Dr. Brad Wilcox is a sociologist who heads the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, which studies marriage and family life, and is also the author of Get Married, a new book that challenges the anti-marriage narrative in popular culture. In the show, Dr. Wilcox discusses the latest research on marriage and how it belies the common narratives around the institution.
00:00:00.000brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
00:00:11.240the marriage rate has come down 65 since 1970 there are multiple factors behind this decrease
00:00:17.860but one of them is what we might call the poor branding that surrounds marriage in the modern
00:00:21.920day from all corners of our culture from both ends of the ideological spectrum come messages
00:00:27.320that marriage is an outdated institution that it hinders financial success and personal fulfillment
00:00:32.120that it's even unimportant when it comes to raising kids my guests would say that these ideas about
00:00:37.280marriage are very wrong and he doesn't come at it from an emotionally driven perspective but from
00:00:41.540what's borne out by the data dr brad wilcox is a sociologist who heads the non-partisan national
00:00:47.060marriage project at the university of virginia which studies marriage and family life he's also
00:00:51.780the author of get married today in the show brad discusses the latest research on marriage and how
00:00:56.900belies the common narratives around the institution we dig into the popular myths around marriage and
00:01:01.700how it not only boosts your finances but predicts happiness in life better than any other factor
00:01:05.920brad also shares the five pillars of marriage that happy couples embrace after the show's over check
00:01:11.260out our show notes at awim.is marriage all right brad wilcox welcome back to the show
00:01:26.720brett it's great to be here so you are a sociologist who spends a lot of time researching and writing
00:01:32.160about marriage particularly the benefits of marriage and family life you got a new book out
00:01:37.500called get married and you start out the book saying that the impetus behind this book is to
00:01:42.680counter what you see as an anti-marriage narrative in popular culture what are some examples of this
00:01:48.080narrative that you're seeing yeah brett you know it's actually funny when i was finishing up kind of
00:01:52.900the last minute touches on the book one article came across my twitter screen it was trending on
00:01:59.760twitter it was an article in bloomberg that said women who stay single and don't have kids are getting
00:02:06.240richer and so the headline was kind of giving the impression that you know steering clear of marriage
00:02:11.300and motherhood was kind of the way to go from and financially but also gave us lots of stories of
00:02:15.540single women who were childless kind of living their best life and so i think both the financial
00:02:21.980story told in this story in bloomberg and the emotional story being told were kind of encouraging
00:02:28.000women to steer clear of marriage and motherhood for a bunch of reasons we've seen articles like the
00:02:34.260case against marriage published in the atlantic articles like divorce can be an act of radical
00:02:39.860self-love published recently in the new york times so these are just kind of some of the examples
00:02:44.580that we see in you know in the media for instance that give us you know what i would call kind of a
00:02:49.160profoundly anti-nuptial or anti-marriage message you kind of think about the pop culture more generally
00:02:54.940and you know mainstream television shows and movies i think what you often see in everything from you
00:03:01.740know that show friends sort of back in the day to a lot of the chicago like you know series on nbc
00:03:08.460is a kind of message that your 20s are your years to sort of have fun and focus on career and then
00:03:14.020maybe as you kind of approach 30 or 35 you would begin to think about settling down and getting
00:03:19.580married and having kids but there's kind of an implicit message too i think in the you know in
00:03:24.620the pop culture and certain precincts in the elite culture that are encouraging in adults to kind of
00:03:28.340just postpone marriage or forego marriage and focus instead on career and having fun in your free
00:03:35.140time so that's also i think part and parcel of what i'm i'm worried about in terms of giving people
00:03:39.600kind of the wrong idea well you mentioned some of these articles in these magazines they focused on
00:03:44.080women staying single and the benefits of that but you're also seeing the same sort of thing about men
00:03:49.400men shouldn't get married yeah so what's striking here i think is when i began this project i was
00:03:54.380thinking about being conversation primarily with kind of more elite voices on the left that tend to
00:03:59.520dominate a lot of mainstream media and academia and pop culture to some extent but now we're getting
00:04:04.600this from the online right as well and pearl davis is one figure that's got a big following online she
00:04:10.560has said that marriage is a death sentence for men and then you have of course andrew tate is kind
00:04:17.020of a very big voice in the manosphere who's also arguing that marriage has no roi you know no return
00:04:23.520on investment for men he says quote the problem is there is zero advantage to marriage in the western
00:04:29.820world for a man and then he goes on to say it's very common that women divorce their husbands you
00:04:36.860know so what the left has been kind of telling us is that really marriage and motherhood can be a bad
00:04:40.380deal for women we're now hearing though from kind of the opposite end of the the ideological spectrum
00:04:46.020that marriage is a bad deal for guys and of course the common takeaway sadly i would say you know for
00:04:54.620young adults is that maybe i should just kind of steer clear of opening my heart to uh to love to
00:05:00.760marriage and family and as a sociologist you this you actually research what happens when people get
00:05:07.040married and we're going to talk about actually there's a lot of benefits when you get married and
00:05:11.320settle down but one thing you talk about what both of these strains of thought have in common these
00:05:16.660anti-marriage anti-family life strains of thought whether it's coming from the left or the right
00:05:21.980is that they both have what you call a midas view of life what do you mean by the midas view of life
00:05:29.180so brett i gotta give all credit to my wife you know i was you know asking her like what how can i
00:05:34.800kind of think about us you know some kind of fable or story that would kind of convey the way in which
00:05:38.600people can become too attached to you know work or money or whatever else just like what about you
