know established a kind of joint level of commitment heading into the relationship and so her

00:24:51.500 kind of happiness that she'd enjoyed for probably substantial share of that relationship

00:24:55.160 you know disappeared and turned out to be a fairly you know traumatic and of course divorce can

00:25:01.040 happen too but i'm just sort of saying that on average marriage is markedly you know more stable

00:25:05.460 than cohabitation and that's one reason why i talk about you know getting married rather than getting

00:25:11.260 together yeah so just getting married it adds more stakes to the relationship i guess you take it more

00:25:16.960 serious so when i'm talking about this to my students because i think the cohabitation piece is like

00:25:20.920 the most surprising thing that we talk about in my class at the university of virginia sort of how

00:25:24.900 marriage and combination are different i'm just thinking about kind of terms of entry right or how

00:25:28.720 couples enter into these two different you know relationship states comes to cohabitation what you

00:25:33.480 see is that oftentimes couples can't even agree on the day when they begin cohabiting like you have

00:25:37.920 like one partner will kind of bring some things over for the weekend maybe leave it you know some

00:25:42.700 clothes like a toothbrush you know whatever and then some more stuff like a week later

00:25:47.700 and then like move in all their stuff you know a month later or whatever two months later but it's

00:25:53.360 never been like there wasn't like a kind of discreet moment where obviously with a wedding it's pretty

00:25:56.860 pretty clear when it happens but more importantly just imagine the social context that these two

00:26:01.620 things are taking place in so with cohabitation you have like there's no assembled multitude right of

00:26:07.220 friends and family in that apartment hallway there's no music playing in the background there are no

00:26:12.240 vows being exchanged you bring your your gear into your partner's apartment for the first

00:26:17.700 time or whatever for the second or third time by contrast with the wedding obviously everything

00:26:22.240 is kind of scripted it's a ceremony it's ritualized and human beings we're actually really you know we

00:26:28.600 tend to endow things with more meaning when we do them in a ritualized communal context and especially

00:26:33.840 when we make public vows you know in a communal context so that's just kind of gives you some sense

00:26:38.260 of how marriage and cohabitation are really different things okay so flying solo for most people getting

00:26:44.640 married probably your best bet for happiness fulfillment and even economic stability another 0.99

00:26:50.400 myth you explore that might be preventing people from investing too much in their marriage is the myth

00:26:56.820 of family diversity what do you mean by that yeah so you know particularly kind of in my academic world

00:27:02.660 there are a lot of folks who would kind of argue that the family isn't in any way getting weaker

00:27:07.060 marriage isn't declining it's just the family is changing and then we should kind of embrace family

00:27:12.520 diversity kind of a wide range of family structures and family approaches and that marriage per se

00:27:18.560 doesn't really matter what really matters for kids when it comes to flourishing is you know love

00:27:24.080 and and also money you know basically families have enough love in the household and who have you know

00:27:31.560 decent income supply are going to be doing just perfectly for instance there was an article in the

00:27:37.520 Atlantic where there was a professor saying that all of our research points to the fact that's the

00:27:41.360 quality of the relationship that matters and the handling of communication conflict and the number

00:27:47.620 of people in the household is not really the key or Philip Cohen a professor at Maryland said if people

00:27:53.280 grow up with single mothers who have adequate income they do fine on average what we find is they 1.00

00:27:58.080 do have a lot of challenges from the lack of resources but family structure per se is not as big a factor

00:28:03.720 so again the idea here is that money matters love matter but marriage doesn't matter per se

00:28:10.060 and what these I think perspectives don't really acknowledge is that yes love matters yes money

00:28:16.960 matters but kids in intact married households are much more likely to be flourishing on any number of

00:28:23.220 fronts they're about twice as likely to graduate from college compared to kids from non-intact families

00:28:27.980 boys are about twice as likely to end up in prison or in jail compared to their peers from intact families

00:28:35.040 if they're in a non-intact family girls and boys in non-intact families are about 50 percent more

00:28:40.560 likely to be sad as eighth graders so that's what the sort of facts are and I think one of the most

00:28:49.080 striking things that I discovered in looking at this data with my colleague Dr. Wendy Wang is that

00:28:55.220 young men today are more likely to go to prison or jail than they are to graduate from college if they're

00:29:02.040 raised in a non-intact family by contrast what we see is it for boys who are raised in intact families

00:29:08.840 only nine percent of them end up in prison or jail and 38 percent of them are graduating from college

00:29:14.460 so that that was for me like when it comes to kids like just that was the sort of like wow like you know

