The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 14, 2026


Conservatives Won't Address the REAL Cause of the Marriage Crisis ｜ 5⧸14⧸26

Hosted by
Auron MacIntyre
Machiavelli： The Power of Glory ｜ 5⧸13⧸26 Will AI Data Centers Destroy America？ ｜ Chase Davis ｜ 5⧸15⧸26

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

165.76

Word count

1,437

Sentence count

77

Harmful content

Misogyny

23

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Marriage in America is on the decline, but few people understand how deep that problem is. Conservative pundits and politicians often blame a lack of individual virtue, but the most important factors are baked into the structure of our society in a manner that Republicans are terrified to address.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The fact that marriage in America is on the decline is concerning, but very few people
00:00:04.860 understand how deep that problem goes. Recent data shows the dismal marriage numbers in the
00:00:10.360 United States. The percentage of married couples, average age at which couples are marrying,
00:00:15.580 and the number of children are all in catastrophic decline. The numbers represent a dramatic collapse
00:00:21.280 in the institution that serves as the foundation for successful civilizations. Conservatives
00:00:26.640 will often place the blame on a lack of individual virtue, and there's plenty of truth to that claim.
00:00:32.560 But the most important factors are baked into the structure of our society in a manner that
00:00:37.300 Republicans are terrified to address. When a movement refers to itself as conservative,
00:00:44.480 you think that the preservation of marriage would be its top priority. However, when marriage does 0.78
00:00:50.020 receive any attention from conservative pundits and politicians, it's in the form of glib advice
00:00:55.740 directed at young men telling them to get out of their parents' basement and stop playing video
00:01:00.360 games. Part of the marriage problem is certainly the lack of initiative on the part of young males,
00:01:06.000 but this is also the easiest and most cowardly attempt to explain away the issue. Our culture
00:01:11.520 encourages placing the blame on young men, who are one of the few groups that can be attacked 0.50
00:01:16.040 without consequence. The real answer requires taking on far more sacred cows. When conservatives 0.94
00:01:22.840 are feeling a little more adventurous, they'll admit that some aspects of our economy are
00:01:27.580 antithetical to family formation. The fact that the average age of the first-time homeowner is
00:01:32.740 now pushing past 40 signals how difficult achieving stability for young families has become.
00:01:38.880 College is now required for even the most entry-level jobs, and the cost keeps exploding,
00:01:44.420 consuming the capital that once went to starter homes. The costs of healthcare and food continue
00:01:50.080 to skyrocket so that most households require two incomes, forcing mothers to work, while the price
00:01:56.320 of child care also increases rapidly. The economic issues are real and important, but even they don't
00:02:02.840 tell the whole story. Love, duty, and honor are all factors that hold our social bonds together,
00:02:10.180 but it's dependence that makes them necessary in the first place and continues to undergird them
00:02:15.360 when everything else falls away. Modern people don't like to hear this fact because they believe
00:02:20.760 that maximizing freedom and independence is the ultimate goal, but there is a point at which
00:02:26.120 autonomy rips society apart. Men are, of course, dependent on many things, but women, due to their 0.99
00:02:32.780 biological vulnerability, were always directly dependent on men. Women are physically weaker, 0.99
00:02:38.860 less aggressive, become pregnant, must care for children, and regularly need the direct 0.74
00:02:43.600 intervention of others to ensure their safety and security. Women couldn't work outside the home 1.00
00:02:49.880 while pregnant or raising children, so they remained dependent on their husband's income. 0.90
00:02:55.400 Even in the most restrictive societies, people are going to have sex. We're hardwired to pursue it.
00:03:00.740 So the reality was that women and men needed to get married early to secure the safety of mothers
00:03:06.480 and children. Family formation was part of the rhythm of life. It was largely unavoidable,
00:03:11.980 And this kept marriage rates among young people relatively high.
00:03:16.580 This meant that young men and young women naturally grew up.
00:03:20.880 They had this determined track through life, this crucible that forced them to put the needs of others before themselves and to understand themselves in relation to a broader society.
00:03:32.600 It made them responsible for another human life, not just materially, but they were required to bring it up, to teach it morally.