00:05:43.940know the king midas story and of course it's great you know a great example i've updated the midas story
00:05:49.500for a you know public lecture on the book but the idea here is that people are thinking that you know
00:05:55.580they should be sort of searching for gold and trying to build their own brand you know it's about
00:06:00.940education money and above all career we've got a lot of data from pew especially telling us that
00:06:07.040americans even parents brett unfortunately are prioritizing for their children you know education
00:06:12.860and career over marriage down the road it's just you know very short-sighted i think they're going to be
00:06:17.820really you know regretting that emphasis when they're 75 years old and there are no grandkids
00:06:23.740on the horizon so we see though but again in a lot of data from pew that americans think that
00:06:29.600money and education especially work are the way to go so a recent pew study found that 71 percent of
00:06:37.840americans thought that having a job or career they can enjoy is the path to fulfillment only 23 percent
00:06:44.340said that being married was the way to go so it just gives you a sense of this minus mindset where
00:06:51.060all the action is kind of in in work and money and building your own brand and the sort of idea is
00:06:58.260that investing in marriage and family is you know the wrong path and you should instead kind of be free
00:07:06.060free of all the encumbrances that you know come from settling down putting a ring on it yeah so the idea
00:07:11.880out there both in the culture and in the media is that marriage will hurt your financial life like
00:07:17.980that's the message that's out there but that's that actually isn't the case yeah so there's i mean so
00:07:23.740that you know that bloomberg headline was just completely bananas it was so so wrong i mean there
00:07:31.420was um they were relying upon data of just you know taken from singles you know fed study on singles
00:07:37.580and somehow they got to this conclusion that somehow that marriage is a bad thing for women
00:07:41.400but what we actually see is that women who are married and men of course too are more likely to
00:07:45.680be flourishing financially in fact in their 50s both women and men have about 10 times the assets
00:07:52.240you know heading towards retirement compared to their single peers so you know ironically both
00:07:59.620andrew tate and bloomberg should be discounted for folks who are worrying about financial security
00:08:04.340because for the average american the path to prosperity tends to run through marriage and
00:08:10.500not away from it but you know my point of course is that there's a lot more to life than money
00:08:14.600and so what we see is that marriage again more than career is a much stronger predictor of
00:08:22.380americans happiness in ways i think that a lot of people would be surprised by so what's the state
00:08:26.560of marriage today in america are people marrying less so yeah so i mean i've got bad news in the
00:08:32.320report and good news and the good news as i was kind of just hinting at is that when it comes to
00:08:36.260loneliness when it comes to meaning when it comes to happiness americans who are married both men and
00:08:42.500women are markedly happier they're less lonely they report more meaningful lives especially if they
00:08:47.180have children in the picture when it comes to meaning that's kind of part of the good the good news
00:08:51.680but the bad news brett is that we've seen the merit rate come down by about 65 percent since 1970
00:08:58.600and what that means practically for young adults today like in their 20s is we're projecting that
00:09:04.860about one in three of them will never marry and we've never been in this territory where so many
00:09:10.920americans will be permanent bachelors and permanent bachelorettes and that's you know cause for concern for
00:09:19.480me just because again what we see is that for ordinary americans you know typically they're just more
00:09:25.600likely to be thriving if they have you know co-pilot to uh travel through life with so one thing you talk
00:09:32.880about in the book is that while there's been a big decrease in marriage overall and for a lot of people
00:09:38.440marriage isn't thriving your research has found that there are four groups where marriage is still
00:09:44.160thriving what are those four groups yeah in terms of again the good news we we do kind of see some
00:09:49.460groups in america today who are generally speaking you know flourishing in their marriages who
00:09:53.860more likely to get married stay married often and be happily married and those four groups are
00:09:58.920asian americans religious americans i call them the faithful in the book college educated americans
00:10:05.200they call them strivers in the book folks can have more of that focus long-term work profession career
00:10:10.500etc and then the fourth group is is conservatives and to be frank but i didn't anticipate having
00:10:16.360conservatives a separate category i thought we kind of crunched the numbers i'd find that you know
00:10:20.160being asian american being religious being college educated that these sort of three groups in their
00:10:27.720own ways would be kind of more likely to be married in america today among other things but i found in
00:10:33.040crunching the numbers that when you included ideology in the statistics you still found that there's a net
00:10:38.200effect a unique effect of being conservative ideologically speaking that boosted your odds of being
00:10:44.840being married and also being happily married even controlling for factors like religion so that's
00:10:51.080why i have four groups in the book and each of those four groups brett a majority of them you know
00:10:56.140if you compare them to kind of the alternative groups are married so for instance a majority of
00:11:00.700college educated americans 1855 are married only a minority today of less educated working class and
00:11:07.160poor americans are married a majority of conservatives are married only a minority of moderates and liberals
00:11:13.640are married asian americans and whites are typically majority married and then black and hispanic americans
00:11:21.460only a minority of them are married okay and then for the the ideology aspect like how do you define like
00:11:27.100what is conservative so there's just on social surveys like the general social survey which we use a
00:11:31.540lot for this book project people are just asked you know are you like very liberal liberal you know
00:11:37.540moderate conservative very conservative and we all said a question like that in a yougov survey that we
00:11:43.500did for the book of about 2 000 husbands and wives and so we were just going to categorize people
00:11:50.220as liberal or conservative gotcha and we found that conservatives are more likely to again to be