00:29:20.220 for boys who don't have the benefit of their own married parents more likely to end up incarcerated

00:29:25.400 whereas for boys who are benefiting from both their married parents in the household much more likely to

00:29:31.080 attend and graduate from college so you're saying there's a myth that's out there that well it doesn't

00:29:36.740 really matter if we get married or if we get divorced or if there's just a single parent in

00:29:41.100 the picture it's not a big deal kids will be fine and what you're saying is well maybe not so yeah two

00:29:48.720 things to be clear about one is that I was raised by a single mom and obviously many kids go on to do

00:29:54.160 just perfectly fine without the benefit of married parents we can think of prominent examples like 0.81

00:29:58.840 barack obama and jeff bezos who at least obviously professionally have done extremely well so I'm

00:30:04.900 not saying that kind of coming from a non-intact household is a death sense I'm just sort of saying

00:30:08.980 that on average kids are more likely to flourish when they have the benefit of their own married

00:30:13.060 parents and the other interesting piece about this is that the proponents of family diversity say

00:30:17.760 it's about really what matters for kids is love and money what they do not acknowledge though

00:30:24.160 Brett is that on average kids are being raised by intact married parents have access to more attention

00:30:30.780 and affection from their you know their married parents and they have access to a heck of a lot more

00:30:35.460 money than kids in other family situations so even on the love and money front what we're seeing is

00:30:41.580 on average of course we know that there are dysfunctional intact married families out there but 0.90

00:30:46.420 on average kids are more likely to get the love and money they need to flourish when they're

00:30:51.360 being raised by their own married parents well at a point you make in the book you point out there's

00:30:57.440 a hypocrisy you see there's people out there in academia and the media that say well you know

00:31:03.300 it doesn't matter what your family looks like you just get divorced whatever the kids are going to be

00:31:07.600 fine you're going to be fine but then you look at how those people are living their lives they're

00:31:12.600 typically they're married and they're living in an intact family yeah I've got a piece coming out in

00:31:18.000 the Atlantic soon talking about how our elites often talk left and walk right and the story there

00:31:24.080 basically is that I think it's become kind of fashionable in a variety of ways to sort of

00:31:30.280 articulate your support for family diversity and to kind of discount the importance of marriage or even

00:31:34.800 to attack it in in certain circles in academia and the media and other precincts of our culture

00:31:40.720 but it's also I think a fact that you know prudentially it makes sense to get married and

00:31:46.160 stay married and so that ends up being the path that a lot of our elites take because they recognize

00:31:52.120 at some level that it's the best thing for them and for their kids so another thing that seems to be

00:31:59.520 holding people back from getting married this is a new one all right so before people weren't getting

00:32:04.300 married they'd say well you know I'll miss out on opportunities for my career I need to make money I want

00:32:08.580 to enjoy myself whatever the one thing you're seeing now I've been seeing more reports of is political

00:32:14.100 polarization what's going on there so my colleague Lyman Stone and I did a piece for the Atlantic kind

00:32:20.560 of talking about the growing number of young women who are moving left and the growing number of young

00:32:25.240 men are moving right those more women moving left and right but it's creating a situation where 1.00

00:32:30.580 there are many more liberal women than there are liberal men and a bit more conservative men than there

00:32:36.300 are conservative women and that's kind of leading to a gap where we would estimate about one in five 1.00

00:32:43.680 young adults can't marry someone or can't date someone who is sort of on the same page with them

00:32:48.240 ideologically so that's a problem because as I'm arguing in the book marriage is generally a good thing 0.95

00:32:53.660 for young adults and for the society at large this political polarization is one more factor making it

00:32:59.280 harder for young adults to marry anything we can do about that well I think one thing to do is just to 0.96

00:33:06.220 recognize that what matters here for I think marital success is being on the same page either you

00:33:14.060 know religiously or in terms of like some core commitments including how you want to do family

00:33:19.100 and work so if you meet someone who's you know not in the same page as you politically but who shares

00:33:26.020 basically either your faith or your kind of broader worldview in terms of how you want to do work and

00:33:30.100 then I would say you know consider moving forward but on the other hand if you're kind of not just

00:33:37.220 sort of politically at odds with one another but also have pretty different views on things like

00:33:43.460 religion or on how you want to how many you know if you want to have kids how you want to raise them

00:33:48.980 all that kind of stuff those are really big warning signs so I think you have to sort of distinguish

00:33:53.520 between politics proper and then other things that would really bear on the on the warp and move of

