Western Standard - When you say ＂I do,＂ do you know what you're really doing？

00:00:01.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:06.400 Joining me tonight is somebody who may be familiar to Western Standard readers from the days when the Standard was a print product.

00:00:13.260 That would be Andrea Morozik, who is very much still writing with her colleague Peter John Mitchell, who has just published a book.

00:00:19.680 Good to see you again, Andrea.

00:00:21.700 Thanks so much for having me on, Nigel.

00:00:23.980 Oh, it's a pleasure.

00:00:24.740 Andrea, I've always recalled you as the investigative reporter who broke the story in the Western Standard that sex-selective abortion was widely practiced in B.C. among...

00:00:34.740 Do you remember this?

00:00:36.520 I do, I do.

00:00:38.240 We have it framed on the wall.

00:00:41.000 Yes, it was widely practiced in B.C. among immigrant communities who wanted sons, not daughters.

00:00:47.380 I'm making light of it in this interview, but of course it was an extremely serious story.

00:00:52.240 I think one of the landmark pieces of journalism in 2006.

00:00:58.080 Anyway, these days you're doing great work with the Christian think tank, CARDIS, in Ottawa.

00:01:02.140 And in fact, your job is to research marriage.

00:01:06.780 Marriage is fantastic, yes.

00:01:07.500 And that's a wonderful project for you as well, isn't it?

00:01:09.740 You made it sound like I got married as a research experiment, but yes, indeed.

00:01:13.920 Ten years of research into my own personal marriage, I suppose.

00:01:18.800 Got married quite late in life, actually, in keeping with today's Canadian statistics.

00:01:23.240 So I'm part of that cohort.

00:01:26.140 Way to go, Andrea.

00:01:27.460 In a few moments, I'm going to give you a chance to tell viewers where to get your book.

00:01:31.360 But first, marriage has been around for a while, hasn't it?

00:01:35.160 And yet you've called your book, I dot, dot, dot, do, question mark.

00:01:41.060 That sounds like it might be a new angle.

00:01:43.720 What is it?

00:01:45.160 Really?

00:01:45.640 I mean, the question mark, I'm glad you picked up on that.

00:01:48.060 It's an important part of the title because today we have a culture and a younger generation

00:01:53.360 who view marriage as maybe nice, but unnecessary and certainly not, it's something that's met

00:02:02.540 with, I think, a fair amount of ambivalence as well.

00:02:04.920 And so we put the question mark in to reflect that cultural trend, but at the same time to

00:02:11.680 indicate that we would like people to start asking questions afresh about the institution

00:02:16.580 of marriage, which over time and research I've come to see as far more critically important,

00:02:21.740 not just for ourselves, but for the culture and the communities that we live in.

00:02:25.900 So the question mark reflects that ambivalence and the fact that we view marriage as kind

00:02:31.140 of negotiable, not necessary.

00:02:34.460 And also the fact that we are encouraging readers, young and old, to reconsider or reimagine

00:02:41.480 what they think they know about marriage.

00:02:44.360 Really?

00:02:45.080 Okay.

00:02:45.400 Well, to me, there's always seemed to be a contractual element to marriage.

00:02:51.000 And, you know, the one partner does something for the other partner and the other partner

00:02:55.640 does something back.

00:02:56.940 And to that point, we've just published a story from BC.

00:03:01.060 We have a reporter in BC, young Jared Jaeger, and he reports that a child advocacy group says

00:03:06.720 nearly half the children living in poverty, as they define it, are actually in single parent

00:03:12.780 households.

00:03:13.420 And that's likely to be single mothers, far more likely than to be single fathers.

00:03:19.880 So when the man-woman contract breaks down, the one where a man basically promises to support

00:03:25.600 a woman and his family, and in return, she looks after him and his needs.

00:03:31.400 When that breaks down, the children suffer.

00:03:33.680 And then, and honestly, authors of the poverty study we're talking about do this, there's

00:03:40.040 an appeal to the state to help.

00:03:42.100 So women end up looking to the state for what they should be looking for from a husband. 1.00

00:03:47.360 As a society, where does that take us?

00:03:50.620 So I think that you've just said a lot, of course, but one angle of that that I'll immediately

00:03:56.080 comment on is that, yes, we do see less income, less financial resources in single parenting

00:04:03.440 families.

00:04:03.920 And marriage remains a source of stability for longevity, and that's good for the kids

00:04:07.580 as it is for the, for the parents.

00:04:09.600 But when you see stories like that arise, and they will often talk about many aspects

00:04:17.300 of poverty eradication that are very valuable, whether it's turning to the state or to the

00:04:22.740 charitable sector.