00:11:55.720married and to be happily married compared to moderates and liberals now what's interesting about
00:11:59.060the ideology story there is it's a little bit complicated so it turns out that very liberal americans
00:12:05.100and i did a piece in the new york times a little while ago are relatively happier looking at women
00:12:09.980so very liberal women are relatively happier than sort of ordinary wives in america like in that
00:12:14.640sort of like you know in the liberal to moderate category but conservative and very conservative
00:12:20.340women are even happier so there's what i call a j curve in in marital happiness when it comes to
00:12:27.180women's marital happiness and where again the very liberal women are a little bit happier than kind
00:12:32.160of the norm and then the conservative americans are women are even are even happier we see a similar
00:12:37.620trend actually it's fascinating looking at a new gallup study that we published in family studies
00:12:43.040a few months ago when it comes to teens reports of the quality of their parent child relationship so
00:12:48.260teens in very liberal households are a little bit happier than kind of the norm
00:12:52.140and then teens in conservative especially very conservative homes are even happier and it's just kind
00:12:58.240of surprising and this gallup study suggests that maybe the story there is that conservative
00:13:04.020parents tend to be a bit more authoritative you know have clearer rules and expectations and
00:13:09.360consequences for their kids and that actually teens are more likely to thrive in a context where
00:13:14.400you know maybe there's a clear curfew you know maybe there are clearer consequences for
00:13:20.340you know getting your chores done your homework done in conservative homes and actually you know those
00:13:27.420kinds of boundaries as long as they're coupled with an affectionate and engaged style tend to
00:13:31.640work out well for for kids can these demographics cross over so for example yes imagine you're
00:13:37.360college educated or highly educated tend to be you know i don't know if the survey says that the
00:13:42.720research shows this tend to be more liberal is that true so yeah they're they're cross-cutting yeah
00:13:47.600that's a great question there are cross-cutting pressures here and then they're overlapping so i
00:13:50.700talked to a conservative religious indian american you know well-educated guy for the book so he would
00:13:57.300kind of you know checking all the boxes and he and his wife are doing well and they've got three kids
00:14:02.200who've done really well as well so there are examples like that and then we also see a lot of
00:14:08.120the discussion around marriage is focused on sort of class and education kind of the assumption has
00:14:12.160been that college educated americans are more likely to be killing it when it comes to marriage and
00:14:17.300my you know my friend and colleague richard reeves brookings he's got a new group focusing on boys and
00:14:22.420men he's kind of made the argument that sort of like college educated americans have like these
00:14:27.500marriage-minded you know sort of norms and ideas but they're also kind of more progressive on gender
00:14:33.380and so that kind of is like the for him like the sweet spot but what i actually find in my own research
00:14:38.400is that when you separate up the college educated americans who are conservative from those who are
00:14:43.260moderate and liberal it's the ones who are conservative who are most likely to be stably married
00:14:48.400and happily married so it kind of calls into question some of richard's ideas about how this is all
00:14:53.420playing out so the bottom line is it's sort of the most educated most religious and most conservative
00:14:58.900couples in america are the ones who are most likely to be stably married and happily married
00:15:04.000well it's similar to what richard reeves was saying an argument that i've heard about marriage
00:15:08.640is that it all comes down to class and money right so if you have lots of money and you're
00:15:14.780upper to middle class you're going to do fine if you're poor you're not going to do fine what is
00:15:18.740your research to show yeah so i'm saying there's both a cultural story and a class story and so
00:15:24.820you know i think like richard and i would tell very similar stories but kind of a general class
00:15:28.380story and there's just having more education and more money is one big reason why we are seeing
00:15:33.780that more educated americans are much more likely to be getting married and staying married and to be
00:15:38.680reasonably happy married but i think where my sort of story diverges from the one that richard
00:15:43.680reeves would tell us is that culturally what we're seeing is that more religious and more
00:15:48.320conservative couples asian american couples are more likely to be getting married and staying
00:15:52.500married oftentimes and are happily married and so i think what they have is oftentimes a deeper sense
00:15:59.900of commitment to marriage as an institution and to kind of like the norms of marriage norms like
00:16:04.240fidelity and kind of not using the d word when things are tough in your marriage obviously divorce
00:16:09.000marriage and they're also more likely to be kind of surrounded by peers who value marriage as well
00:16:15.780and we know that that's a big predictor of succeeding in marriage too if you're surrounded by people who
00:16:19.720value marriage and are living more what i call family first you know lifestyles that's going to
00:16:26.380you know other things being equal increase your odds of success so again the bottom line here is that
00:16:31.420both culture and class are important understanding marriage today and so folks who have both
00:16:37.400you know more income more education but also kind of an appreciation for a lot of those classic norms
00:16:43.300and values around marriage are also more likely to be succeeding at marriage today so you spend a lot
00:16:49.120of time in the book countering what you think are some of the myths that are keeping young people from
00:16:53.140marrying or not investing enough in their marriage and one myth is what you call the flying solo myth
00:16:58.440what is the flying solo myth so there's just kind of this idea that again kind of being free of
00:17:04.380entanglements encumbrances you know family obligations is the path to happiness that you
00:17:10.880know we want to kind of keep our options open keep our choices before us we want to focus on our 20s on
00:17:16.580just having a good time and really investing in our career and i talked to a number of women and men
00:17:22.980for the book who were in their mid-30s basically and you know regretting the fact that they had spent
00:17:29.220their 20s focusing more on just career and and fun and now they're unmarried and they're these two