00:33:58.820 organizing a family and unfortunately I have seen friends you know in my 20s who kind of grew

00:34:05.520 ideologically apart and then got divorced so I've seen that play out you know in my own social circle

00:34:10.400 so something else you do in this book is you look at what families or couples that are having

00:34:15.940 thriving marriages thriving family life do on a day-to-day basis to make them thriving and you talk about

00:34:22.600 you mentioned earlier they typically have a family first approach to marriage what does that look 0.98

00:34:27.280 like on a day-to-day basis yeah so I argue that one of the challenges facing all of us I think in

00:34:32.620 this culture today is that sometimes we can think about marriage is kind of like the soulmate thing

00:34:35.760 it's like I'm going to find this perfect match we're gonna have this intense romantic and maybe

00:34:40.300 sexual connection we're gonna fit like you know this perfect uh we're gonna have a perfect fit

00:34:45.480 and she's gonna understand me I'm gonna understand her you know perfectly and there's gonna be very little

00:34:51.300 friction and a lot of you know passion and fulfillment and happiness pretty much all the time

00:34:55.980 right that's sort of like the soulmate idea just in a nutshell and yet obviously once you're married

00:35:00.760 and in relationship with someone you know you discover that she's not perfect and you're not perfect

00:35:05.600 and it's often extremely difficult to get along you know in some days or some weeks some months

00:35:12.020 whatever and by contrast I think people recognize realize that marriage is about more than just an

00:35:16.580 emotional connection more than just a feeling it's about establishing a life together a family

00:35:21.720 together having kids if you can raising kids together you know being there for your kin you know

00:35:27.520 for your parents your wife's parents doing things together as a family you know going trips going to the

00:35:34.740 park going to the basketball game whatever it is that you know your family does going hunting for some

00:35:39.380 you know going to the beach for others you know all these kind of family things end up being

00:35:44.440 you know also important financial securities also part and parcel of kind of a family first approach

00:35:50.360 to marriage so people kind of have like a richer view of like the many different goods that marriage

00:35:56.120 tends to facilitate or foster are kind of pursuing what I would call like a more family first or more

00:36:02.660 institutional approach to marriage and that of course is more stable than just kind of one that based

00:36:07.840 on feelings the soulmate approach and I think what people don't realize is it's often happier as well

00:36:13.340 because you're able to appreciate that your spouse and your marriage and your family are about a number

00:36:20.680 of different goods not just an intense romantic connection and so even if you're not necessarily

00:36:26.420 firing on all cylinders on the romantic side at some point in your marriage you recognize oh my

00:36:32.200 husband's a great father or oh my wife's a great mother for instance and that is a source of

00:36:37.560 satisfaction for you and for your relationship so what I find is there's a slight edge too that the folks

00:36:42.500 have this more family first model enjoy in marital quality and then also they're less likely to 0.71

00:36:47.220 be thinking about divorce compared to folks who have more of a feelings-based soulmate approach to

00:36:52.340 married life and you get nitty-gritty with this stuff like how these couples navigate you know sex

00:36:58.140 parenthood responsibilities chores I mean what does that look like so what I'm also arguing too is that

00:37:02.900 the sort of what I call the masters of marriage tend to be more likely to embrace what I call the five

00:37:07.760 pillars of marriage and these are five c's one is communion a sense of communion in their marriage

00:37:12.680 one is proper appreciation of the role of children in marriage if they have kids third c is commitment

00:37:19.040 the fourth c is cash the fifth c is community and so just to kind of take for instance the communion

00:37:25.700 piece what I find is the couples who have regular date nights to try to maintain that sense of romance

00:37:30.240 and that emotional connection are more likely to be flourishing both in marital happiness but also in

00:37:35.400 terms of sexual satisfaction so not surprisingly like you know if if you'd like to have a healthy

00:37:39.940 sexual life it's important to keep the romance alive in your marriage and so doing you know fun

00:37:44.520 and different and you know regular date nights which can be challenging when you've got kids as my wife 1.00

00:37:49.480 and I do still is important try to figure out that piece I would say but also in terms of community I

00:37:55.320 talked to about a way before me approach to life rather than a me first approach and one example I give

00:38:00.620 is couples who have shared checking accounts are doing better both in terms of stability but also

00:38:06.500 marital quality compared to couples who have separate accounts and more of that me first approach

00:38:10.360 to money so that's communion commitment is among other things prioritizing the well-being of your

00:38:15.480 spouse and your family and then also concretely like being attentive to the importance of fidelity