00:04:23.560 But the one thing no one ever talks about is the obvious family angle, which is foundational

00:04:30.460 to poverty eradication.

00:04:33.020 So I come to this question of marriage also with an eye to helping those who are poor,

00:04:39.400 helping those who are living on the margin.

00:04:41.960 And what we see in marriage culture today is that there's a marriage divide and wealthier

00:04:46.880 people continue to get married.

00:04:49.180 We're less wealthy, lower income people, the marriage rates are dropping off even more than

00:04:55.020 the population as a whole.

00:04:57.260 I think that that speaks to the idea of luxury beliefs, which is a term coined by a scholar,

00:05:02.240 Robert Henderson.

00:05:03.560 He was raised virtually without family in the foster care system in the United States.

00:05:07.380 But those stories also exist here in Canada.

00:05:09.860 So when we're thinking about some of the pressing social issues that we face as a society, be

00:05:14.580 it child poverty, be it rising rates of social isolation or loneliness, the family angle often

00:05:20.580 most often goes totally unmentioned.

00:05:23.400 And so part of the book's effort is to bring the family angle back in, not as a form of judgment or saying

00:05:29.320 everybody must be married, but as a simple research question that we see benefits from this.

00:05:33.480 So why not talk about the institution of marriage?

00:05:36.240 So Andrea, look, you said just a moment ago that for wealthier people, they tend to carry

00:05:43.740 on, get married and have families, but that marriage rates are dropping off among the less

00:05:51.680 prosperous.

00:05:54.060 Which is the cause and which is the effect?

00:05:58.700 Go ahead.

00:06:00.440 I think you know what I'm getting at.

00:06:01.580 Yeah, which is cause and effect.

00:06:04.080 And I think there is different theories on that and you can see factors coming together

00:06:09.580 in a circular way and that it's not, it's a complex issue.

00:06:12.620 And so you might have, you know, simple choices amongst people who are wealthier towards getting

00:06:18.180 married or they're more marriageable.

00:06:20.240 You have the education factor mixed in there, but ultimately we want to see a society where

00:06:25.400 we treat people equally, regardless of education level, regardless of income level, that they,

00:06:29.840 everybody sees marriage as an opportunity for their own family stability, regardless of

00:06:34.940 how we get into the place of seeing less educated or lower income North Americans, really.

00:06:40.900 It says across North America, we see that trend line.

00:06:43.460 We want marriage to be an accessible option to everybody.

00:06:46.900 I'm not sure if your viewers are aware, but there's something called the success sequence

00:06:50.200 and that in the research points to the idea.

00:06:52.900 What is it?

00:06:53.880 What did you just say?

00:06:54.780 There's something called a what?

00:06:55.740 The success sequence, which virtually eliminates the probability that you're ever going to live

00:07:02.900 in poverty.

00:07:03.640 And that is the sequence is a simple one.

00:07:06.420 You finish your schooling first, you get married next, then you have kids after that in that

00:07:11.480 order.

00:07:11.740 And so that, I guess, gets the poverty angle again, as well as some of the differences between

00:07:18.480 high income and low income in marriage rates.

00:07:21.420 But really, we want marriage to be there for everybody and not just a certain segment of

00:07:26.720 society.

00:07:28.260 So in the course of your researches, you must have observed that in this day and age, unlike

00:07:34.420 maybe 20 or 50 years ago, often you have the wife earning or has the ability to earn more 0.99

00:07:44.700 than the husband.

00:07:45.560 So if the woman is earning more than the man, does that tend to make men less anxious to

00:07:52.400 be married?

00:07:53.740 Is it kind of a little power thing going on there that deters them?

00:07:58.040 I don't know about that, Nigel, but I do think there is the sense today that we have, which

00:08:02.580 I would argue is wrongheaded, that we just don't need marriage as much anymore.

00:08:07.860 And that may have something to do with income generation on the part of women and rising opportunities 1.00

00:08:13.620 in the workforce, whether we're in the 2000s or back in the 50s, I think the same thing

00:08:21.460 is at play, which is to say that marriage acts as a future-oriented institution in your

00:08:28.740 life, and it contains the love of partners in it.

00:08:32.140 And that means that we can view marriage more as like an adventure, a Tolkien-style adventure,

00:08:38.400 rather than a rom-com.

00:08:39.840 And you can have a lot of variation in the ways that people live out their marriages.

00:08:45.760 But it is still something that is future-oriented and holding families together, maintaining

00:08:51.480 stability at a greater rate than, say, merely living together.

00:08:55.440 And it remains important regardless of the ways in which people negotiate particular aspects

00:09:01.340 of their married lives.