00:17:36.140a woman in the rocky mountain west and a man in the dc far suburbs are um you know really unmoored in
00:17:42.900some important ways they're kind of struggling with loneliness and a sense of meaninglessness
00:17:47.340and just wishing that they had made different choices in their 20s and i should say like okay well
00:17:53.480so i found i found two people you know in america who kind of you know conformed to my priors well
00:17:59.420the the important point to make here actually is that we're we're seeing a decline in happiness in
00:18:04.800america and this decline is concentrated among unmarried americans and the biggest factor driving
00:18:11.960the drop in happiness america according to a recent study from the university of chicago
00:18:15.580is the declining rate of marriage in america so a simple way to sort of say this is sort of like
00:18:22.840less marriage equals more unhappiness for the country at large and i think our younger adults
00:18:28.540should just be a lot more skeptical of the messages they're getting about the importance of
00:18:32.600you know freedom and choice and building your own brand and steering clear of entanglements of the
00:18:39.200opposite sex because the people are able to actually get married and build decent marriages are just
00:18:45.300flourishing on so many more dimensions than their peers who are not yeah and a point you make in the
00:18:50.240book is that the flying solo idea it could be great if you have lots of money and you can travel the
00:18:57.100world but for average americans like you probably not you're not going to be able to do all these
00:19:03.120things because you don't have access to money so if you really want flourishing and happiness
00:19:06.480your best bet would be to get married correct right and there and i profile a professional from i think
00:19:13.640new york city who was kind of like living the life as a single 30 something you know high flying
00:19:19.140guy and he was perfectly happy you know but as you were saying there are a lot of americans who are
00:19:25.140not traveling the world not making a lot of money and not you know killing it at work and without the
00:19:31.780benefit of a spouse and family life can be pretty hard but again what's interesting too and about my
00:19:35.800you know the guy that i profile in the other suburbs of washington dc is that he has graduate training
00:19:41.900he has a good job he owns his own home he's making six figures and you know he basically says to me as
00:19:49.900i interviewed him he says you know i've got degrees in my wall i've got accomplishments and certificates
00:19:54.720but it doesn't mean anything in the end i have to get up every day and look in the mirror and realize
00:20:01.180i'm alone i have nobody okay so for this guy the midas mindset is not worked out he's in his mid-30s
00:20:09.580and he is not happy he's not a happy camper now again i know plenty of single folks are doing great
00:20:14.980but i'm just saying on average single americans are more likely to be struggling and married
00:20:19.860americans are more likely to be flourishing and that average story unfortunately brett is not being
00:20:26.100told enough in the media and certainly on social media as well so we mentioned earlier kind of
00:20:30.880reference that your research that you've done has shown that married people tend to have more money
00:20:34.800they're happier they're more fulfilled is this a matter of causation or correlation does marriage
00:20:40.960make you happier or do happier people or people who have those attributes that can lead to a flourishing
00:20:46.880life tend to get married more often yeah that's i think really the the killer question right and so
00:20:53.680yeah the smart critics of the kind of argument that i'm making in the academy and in the media would
00:20:59.800talk about what we call a selection effect where the kinds of people who are selecting into marriage
00:21:05.120are just different they're you know more educated they're more affluent they're more
00:21:10.320may have better social skills right and so they would say it's brad is confusing correlation with
00:21:15.620causation here yes married people are happier they're more affluent that's because they're already
00:21:20.960happier and more affluent to begin with so like matt brunick for instance a progressive says married
00:21:25.380people are less impoverished because people who are not impoverished are more likely to get married
00:21:30.300he says with marriage you have an institution that attracts and retains more economically secure
00:21:35.540and stable people not an institution that creates them so this is like a great summary of the sort of
00:21:40.840selection perspective but what matt is missing though is just there's just a ton of research on the way in
00:21:46.960which marriage is an institution that tends to transform our lives it doesn't just sort of like
00:21:51.560vacuum up the elites and and and just put them together now there's some of that obviously
00:21:55.680happening now but we know for instance of a study in minnesota looking at identical twins
00:22:00.640and fraternal twins guys and the twins who got married earned about 26 percent more than their
00:22:07.400twins who did not get married so kind of giving us a clear sense it's probably something about marriage
00:22:11.520per se that is helping to make men and we see other evidence in the score too when it comes to men
00:22:17.400and marriage and work married men work harder they work longer hours they're more strategic in their
00:22:23.140job search they're less likely to be fired so these are all the kinds of things that would help us to
00:22:27.760understand why marriage per se can be transformational and then on the happiness front there's work done
00:22:34.880by the economists sean grover and john heliwell and they controlled for happiness prior to marriage
00:22:39.720and then tracked happiness after people got married and after other people did not get married kind of
00:22:44.060comparing them over time and they still found quote a causal effect on happiness at all stages of the
00:22:49.480marriage from prenuptial bliss to marriages of long duration unquote and they found the biggest sort
00:22:55.660of happiness premium was in midlife when people were in their late 40s and 50s and we often see adult
00:23:01.540happiness at its nadir but and again like why is it that marriage is happiness inducing i think the
00:23:06.860point is that we are as aristotle said social animals and so money and status ended up being
00:23:13.460less important for us than our friendships and our family relationships which give us opportunities
00:23:18.620to connect with others to be with and for others and i think importantly enough to really to to care for
00:23:26.000others and for both women and men i think it's important not just to be cared for but to have
