These are the dog days of summer. Here are my dogs:
The dogs are what we’re talking about today, sort of. We’re actually talking about the joys of marriage and children. Sadly, my children have abandoned me for the real world, and now these two critters are getting all my displaced love. Luckily, I still have the Long Suffering Stephen™ to keep me on my toes. We talked about him (poor guy), and the general question of marriage when we hosted our colleague Brad Wilcox for a recent WTH live episode. (We didn’t really get into Marc’s dating life and the jacuzzi limo. Look for that in a future post.)
Brad is the author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (Broadside Books, 2024). He feels strongly on this question, and we grilled him in a room full of 20-somethings attending AEI’s incredible Summer Honors Program. A lot of our conversation (highlights below) will be familiar ground to any of you who have thought about marriage, been on a dating site, brought up kids, or otherwise lived a pretty normal life in 2024 USA.
Turns out, boys are playing video games and watching porn. Girls are thinking about their careers first. Almost no one is thinking, “Wait till marriage.” And ever fewer are thinking about marriage itself. I get it; marriage isn’t a panacea, and marrying young has generally been a recipe for divorce. And I have plenty of amazing friends — men and women — who have chosen not to marry for various reasons. Sometimes it’s not in the cards, sometimes the right person just doesn’t come along. But, to channel Arthur Brooks, the data suggests that marriage is a good thing for the people who do choose it.
79 % of married men and 75% of married women report being completely satisfied or very satisfied with their relationship.
In 2020, married mothers ages eighteen to fifty-five had a median family income of $108,000, compared to $41,000 for childless single women of the same age. (Wilcox book)
Average retirement for women in their fifties: $322,000 (married) and $100,000 (single) (Wilcox book)
60% of married mothers aged 18-55 reported their lives were meaningful “most” or “all the time”. Only 36% of single non-married women reported to be. (Wilcox book)
75% of married mothers reported they were satisfied with life, only 54% of single childless women reported to be. (Wilcox book)
The odds of being “very happy” in life are 151% higher for those who are married, compared to those who are single. (Wilcox book)
Married people are, on average, substantially wealthier than their single counterparts. They’re also substantially happier. They live longer. Kids are happier in a two-parent home. Those are good things. And a lot of the counter-arguments are weak: In fact, career success is not a predictor of happiness. Counter to the MSM suggestion (no really) that marriage is a death sentence to young men, the reverse is actually true. Then again, we understand why many might think professional fulfillment and playing the field are amazingly cool ways to live… because, social media.
Too many younger people have a false sense of the happiness of others based on social media habits. Others buy into the fantasy that there’s a Mr/Ms Right out there that they need to wait for. And of course, there’s the incredible detail that Brad shared: Kids don’t know how to date anymore. SMH.
I vaguely remember dating as an ordeal. If someone had offered me a menu of guys I could swipe through, I’m betting I would’ve jumped. But as I said on the pod, the reality is that a photo and a weird bio doesn’t capture a human. I have friends who are not traditionally attractive and whose personalities make them gorgeous. And friends who are gorgeous whose personalities… well, you get it. We all know those people. That’s what dating does — it involves real people in your life.
And kids… sigh. I feel lucky with my four (though not as lucky as Brad with nine children: “How do you get around, Brad?” “One of those airport van things.”). But people can be happy without children, and some people have no choice. Not everyone is destined to be a mother or father. Sometimes they’re just the best aunt or uncle, the best dog mum or dad, the best friend. But one thing is clear: Human beings in our life (vice Insta, TikTok, X, Facebook) make it better.
HIGHLIGHTS
You’re sitting in front of an audience full of young people, why should they get married?
BW: I think a lot of young adults in your position are getting what I call the Midas mindset broadcast to you, and this is the idea that what really matters for you is your education, your work, and building your own brand. There's a lot of polling data now that backs that up, much more important for you than getting married and having a family. So a lot of young adults that I speak to at UVA have the impression and are organizing their lives to focus on education and work, and they haven't really given any real thought to dating and marriage in a serious planful way.
So I think what they don't recognize and don't realize is that when it comes to the data, that there is no better predictor of things like meaning and not being alone and especially happiness than a good marriage.
Why has there been such a dramatic decline in marriage rates among young people?
BW: When it comes to understanding why there's been a dramatic decline in the marriage rate and a rise in the young adults who are not married and won't be married going forward, I would think about really four different sets of factors. One is the increasingly secular character of our society. Obviously, religion's a big driver of marriage, and so there are less religious young adults out there. That's one factor. I think another big factor, as you guys were touching on already, is just the way in which our culture is turned into more individualistic direction and this idea that what really matters is what makes me happy often even in the moment rather than what's good for my family, good for my friends, and more familistic mindset, which is more common before the 1970s in this country.