00:38:20.340 so that means you know kind of steering clear of attractive alternatives both in the real world and now today in

00:38:25.740 the virtual world who might obviously distract your attention and your affections away from your

00:38:30.840 spouse and when it comes to divorce not putting the d word in a conversation when you're having an

00:38:36.280 argument or there's some problem in your marriage you know most couples have problems at some point in

00:38:41.560 their marriage and I think couples who just keep divorce off you know out of the picture are more readily

00:38:48.660 able to handle those challenges and overcome them and then the community piece you know basically again if you

00:38:55.140 are surrounding yourself with people who are you know whether you're secular or religious but you know

00:38:59.920 people who are like intentional about being good spouses and being good parents you're more likely to

00:39:05.720 thrive and yet I do find that folks who are religious are more likely to be succeeding you know on that front

00:39:12.300 because you find that couples who are going to church especially together or temple or synagogue whatever

00:39:17.800 are more likely to be spending time with their kids to be capable of forgiving their spouse

00:39:24.140 to be maintaining surprising I think to some extent a more vibrant sexual life than couples who are not

00:39:30.960 part of a religious community you do your research with the eye of you know suggesting public policy

00:39:36.500 and you have some public policy recommendations at the end of your book but then I think it was a

00:39:40.680 recent article or might have been a tweet you talked about how there's research showing and even in

00:39:45.500 these Nordic countries that have very pro-family public policy people still aren't getting married and having

00:39:50.760 kids so basically public policy isn't enough you have to change the culture about marriage and family

00:39:57.620 life so how do you how do you do that that's that's a that's a tough that's a tough hill to climb

00:40:01.780 so you know I want to be clear here I do think public policy is helpful and I think we could do more to sort

00:40:12.180 of promote in our schools what's called the success sequence which among other things sucks with the value of

00:40:16.320 marriage to our kids in high school public high schools I think we could get rid of the marriage penalty

00:40:21.180 that ends up penalizing marriage for a lot of working class families across America I think we could have 1.00

00:40:26.140 a more generous child tax credit that would help people who are particularly working in middle class families

00:40:31.360 who are kind of struggling financially to raise the next generation kind of have an easier time of it so there are

00:40:37.260 some policies that I think would be helpful in terms of making marriage more financially and culturally

00:40:42.900 you know appealing attractive and attainable particularly again for working class and middle

00:40:49.620 class Americans but I think at the end of the day we have to recognize and realize that unless the 0.96

00:40:54.560 culture changes we're just going to see a continuing decline in marriage and infertility and the reason I 0.84

00:41:01.660 say is because we're already seeing that in the Nordic countries like for instance Finland where they have an

00:41:07.040 incredible suite you know collection of great family policies child care and parental leave and child

00:41:14.700 allowances arguably one of the best suite of family policies in the world you know like if you have

00:41:20.480 a high degree of confidence in public policy to help families and yet in Finland you know marriage and

00:41:27.960 coupling and fertility are way down in recent years and I think what's happening in Finland is also happening here in the US

00:41:36.860 but just not as quite yet as pronounced and that is it's a combination I think of a couple of things one is the

00:41:44.180 minus mindset which you've talked about focusing on education work and money more than other things a kind of

00:41:49.340 focus on having a good time fun staying you know free of encumbrances keeping your individual more individualistic

00:41:56.300 mindset among a lot of 20-somethings and even 30-somethings is part of the problem as well and then two I think you know we're seeing men

00:42:03.420 losing ground doing less well relative to the women in their lives in education work and then other domains and so I think

00:42:12.000 women are just more skeptical about investing in a relationship marriage and having kids when the men their lives don't you know from their 1.00

00:42:21.400 perspective kind of meet the bar of what a spouse or a partner or parent should be up for so there's more going on but I did the point is that there's just sort of a

00:42:32.580 a series of cultural shifts that are kind of unfolding across the developed world that are both devaluing

00:42:42.340 family and the sacrifices that being a spouse and a parent require of us and they're kind of elevating a

00:42:48.660 more individualistic a kind of more live for the moment ethos that in the short term can be attractive

00:42:54.540 and appealing but the long-term spells not just demographic demographic problems but but I think more fundamentally a very bleak and lonely and meaningless

00:43:04.300 life not for everybody of course but for a growing share of of people who are going to be kinless as they head into mid and late life

00:43:12.860 well yeah it's speaking of sort of this culture around parenthood so let's say someone does get married you're seeing a lot of people who are getting