00:23:32.540opportunities to care for others it gives our lives certainly i'll speak personally for a second i mean
00:23:37.240you know caring for my wife and children is the most meaningful thing that i get to do so i just think
00:23:44.300people are not factoring in the ways that marriage and family can be so generative on so many fronts for
00:23:50.800ordinary women and men we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
00:23:55.320and now back to the show well couldn't you get these same benefits just by cohabitating like
00:24:05.800companionship yeah great question so i think if you kind of do like just an immediate look at like
00:24:10.480you know people's happiness cohabiting and married often not not a big difference right but the problem
00:24:14.700is the cohabitation is much less committed and so what that means in practice is that couples who are
00:24:20.560cohabiting just don't go the distance you know nearly as much as those who are married so you have
00:24:25.300situations you know like a former neighbor of mine where she you know invested five years of her
00:24:30.340life from ages like 28 to 33 in her cohabiting partner and then he just you know she kind of
00:24:35.280made it clear she wanted to get married and have kids and he's like well i'm just not i'm not ready
00:24:38.220for that you know and so he was gone and um you know that was pretty traumatic right because they hadn't
00:24:45.280you know established a kind of joint level of commitment heading into the relationship and so her
00:24:51.500kind of happiness that she'd enjoyed for probably substantial share of that relationship
00:24:55.160you know disappeared and turned out to be a fairly you know traumatic and of course divorce can
00:25:01.040happen too but i'm just sort of saying that on average marriage is markedly you know more stable
00:25:05.460than cohabitation and that's one reason why i talk about you know getting married rather than getting
00:25:11.260together yeah so just getting married it adds more stakes to the relationship i guess you take it more
00:25:16.960serious so when i'm talking about this to my students because i think the cohabitation piece is like
00:25:20.920the most surprising thing that we talk about in my class at the university of virginia sort of how
00:25:24.900marriage and combination are different i'm just thinking about kind of terms of entry right or how
00:25:28.720couples enter into these two different you know relationship states comes to cohabitation what you
00:25:33.480see is that oftentimes couples can't even agree on the day when they begin cohabiting like you have
00:25:37.920like one partner will kind of bring some things over for the weekend maybe leave it you know some
00:25:42.700clothes like a toothbrush you know whatever and then some more stuff like a week later
00:25:47.700and then like move in all their stuff you know a month later or whatever two months later but it's
00:25:53.360never been like there wasn't like a kind of discreet moment where obviously with a wedding it's pretty
00:25:56.860pretty clear when it happens but more importantly just imagine the social context that these two
00:26:01.620things are taking place in so with cohabitation you have like there's no assembled multitude right of
00:26:07.220friends and family in that apartment hallway there's no music playing in the background there are no
00:26:12.240vows being exchanged you bring your your gear into your partner's apartment for the first
00:26:17.700time or whatever for the second or third time by contrast with the wedding obviously everything
00:26:22.240is kind of scripted it's a ceremony it's ritualized and human beings we're actually really you know we
00:26:28.600tend to endow things with more meaning when we do them in a ritualized communal context and especially
00:26:33.840when we make public vows you know in a communal context so that's just kind of gives you some sense
00:26:38.260of how marriage and cohabitation are really different things okay so flying solo for most people getting
00:26:44.640married probably your best bet for happiness fulfillment and even economic stability another
00:26:50.400myth you explore that might be preventing people from investing too much in their marriage is the myth
00:26:56.820of family diversity what do you mean by that yeah so you know particularly kind of in my academic world
00:27:02.660there are a lot of folks who would kind of argue that the family isn't in any way getting weaker
00:27:07.060marriage isn't declining it's just the family is changing and then we should kind of embrace family
00:27:12.520diversity kind of a wide range of family structures and family approaches and that marriage per se
00:27:18.560doesn't really matter what really matters for kids when it comes to flourishing is you know love
00:27:24.080and and also money you know basically families have enough love in the household and who have you know
00:27:31.560decent income supply are going to be doing just perfectly for instance there was an article in the
00:27:37.520Atlantic where there was a professor saying that all of our research points to the fact that's the
00:27:41.360quality of the relationship that matters and the handling of communication conflict and the number
00:27:47.620of people in the household is not really the key or Philip Cohen a professor at Maryland said if people
00:27:53.280grow up with single mothers who have adequate income they do fine on average what we find is they
00:27:58.080do have a lot of challenges from the lack of resources but family structure per se is not as big a factor
00:28:03.720so again the idea here is that money matters love matter but marriage doesn't matter per se
00:28:10.060and what these I think perspectives don't really acknowledge is that yes love matters yes money
00:28:16.960matters but kids in intact married households are much more likely to be flourishing on any number of
00:28:23.220fronts they're about twice as likely to graduate from college compared to kids from non-intact families
00:28:27.980boys are about twice as likely to end up in prison or in jail compared to their peers from intact families
00:28:35.040if they're in a non-intact family girls and boys in non-intact families are about 50 percent more
00:28:40.560likely to be sad as eighth graders so that's what the sort of facts are and I think one of the most
00:28:49.080striking things that I discovered in looking at this data with my colleague Dr. Wendy Wang is that
00:28:55.220young men today are more likely to go to prison or jail than they are to graduate from college if they're
00:29:02.040raised in a non-intact family by contrast what we see is it for boys who are raised in intact families
00:29:08.840only nine percent of them end up in prison or jail and 38 percent of them are graduating from college
00:29:14.460so that that was for me like when it comes to kids like just that was the sort of like wow like you know
00:29:20.220for boys who don't have the benefit of their own married parents more likely to end up incarcerated