00:09:02.440 I do know there's research available to suggest that women still, even today, with all of our 0.91

00:09:08.940 earning potential and all of the career opportunities available, which are a good thing, but even

00:09:13.080 today, women would like men who also earn as much or more than they do. 1.00

00:09:18.000 I don't think this is a deal breaker for marriage as an institution.

00:09:21.140 Really, we're getting at that foundational idea of marriage and how it undergirds our social

00:09:26.080 stability and helps us in raising our families and having a source of long-term, like thinking

00:09:34.700 about the long-term in our lives, looking towards the future.

00:09:38.000 I think what you just talked about there is something you refer to in the book as a life

00:09:42.020 script, this sequential, I think you said you finish school and then you get married and

00:09:50.060 then you have children, do it in that order and things go better.

00:09:53.320 Now, I guess one of the questions would be is if you are wanting to do that, do you have

00:10:05.020 to be married?

00:10:05.720 You could still finish school, start a relationship and have children and I know there's a whole

00:10:13.900 lot of people who are out there living in that situation who would say, well, and it works

00:10:18.280 fine for us, but you're saying marriage is better.

00:10:22.940 What's the difference?

00:10:24.560 Yeah, and the answer there is going to be a bit dry and certainly we all have those examples

00:10:28.200 in our lives and perhaps living them ourselves, but the data on the nature of cohabitation just

00:10:35.100 shows that it works itself in the aggregate in spite of the wonderful examples of people

00:10:41.640 who look exactly as if they're married, raising children happily and the data is just not the

00:10:48.320 same.

00:10:48.860 And so I think we can intuitively understand that both can coexist, both can be true, but

00:10:54.060 in the aggregate, people who end up living together have come into that relationship for

00:11:00.080 different reasons.

00:11:00.720 And some of them are very intentional and others slide into a living together arrangement

00:11:06.260 by accident.

00:11:07.220 Maybe they have a child by accident.

00:11:09.340 The intention there is not quite the same.

00:11:11.920 The intentionality, the purposeful nature of it may not be the same.

00:11:15.320 That's actually an advantage of cohabitation.

00:11:17.680 If you want to get in and out quickly, it's really not the same type of commitment as marriage

00:11:25.700 might be in spite of many beautiful examples that we might see around us.

00:11:29.020 So the answer's a bit dry there, simply say that the data doesn't bear out, but they're

00:11:32.560 exactly the same.

00:11:33.820 And so on heated issues and family and marriage can be quite heated because they are so personal.

00:11:41.040 Oftentimes I'm just like, what does the data, what did the data show us?

00:11:44.640 And the data tells us it's not the same thing.

00:11:47.360 Well, being pretty ancient as I am, I grew up in an era when the joke was that men didn't

00:11:54.360 want to get married, but women did. 1.00

00:11:56.900 And it seems to me that just to take that seriously for a moment, for cohabitation without

00:12:05.920 marriage seems, whatever the law says, but seems to a man a kind of lower level of commitment.

00:12:13.400 And I think that's what you just said.

00:12:14.960 And so it makes it more attractive.

00:12:18.440 Now, is that perhaps at the root of why the data, and where are the data you're talking

00:12:25.160 about, it's very clear, the cohabitation, the less successful outcome.

00:12:32.300 But is it the fact that men go into this thing thinking they can get out of it a bit easier?

00:12:36.820 In the cohabitation side of the thing? 1.00

00:12:38.880 Yeah, the law says otherwise, but men often think stupid things. 0.98

00:12:44.520 You know, as you were talking, I thought of some of the feminist literature on marriage, 0.99

00:12:48.060 which has really panned marriage. 0.86

00:12:50.820 You know, second wave feminism and beyond has almost, without exception, said that marriage 1.00

00:12:55.980 is terrible for women, a bit of a prison for women, and that it constrains women. 1.00

00:13:00.620 But that conversation is pushed out the side, saying that what actually marriage can do

00:13:05.300 is constrain men and limit their options in such a way that is beneficial to the woman 1.00

00:13:11.360 and perhaps mother of a child and family, also beneficial to men. 0.97

00:13:16.400 But I often like to bring up that point of marriage as a constraint on men acting as a constraint

00:13:23.600 in a way that we haven't had that conversation, because we're, you know, immersed very much

00:13:28.800 in this, in a lot of the feminist literature on marriage, declaring that it's bad, it's bad 1.00

00:13:34.300 for women.

00:13:34.780 So we have a section in the book talking about the ways in which marriage is beneficial to

00:13:39.560 men alone, and then to women alone, then to children, as if they were separate.

00:13:43.120 But really, that amounts to benefits for everybody, even if it comes through constraints.

00:13:48.200 So endless choices don't always amount to greater happiness.