I think a third factor that emerged is the way in which, it's tied to the economy, are young men are really floundering relative to young women, especially young men who don't have a college degree. They're much more likely to be working not full-time, and that's still a pretty big predictor of getting married today and staying married. So there's a male malaise issue that I think is really salient here. And then the final thing that I would mention is the way in which is, per your point about public policy, the way in which too many of our public policies end up penalizing marriage for working class couples with kids.
So these different factors among others have all unintentionally pushed the marriage rate down. And then I think, basically, there's gasoline now on this dynamic, which is smartphones and social media. I mean, because they are essentially undercutting our capacity to engage in an in-person basis to hang out, to date, et cetera, that's an issue. And then also, social media now is polarizing young women and young men as I think everyone here knows.
So what's happening is that the social media algorithms are pushing young women to the left ideologically and often pushing young men a little bit to the right or a lot to the right, depending upon which algorithm you're on. Of course, that doesn't help in terms of facilitating relationships because it is the case that we tend to be more likely to succeed in a dating relationship than in a marriage when we're roughly on the same page when it comes to religion or ideology or whatever, these core values that would orient our lives.
What are our young men doing if they are not working or going on dates?
BW: A large minority of young men are in this position of I call boys in the basement, who are living in their parents' basement or living in their girlfriend's apartment as it might be as well, and they're not working full-time, they're not attending college, they're just getting by. They're doing the things you mentioned, but also often doing a lot of gaming as well.
What’s causing this “boys in the basement” phenomenon?
BW: I talk about our electronic opiates have become a lot more enticing. They're drawing young men in with games that appeal to their interest in being a White knight or a fighter and doing some adventure.
There's a way in which our schools are really not doing a good job with boys. I was just at a graduation for my middle school kids, and of the four top awards that were given out to the kids, three were given to girls and one to boys. There's a way in which our schools unfortunately are not, and it's not intentional usually, but they're just oriented in terms of the ethos and the lack of recess and the kinds of books they're selecting to really speak more to girls than to boys, and that has an impact on, I think, on boys' ability to succeed in our schools.
Are we teaching our youth how to date? And how is hookup culture affecting the path towards marriage?
BW: Most cultures and most civilizations have, and they've done it differently obviously in different ways, but they have given everyone this age a script about how to navigate relationships with an eye towards marriage. And really since the '60s, we've jettisoned that project as a culture and it's just made it much more difficult for young adults your age to figure out how do you get together.
So I think the challenge has become even more salient with smartphones because I think part of the deal with dating is that it requires, generally speaking, young men to ask young women out on a date. Today, I think when guys do that and they're less inclined to do it for obvious reasons, but when they do do that, they're often seen as creeps, especially in the wake of the Me Too movement. And yet we know from polling both at large, but also even in my large classes at UVA, it's still the case that women would prefer that the guys would ask them out on a date.
How do young people perceive the importance of marriage today?
BW: We're hearing a lot of voices on the left telling us that marriage is a bad deal for young women. And in fact, we've got a poll here from AEI telling us that young women generally think that marriage and motherhood are a bad deal for them in terms of happiness. So that's one message we're getting-
DP: Which is crazy, by the way.
BW: Places like the New York Times and Bloomberg have run articles, I mean, Atlantic have run articles in this spirit. And then now from the right though, we're getting messages from people kind of online like Andrew Tate and Pearl Davis are telling us that for young men, marriage is a bad deal. I mean, Pearl calls it a death sentence for young men, and Andrew Tate says that there's zero statistical advantage for young men when it comes to marriage.
So the takeaway, I think, from both the left and the right, although for women and men separately, is that you should steer clear of marriage and instead focus again on your job, making a lot of money, for Tate, getting strong and all that kind of stuff, but what they don't acknowledge and don't realize is that for the average man and woman today, those who get married and have kids are happier in their prime of life, 18 to 55, than their peers who are single and childless, and that stably married men and women are markedly more prosperous than their never married peers.
So in their '50s, I'm 53, guys who are stably married have about 10 times the assets as their never married male peers, and the same thing is true for women in terms of household assets. So there's just no question that in the real world, if you can be stably married, and that's an important caveat, we can talk about that, but you're just in a much better place when it comes to finances, when it comes to happiness, when it comes to your risk of being lonely, your sense that your life is meaningful.
Are we seeing any consequences due to the decline in marriage rates?
BW: So we've also seen, obviously, in part because the marriage rates come down as you were saying before, we're also seeing fertility reach record lows in the US, and now we're seeing about 1.6 babies per woman being born on average in the US, and that's below the replacement rate of 2.1. And what that means more practically for your demographic broadly defined is about one in four young adults today are predicted to never have kids. Again, we're in record territory for the United States here. We've never had so much kinlessness is how I would describe it, projected for young adults. So that's sort what's happening, again, it's part because marriage is in retreat, but I think it's also the case too that people are focusing more on their work in their 20s and early 30s and less than starting a family.
What do Americans think is more important than marriage?