00:29:25.400whereas for boys who are benefiting from both their married parents in the household much more likely to
00:29:31.080attend and graduate from college so you're saying there's a myth that's out there that well it doesn't
00:29:36.740really matter if we get married or if we get divorced or if there's just a single parent in
00:29:41.100the picture it's not a big deal kids will be fine and what you're saying is well maybe not so yeah two
00:29:48.720things to be clear about one is that I was raised by a single mom and obviously many kids go on to do
00:29:54.160just perfectly fine without the benefit of married parents we can think of prominent examples like
00:29:58.840barack obama and jeff bezos who at least obviously professionally have done extremely well so I'm
00:30:04.900not saying that kind of coming from a non-intact household is a death sense I'm just sort of saying
00:30:08.980that on average kids are more likely to flourish when they have the benefit of their own married
00:30:13.060parents and the other interesting piece about this is that the proponents of family diversity say
00:30:17.760it's about really what matters for kids is love and money what they do not acknowledge though
00:30:24.160Brett is that on average kids are being raised by intact married parents have access to more attention
00:30:30.780and affection from their you know their married parents and they have access to a heck of a lot more
00:30:35.460money than kids in other family situations so even on the love and money front what we're seeing is
00:30:41.580on average of course we know that there are dysfunctional intact married families out there but
00:30:46.420on average kids are more likely to get the love and money they need to flourish when they're
00:30:51.360being raised by their own married parents well at a point you make in the book you point out there's
00:30:57.440a hypocrisy you see there's people out there in academia and the media that say well you know
00:31:03.300it doesn't matter what your family looks like you just get divorced whatever the kids are going to be
00:31:07.600fine you're going to be fine but then you look at how those people are living their lives they're
00:31:12.600typically they're married and they're living in an intact family yeah I've got a piece coming out in
00:31:18.000the Atlantic soon talking about how our elites often talk left and walk right and the story there
00:31:24.080basically is that I think it's become kind of fashionable in a variety of ways to sort of
00:31:30.280articulate your support for family diversity and to kind of discount the importance of marriage or even
00:31:34.800to attack it in in certain circles in academia and the media and other precincts of our culture
00:31:40.720but it's also I think a fact that you know prudentially it makes sense to get married and
00:31:46.160stay married and so that ends up being the path that a lot of our elites take because they recognize
00:31:52.120at some level that it's the best thing for them and for their kids so another thing that seems to be
00:31:59.520holding people back from getting married this is a new one all right so before people weren't getting
00:32:04.300married they'd say well you know I'll miss out on opportunities for my career I need to make money I want
00:32:08.580to enjoy myself whatever the one thing you're seeing now I've been seeing more reports of is political
00:32:14.100polarization what's going on there so my colleague Lyman Stone and I did a piece for the Atlantic kind
00:32:20.560of talking about the growing number of young women who are moving left and the growing number of young
00:32:25.240men are moving right those more women moving left and right but it's creating a situation where
00:32:30.580there are many more liberal women than there are liberal men and a bit more conservative men than there
00:32:36.300are conservative women and that's kind of leading to a gap where we would estimate about one in five
00:32:43.680young adults can't marry someone or can't date someone who is sort of on the same page with them
00:32:48.240ideologically so that's a problem because as I'm arguing in the book marriage is generally a good thing
00:32:53.660for young adults and for the society at large this political polarization is one more factor making it
00:32:59.280harder for young adults to marry anything we can do about that well I think one thing to do is just to
00:33:06.220recognize that what matters here for I think marital success is being on the same page either you
00:33:14.060know religiously or in terms of like some core commitments including how you want to do family
00:33:19.100and work so if you meet someone who's you know not in the same page as you politically but who shares
00:33:26.020basically either your faith or your kind of broader worldview in terms of how you want to do work and
00:33:30.100then I would say you know consider moving forward but on the other hand if you're kind of not just
00:33:37.220sort of politically at odds with one another but also have pretty different views on things like
00:33:43.460religion or on how you want to how many you know if you want to have kids how you want to raise them
00:33:48.980all that kind of stuff those are really big warning signs so I think you have to sort of distinguish
00:33:53.520between politics proper and then other things that would really bear on the on the warp and move of
00:33:58.820organizing a family and unfortunately I have seen friends you know in my 20s who kind of grew
00:34:05.520ideologically apart and then got divorced so I've seen that play out you know in my own social circle
00:34:10.400so something else you do in this book is you look at what families or couples that are having
00:34:15.940thriving marriages thriving family life do on a day-to-day basis to make them thriving and you talk about
00:34:22.600you mentioned earlier they typically have a family first approach to marriage what does that look
00:34:27.280like on a day-to-day basis yeah so I argue that one of the challenges facing all of us I think in
00:34:32.620this culture today is that sometimes we can think about marriage is kind of like the soulmate thing
00:34:35.760it's like I'm going to find this perfect match we're gonna have this intense romantic and maybe
00:34:40.300sexual connection we're gonna fit like you know this perfect uh we're gonna have a perfect fit
00:34:45.480and she's gonna understand me I'm gonna understand her you know perfectly and there's gonna be very little
00:34:51.300friction and a lot of you know passion and fulfillment and happiness pretty much all the time
00:34:55.980right that's sort of like the soulmate idea just in a nutshell and yet obviously once you're married
00:35:00.760and in relationship with someone you know you discover that she's not perfect and you're not perfect
00:35:05.600and it's often extremely difficult to get along you know in some days or some weeks some months