00:43:19.540 married it's like I don't we don't want to have kids but in like the surveys that you've done do people give

00:43:24.260 reasons for why they don't want to have kids well there are different theories about this everything from like the cost of

00:43:29.780 parenthood to like the environment to I think probably more importantly kind of I just want to like do my own thing and we've seen

00:43:36.240 obviously ding videos on tiktok where these couples who are actually married but they're like enjoying sleeping in on

00:43:43.220 Saturday morning they say and they're enjoying traveling to Florida on a regular basis they say and they're you know just sort of saying that

00:43:49.260 they're living the life you know it's it's it's the life right you know that they think that they have

00:43:53.760 without children and I'm just like okay let's stick back with you in 20 20 years or in in 40 years yeah and

00:44:00.440 see how you're doing you know because I just can't even imagine to be blunt you know my life without my

00:44:06.420 children I mean you know every night I've got a teenage daughter hunts me down and she'll give me a hug or a

00:44:11.840 kiss on on the forehead I mean that's just like wow you know like it's a nice way to end the night

00:44:17.240 and yes kids are incredibly expensive and challenging and all that kind of stuff but

00:44:22.840 I mean just the meaning the joy that you know kids can bring to your life is amazing and I just feel

00:44:29.360 sad for people who are deliberately closing their their hearts to having children but to be more

00:44:36.260 empirical for a second again too what's interesting about the research is that we saw some evidence back

00:44:41.080 before 2000 that parents were less happy than childless Americans but today it's no longer true I

00:44:45.780 published a piece in Deseret News you may have seen just showing that given some newer survey data

00:44:50.800 parents particularly married parents are happier than childless Americans and there's no group of

00:44:56.040 happier Americans age 1855 and that's the sort of age focus of my book than married mothers and

00:45:03.440 married fathers compared to their peers who are single and or childless so that's often lost in our

00:45:10.660 public discussions and a lot of the social media commentary that for all of the hard things that

00:45:15.440 being a mother and a father you know demand of us we do see that compared to their peers you know

00:45:21.800 it's sort of like Churchill's point like yeah democracy is like you know paraphrasing obviously

00:45:26.380 it's like you know is flawed but compared to the alternatives it's much better I think the same

00:45:30.680 thing is true of parenthood yeah you know being a parent can be really hard and challenging and

00:45:35.460 frustrating and you know hair pulling inducing but compared to the alternative I think it often

00:45:41.000 ends up being pretty pretty good yeah and something I don't think has helped with this is that in the

00:45:47.280 popular culture people just tend to talk about the negatives of being a parent they just talk about

00:45:51.360 the hair pulling stuff when your kids are driving you bonkers and they really don't talk about the

00:45:56.200 great stuff about being a parent like being a dad is awesome whenever things in life feel

00:46:02.780 flimsy and meaningless my family is the thing that feels the most real to me I agree well Brad this

00:46:11.780 has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:46:14.820 so I've got a new website bradbelcox.com familystudies.org is a good place to go as well

00:46:19.960 and then the national marriage week is kind of rolling out from February 7th to 14th this year

00:46:24.920 and they've got a lot of resources for people looking for you know things about marriage also tips to

00:46:29.820 improve your marriage there are plenty of obviously couples out there who are struggling and so if

00:46:33.520 you're struggling I would encourage you to go to the national marriage weeks website for some ideas

00:46:37.640 about how you can strengthen your your relationship as you head towards valentine's day fantastic well

00:46:42.220 Brad Wilcox thanks for time it's been a pleasure thanks so much Brad my guest today was Brad Wilcox

00:46:47.560 he's the author of the book get married it's available on amazon.com the bookstores everywhere

00:46:51.200 check out our show notes at aom.is slash marriage where we find links to resources we delve deeper

00:46:55.540 to this topic including a link to another survey that just came out by gallop that once again

00:47:00.020 affirmed that married people are happier we've also included a link to an article by one of Brad's

00:47:04.440 colleagues and former aom podcast guest lyman stone on how the chance of divorce still doesn't

00:47:09.220 negate this happiness premium for men well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure

00:47:21.800 check out our website at artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of

00:47:25.800 articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't

00:47:29.260 done so already I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to get your review on the podcast or

00:47:32.160 spotify it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the

00:47:36.400 show with a friend or family member do you think there's something out of it as always think of

00:47:40.060 the continued support until next time's Brett McKay remind you to not listen to aom podcast but put what

00:47:44.520 you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - February 14, 2024

Busting the Myths of Marriage — Why Getting Hitched Still Matters

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