00:03:40.660 It brought them a deeper understanding of life and made them more serious and well-rounded.
00:03:47.000 This was, again, nothing that they voluntarily entered, really.
00:03:50.720 This is something that they just kind of had to go through because this was the reality of how life progressed.
00:03:57.520 This was a rhythm of life, something that was unescapable.
00:04:01.620 Now, once birth control and abortion made pregnancy a choice instead of an inevitability, everything shifted. 0.90
00:04:09.000 Single women became a larger part of society,
00:04:12.000 and the state expanded its reach to provide them with broader physical and economic protections. 0.97
00:04:18.040 The newly emancipated woman needed her own stream of income, 0.99
00:04:22.040 and corporations were more than happy to provide it. 1.00
00:04:25.100 Women doubled the labor pool, driving down wages. 1.00
00:04:27.760 In large bureaucratic organizations where compliance is key, 1.00
00:04:31.600 the more agreeable nature of women is considered an asset in a way 1.00
00:04:35.260 that it would not be in a more entrepreneurial economy.
00:04:38.480 When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination.
00:04:45.860 It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music and new shared memories.
00:04:51.840 And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.
00:05:02.700 to fasten seatbelt signs.
00:05:04.700 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
00:05:06.540 When you travel, travel well.
00:05:09.780 Advantages were built into every level of our system 1.00
00:05:12.740 to help elevate women due to the perceived biases 0.99
00:05:15.860 that existed when mothers were expected to stay home. 1.00
00:05:19.280 Universities gave priority to women, 1.00
00:05:21.380 who now earn more degrees than men. 0.61
00:05:23.620 Corporations gave hiring priority to women, 0.99
00:05:26.040 who now make up a majority of their workforce.
00:05:28.740 Government assistance and scholarship programs
00:05:30.900 were established to ensure that working mothers didn't fall through the cracks. It's not that
00:05:35.460 women stopped getting married. Every female must be married at some level. They simply became 1.00
00:05:40.800 dependent on the men running the government and corporations instead of traditional husbands.
00:05:46.780 Most women simply don't date men that earn less than they do, even if they think of themselves
00:05:52.060 as independent. Deep down, females know that in the modern world, income signals status and status 0.99
00:05:58.540 means protection. Even in our hyper-feminist culture, women still know that they could become 1.00
00:06:04.540 mothers at any time, and naturally seek out protection and stability. The push to elevate 1.00
00:06:10.080 women in education and hiring meant that the percentage of well-paying jobs going to men
00:06:15.200 shrank. This resulted in men being systematically removed from the pool of attractive marriage 0.97
00:06:20.460 prospects. Dwindling prospects for both education and career have already set young men on the
00:06:28.520 the path to downward mobility, but the lack of prospects for marriage was the nail in the coffin.
00:06:34.620 These changes, coupled with the one-sided nature of divorce and child custody law,
00:06:40.080 means that many men no longer see a reason to bother dating. Women initiate 70% of divorces 0.51
00:06:47.280 in the United States. The truth is that women who do not need men don't marry when they're young, 0.91
00:06:52.940 and are far more likely to divorce if they do.
00:06:57.240 To be clear, this is not to absolve men of their responsibility. 1.00
00:07:01.240 Both sexes made this mess. 1.00
00:07:03.320 Both sexes are to blame, 1.00
00:07:04.960 and both will need to do hard work to fix the problem. 1.00
00:07:08.660 Men must have the drive and vitality to make something of themselves,
00:07:12.560 no matter what situation they find themselves in.
00:07:15.560 But in the rare instances where conservatives are even willing to address the marriage crisis,
00:07:20.540 they save all of their criticism for young men because they are the culturally approved target.
00:07:27.700 There are no easy answers to the chaos that modernity has visited on the dating and marriage
00:07:32.780 landscape, but the structural issues are real, and telling men to get it together doesn't change
00:07:38.860 that. Until conservatives are willing to be as honest with women as they are with men about our
00:07:44.660 situation, nothing will improve.
00:07:50.540 Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that video. If you did, go ahead and click like. If you haven't
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00:08:17.400 The links to do that are down below in the description.
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00:08:37.020 Thanks for watching, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.