00:35:12.020whatever and by contrast I think people recognize realize that marriage is about more than just an
00:35:16.580emotional connection more than just a feeling it's about establishing a life together a family
00:35:21.720together having kids if you can raising kids together you know being there for your kin you know
00:35:27.520for your parents your wife's parents doing things together as a family you know going trips going to the
00:35:34.740park going to the basketball game whatever it is that you know your family does going hunting for some
00:35:39.380you know going to the beach for others you know all these kind of family things end up being
00:35:44.440you know also important financial securities also part and parcel of kind of a family first approach
00:35:50.360to marriage so people kind of have like a richer view of like the many different goods that marriage
00:35:56.120tends to facilitate or foster are kind of pursuing what I would call like a more family first or more
00:36:02.660institutional approach to marriage and that of course is more stable than just kind of one that based
00:36:07.840on feelings the soulmate approach and I think what people don't realize is it's often happier as well
00:36:13.340because you're able to appreciate that your spouse and your marriage and your family are about a number
00:36:20.680of different goods not just an intense romantic connection and so even if you're not necessarily
00:36:26.420firing on all cylinders on the romantic side at some point in your marriage you recognize oh my
00:36:32.200husband's a great father or oh my wife's a great mother for instance and that is a source of
00:36:37.560satisfaction for you and for your relationship so what I find is there's a slight edge too that the folks
00:36:42.500have this more family first model enjoy in marital quality and then also they're less likely to
00:36:47.220be thinking about divorce compared to folks who have more of a feelings-based soulmate approach to
00:36:52.340married life and you get nitty-gritty with this stuff like how these couples navigate you know sex
00:36:58.140parenthood responsibilities chores I mean what does that look like so what I'm also arguing too is that
00:37:02.900the sort of what I call the masters of marriage tend to be more likely to embrace what I call the five
00:37:07.760pillars of marriage and these are five c's one is communion a sense of communion in their marriage
00:37:12.680one is proper appreciation of the role of children in marriage if they have kids third c is commitment
00:37:19.040the fourth c is cash the fifth c is community and so just to kind of take for instance the communion
00:37:25.700piece what I find is the couples who have regular date nights to try to maintain that sense of romance
00:37:30.240and that emotional connection are more likely to be flourishing both in marital happiness but also in
00:37:35.400terms of sexual satisfaction so not surprisingly like you know if if you'd like to have a healthy
00:37:39.940sexual life it's important to keep the romance alive in your marriage and so doing you know fun
00:37:44.520and different and you know regular date nights which can be challenging when you've got kids as my wife
00:37:49.480and I do still is important try to figure out that piece I would say but also in terms of community I
00:37:55.320talked to about a way before me approach to life rather than a me first approach and one example I give
00:38:00.620is couples who have shared checking accounts are doing better both in terms of stability but also
00:38:06.500marital quality compared to couples who have separate accounts and more of that me first approach
00:38:10.360to money so that's communion commitment is among other things prioritizing the well-being of your
00:38:15.480spouse and your family and then also concretely like being attentive to the importance of fidelity
00:38:20.340so that means you know kind of steering clear of attractive alternatives both in the real world and now today in
00:38:25.740the virtual world who might obviously distract your attention and your affections away from your
00:38:30.840spouse and when it comes to divorce not putting the d word in a conversation when you're having an
00:38:36.280argument or there's some problem in your marriage you know most couples have problems at some point in
00:38:41.560their marriage and I think couples who just keep divorce off you know out of the picture are more readily
00:38:48.660able to handle those challenges and overcome them and then the community piece you know basically again if you
00:38:55.140are surrounding yourself with people who are you know whether you're secular or religious but you know
00:38:59.920people who are like intentional about being good spouses and being good parents you're more likely to
00:39:05.720thrive and yet I do find that folks who are religious are more likely to be succeeding you know on that front
00:39:12.300because you find that couples who are going to church especially together or temple or synagogue whatever
00:39:17.800are more likely to be spending time with their kids to be capable of forgiving their spouse
00:39:24.140to be maintaining surprising I think to some extent a more vibrant sexual life than couples who are not
00:39:30.960part of a religious community you do your research with the eye of you know suggesting public policy
00:39:36.500and you have some public policy recommendations at the end of your book but then I think it was a
00:39:40.680recent article or might have been a tweet you talked about how there's research showing and even in
00:39:45.500these Nordic countries that have very pro-family public policy people still aren't getting married and having
00:39:50.760kids so basically public policy isn't enough you have to change the culture about marriage and family
00:39:57.620life 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
00:40:01.780so you know I want to be clear here I do think public policy is helpful and I think we could do more to sort
00:40:12.180of promote in our schools what's called the success sequence which among other things sucks with the value of
00:40:16.320marriage to our kids in high school public high schools I think we could get rid of the marriage penalty
00:40:21.180that ends up penalizing marriage for a lot of working class families across America I think we could have
00:40:26.140a more generous child tax credit that would help people who are particularly working in middle class families
00:40:31.360who are kind of struggling financially to raise the next generation kind of have an easier time of it so there are
00:40:37.260some policies that I think would be helpful in terms of making marriage more financially and culturally
00:40:42.900you know appealing attractive and attainable particularly again for working class and middle
00:40:49.620class Americans but I think at the end of the day we have to recognize and realize that unless the