BW: It's important to know too, again, most Americans, particularly younger adults your age think that work is a better predictor of happiness and fulfillment than is marriage, and yet what we see is that in the book is that being married predicts happiness better than being employed. There's nothing in the data like a good marriage when it comes to predicting happiness, not money, not sexual frequency, not religious attendance, not self-rated health. These are all things that predict happiness, but nothing in the data predicts happiness like a good marriage. So I think we just got to recognize that we should be focusing as young adults more on this next chapter of our lives in terms of marriage and dating and whatnot.
You discuss what you call the “soulmate myth” in your book, how does the expectation that you will find your soulmate affect your pursuit of finding a partner you can marry?
BW: I think Americans who have this more soulmatey model of marriage, that thinks about it in terms of just this incredible romantic emotional connection are often disappointed to realize that the person they thought was the perfect fit for them annoys them in certain small discrete ways or there's conflict over a work and family or there's some other major issue that emerges. And if you have this more soulmatey view of marriage, you're going to find these difficult moments, which are natural for any marriage, to be much more difficult to navigate. Whereas if you've recognize that marriage is about many different goods and it's also about you putting the welfare fair of your spouse first, you're much more likely to be successful in not only being stably married, but also actually being happily married because you don't think about marriage only in a romantic way.
How is marriage better for kids?
BW: I talk about this idea of the family diversity myth in the book. It's this idea that what matters for kids is not having a ring on your finger for both parents, not marriage, not family structure, but what matters for our kids basically is love and money, love and money. And so any kind of configuration for kids is fine, so long as the adults in the household love the kids and have access to adequate financial resources. This is the more progressive take on family oftentimes today. So what we need to do when it comes to policies is just give families more money and encourage people to be loving basically is the takeaway in simple terms, obviously.
What that doesn't, I think, recognize and appreciate is that generally speaking on average, kids are more likely to flourish when they're raised by their own intact married parents. I'm working on a piece right now with my colleague, Sam Herron, looking at incarceration and college graduation for young men in America today. One of the striking things we're finding across two different datasets now is that for boys who are raised apart from an intact married family, they're more likely to land in prison or in jail today than they are to graduate from college. And by contrast, boys are raised in intact married family are about four times in one day to set more likely to graduate from college than they are to end up in prison or in jail at some point before the age of about 30.
What policies should Washington consider to both help families and help people get married?
BW: When it comes to family policy in general, as your question indicates, we're a lagger when it compares to countries like Canada, for instance, and many European countries as well. I do think we could both improve the size of the child tax credit. We could also and should pass paid maternal leave as well to address the challenges of being a new mother and to also give moms opportunities to bond with their babies as well. So there are a couple of things like that that would be helpful to do.
I think the challenge is just that we're living, and Marc has written about a suite of family policies that are in the spirit, I think, in part of answering your question too earlier in the post, but we're living, as everyone here knows, in a world where there's just so much profound political polarization that it's hard for people to find common ground on Capitol Hill. I actually think that if we have a unified Republican or actually Democratic Congress and president in the next Congress, that we'd probably make some headway on the kinds of policies that I think your question is hinting at, including on paid parental leave or paid maternal leave.
Read the transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (Brad Wilcox, Broadside Books, February 13, 2024)
Here's the Average Age of Marriage in the US, According to Data (Esther Lee, The Knot, April 30, 2024)
Is Marriage Better for Men? (Daniel Cox, AEI’s Survey Center on American Life, November 30, 2023)
A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married (Pew Research Center, June 28, 2023)
Americans are waiting longer and longer to get married (Daniel De Vise, The Hill, June 5, 2023)
America the single (Axios, February 25, 2023)
Are Americans marrying enough? (Peder Schafer, Politico, March 29, 2024)
Political divides cut through marriages and families in the run-up to the 2024 election (Brad Wilcox on the PBS News Hour, March 13, 2024)
‘I Said, ‘What’s Your Plan About Marriage and Dating?’ And There Was Silence.’ (Jane Coaston, The New York Times, February 26, 2024)
Back from the brink: The intellectual tide is turning on marriage and civil society (Chris Bullivant and Brad Wilcox, Deseret News, April 17, 2024)
The closing of the American heart (Brad Wilcox, Deseret News, April 30, 2024)
The American Heart Is Closing to Marriage and Family. Can Red States Change That? (Bradford Wilcox, Washington Examiner, May 15, 2024)
‘Get Married’ and ‘Family Unfriendly’ Review: The Case for Wedlock (Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, March 8, 2024)
Can People Be Persuaded to ‘Get Married’? (Elizabeth Grace Matthew, The Dispatch, February 17, 2024)
This issue distresses me. Choosing not to have children is pessimistic. It also distresses me that we to often turn to government first for solutions. Replacing the family with the state is the problem. The best remedy is to live a virtuous family life exposed to the world as a guide for others.
What beautiful dogs! 😍