00:13:52.040 So, you know, hence all the jokes about marriage.

00:13:55.100 Everybody grumbles, and yet so many of us still do it.

00:13:59.240 Look, putting this together, Andrea, you're saying that society at large has an interest

00:14:04.020 in not only marriage, but in stable marriage, and yet that can sound pretty harsh to people

00:14:10.660 who have never been married, but wish to, and to those for whom it's not even something

00:14:15.280 they want.

00:14:17.880 Should everybody be married? 1.00

00:14:20.140 No, absolutely not.

00:14:23.360 It's not a book that compels forced marriage.

00:14:26.400 The question mark remains at the beginning, and we hope that this book is a soft entry point

00:14:30.760 into discussing the ways in which marriage matters without compelling anyone to a particular

00:14:34.780 course of action.

00:14:36.100 But because family is so personal, and it's a place of great joy, but also our deepest wounds,

00:14:41.000 oftentimes we can't even have the conversations that engender, you know, thinking on the subject

00:14:46.800 of marriage.

00:14:47.500 So we haven't even begun to touch on how we consider marriage today as a largely romantic

00:14:52.280 expression.

00:14:53.480 There's a lot of emotion invested in it.

00:14:55.180 We call it the soulmate model of marriage.

00:14:57.440 Our hope is to return to a bit of a more robust model, which is more institutional, and

00:15:02.340 yet at the same time, to return to your question, this is not to say that those who are not married

00:15:07.240 are living lesser lives.

00:15:08.600 I myself got married very, very late in life and feel that the 40 years leading up to that

00:15:16.140 were quite meaningful and fruitful, as it were.

00:15:19.260 So it's a book written without judgment.

00:15:22.280 And if I may toot our own horn just a little bit, we were concerned about the judgment factor

00:15:26.480 in writing it.

00:15:27.700 And one person who's read it is a divorced mother of a 14-year-old, and her own marriage

00:15:34.020 had ended for good reason, and it had been very traumatic for the family.

00:15:38.320 And this divorced mother was going to be giving her 14-year-old daughter a book so that she 0.98

00:15:42.780 could encounter some of these more academic arguments around marriage with a lot of the

00:15:47.760 heat taken out.

00:15:48.960 So I felt quite proud of that to understand that it was a book that spoke to people who

00:15:53.280 have themselves suffered in their marriages.

00:15:55.860 Well, I bet you did feel proud of that.

00:15:57.480 Well done.

00:15:57.860 That's a great compliment.

00:15:59.260 And, you know, if anybody could actually take the subject of marriage and set it on one

00:16:05.100 side and look at it from all angles and come up with a good read, that would be you.

00:16:10.040 So really, really good to hear your comments about it.

00:16:14.300 Andrea, how do people get a copy?

00:16:16.240 And can they get it in time for Christmas?

00:16:18.460 Oh, they can indeed.

00:16:19.540 Yes, just through Amazon is the easiest way.

00:16:21.760 I work for Cardus, and so it's up at cardus.ca as well.

00:16:24.620 But the easiest way is Amazon.

00:16:26.640 Yeah.

00:16:26.840 Okay, well, you know, for all the times that I've talked to people who've written books,

00:16:30.980 oh, get it on Amazon.

00:16:32.060 We really should be tapping up Amazon for some advertising, but there it is.

00:16:36.620 And what a great thing.

00:16:38.800 Speaking as a taxpayer, I sure hope that marriages will last, because when marriages last, they 0.59

00:16:45.220 don't go back and become a charge to the state.

00:16:48.380 And that's when I go back into that contractual argument.

00:16:50.820 But anyway, you have done a wonderful job here in taking this subject apart and putting it back

00:16:57.720 together again.

00:16:58.960 Bless your heart, and it's great to see you, Andrea.

00:17:02.420 Thanks so much.

00:17:03.320 It's good to reconnect with the Western Standard.

00:17:05.580 What's your next project?

00:17:07.560 Oh, gosh.

00:17:08.560 Promoting this one.

00:17:09.360 Okay, well, consider it well done.

00:17:14.580 We've been privileged to have with us Western Standard viewers, Andrea Morozek.

00:17:20.640 She works for Cardus in Ottawa, and it is her job to study and be well-informed about marriage.

00:17:27.340 And she has put it out in a book, and she tells us you can get it via Amazon.

00:17:31.480 It's called I...do question mark, and by Andrea Morozek.

00:17:38.860 Thanks again for coming on, Andrea.

00:17:40.860 And for the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Henneford.

00:18:01.480 Thank you.

Western Standard - December 10, 2024

When you say ＂I do,＂ do you know what you're really doing？

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