00:40:54.560culture changes we're just going to see a continuing decline in marriage and infertility and the reason I
00:41:01.660say is because we're already seeing that in the Nordic countries like for instance Finland where they have an
00:41:07.040incredible suite you know collection of great family policies child care and parental leave and child
00:41:14.700allowances arguably one of the best suite of family policies in the world you know like if you have
00:41:20.480a high degree of confidence in public policy to help families and yet in Finland you know marriage and
00:41:27.960coupling and fertility are way down in recent years and I think what's happening in Finland is also happening here in the US
00:41:36.860but just not as quite yet as pronounced and that is it's a combination I think of a couple of things one is the
00:41:44.180minus mindset which you've talked about focusing on education work and money more than other things a kind of
00:41:49.340focus on having a good time fun staying you know free of encumbrances keeping your individual more individualistic
00:41:56.300mindset 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
00:42:03.420losing ground doing less well relative to the women in their lives in education work and then other domains and so I think
00:42:12.000women are just more skeptical about investing in a relationship marriage and having kids when the men their lives don't you know from their
00:42:21.400perspective 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
00:42:32.580a series of cultural shifts that are kind of unfolding across the developed world that are both devaluing
00:42:42.340family and the sacrifices that being a spouse and a parent require of us and they're kind of elevating a
00:42:48.660more individualistic a kind of more live for the moment ethos that in the short term can be attractive
00:42:54.540and appealing but the long-term spells not just demographic demographic problems but but I think more fundamentally a very bleak and lonely and meaningless
00:43:04.300life 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
00:43:12.860well 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
00:43:19.540married 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
00:43:24.260reasons for why they don't want to have kids well there are different theories about this everything from like the cost of
00:43:29.780parenthood 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
00:43:36.240obviously ding videos on tiktok where these couples who are actually married but they're like enjoying sleeping in on
00:43:43.220Saturday 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
00:43:49.260they're living the life you know it's it's it's the life right you know that they think that they have
00:43:53.760without children and I'm just like okay let's stick back with you in 20 20 years or in in 40 years yeah and
00:44:00.440see how you're doing you know because I just can't even imagine to be blunt you know my life without my
00:44:06.420children I mean you know every night I've got a teenage daughter hunts me down and she'll give me a hug or a
00:44:11.840kiss on on the forehead I mean that's just like wow you know like it's a nice way to end the night
00:44:17.240and yes kids are incredibly expensive and challenging and all that kind of stuff but
00:44:22.840I mean just the meaning the joy that you know kids can bring to your life is amazing and I just feel
00:44:29.360sad for people who are deliberately closing their their hearts to having children but to be more
00:44:36.260empirical for a second again too what's interesting about the research is that we saw some evidence back
00:44:41.080before 2000 that parents were less happy than childless Americans but today it's no longer true I
00:44:45.780published a piece in Deseret News you may have seen just showing that given some newer survey data
00:44:50.800parents particularly married parents are happier than childless Americans and there's no group of
00:44:56.040happier Americans age 1855 and that's the sort of age focus of my book than married mothers and
00:45:03.440married fathers compared to their peers who are single and or childless so that's often lost in our
00:45:10.660public discussions and a lot of the social media commentary that for all of the hard things that
00:45:15.440being a mother and a father you know demand of us we do see that compared to their peers you know
00:45:21.800it's sort of like Churchill's point like yeah democracy is like you know paraphrasing obviously
00:45:26.380it's like you know is flawed but compared to the alternatives it's much better I think the same
00:45:30.680thing is true of parenthood yeah you know being a parent can be really hard and challenging and
00:45:35.460frustrating and you know hair pulling inducing but compared to the alternative I think it often
00:45:41.000ends up being pretty pretty good yeah and something I don't think has helped with this is that in the
00:45:47.280popular culture people just tend to talk about the negatives of being a parent they just talk about
00:45:51.360the hair pulling stuff when your kids are driving you bonkers and they really don't talk about the
00:45:56.200great stuff about being a parent like being a dad is awesome whenever things in life feel
00:46:02.780flimsy and meaningless my family is the thing that feels the most real to me I agree well Brad this
00:46:11.780has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work
00:46:14.820so I've got a new website bradbelcox.com familystudies.org is a good place to go as well
00:46:19.960and then the national marriage week is kind of rolling out from February 7th to 14th this year
00:46:24.920and they've got a lot of resources for people looking for you know things about marriage also tips to
00:46:29.820improve your marriage there are plenty of obviously couples out there who are struggling and so if
00:46:33.520you're struggling I would encourage you to go to the national marriage weeks website for some ideas
00:46:37.640about how you can strengthen your your relationship as you head towards valentine's day fantastic well
00:46:42.220Brad Wilcox thanks for time it's been a pleasure thanks so much Brad my guest today was Brad Wilcox
00:46:47.560he's the author of the book get married it's available on amazon.com the bookstores everywhere
00:46:51.200check out our show notes at aom.is slash marriage where we find links to resources we delve deeper
00:46:55.540to this topic including a link to another survey that just came out by gallop that once again
00:47:00.020affirmed that married people are happier we've also included a link to an article by one of Brad's
00:47:04.440colleagues and former aom podcast guest lyman stone on how the chance of divorce still doesn't
00:47:09.220negate this happiness premium for men well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure
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