Why Your Community Needs Healthy Marriages

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Collin Hansen
Stop me if you’ve heard this story. Marriage followed by childbearing is the path most likely to lead to a happy, meaningful life for most of us. Compared to Americans who don’t attend church, religiously observant, say they’re happier, less lonely, and find more satisfaction and meaning in life. shared faith matters more to a quality a marriage than education, income or political ideology. The major increase in divorce can be traced back to the 1970s with the introduction of the soul mate model of marriage, but religious attendance can reduce your risk of divorce by up to 50%. Women in particular report greater happiness with family responsibilities compared to freedom to prioritize work and travel over marriage and children. Of course, that’s what you hear on TV talk shows watching popular movies reading best selling health self help books, right? Oh, no, of course, not what you hear in any of those venues. But it is what the survey data actually tells us from people. And you can see it for yourself in the new book get married, why Americans must defy the elites forge strong families, and save civilization by the eminent sociologist Brad Wilcox. Now you can see from that ambitious subtitle that Wilcox is writing about a watershed of the highest magnitude as he puts it, quote, a shift away from marriage and all the fruits that follow from this most fundamental social institution, children can financial stability and innumerable opportunities to love and be loved by another. For the first time in American history, less than half of adults are married, and the birth rate has never been lower, resulting in 7 million fewer babies since the great recession. And Wilcox has been a professor of sociology and Director of the National marriage Project at the University of Virginia for the past 15 years. And while he doesn’t focus in this book on his personal story, he did grow up with a single mother after his father died when he was three and he’s now raising a family with his wife. Wilcox makes his bold claim in his book, quote, nothing less than the future of our civilization depends on more Americans succeeding in this most fundamental social institution. And in a world where trust is falling, loneliness is soaring. And economic inequality is endemic. Nothing may matter more for your future and the sake of your children than forming, feeding and enjoying your own family first marriage. Now Brad Wilcox joins me now on gospel bound to discuss the role of churches and reinforcing the values and virtues of good families. The modern priority on money and free time and and the to parent privilege among many other subjects. No doubt, Brad, thanks for joining me on gospel bound.

Brad Wilcox
Great to be here today. Colin,

Collin Hansen
I’ve read your book is is full of compelling sometimes shocking. And I gotta admit, sometimes depressing statistics. But there’s one that stood out to me. In fact, I was at a dinner party on Sunday night, and I mentioned it because it was so shocking to me. I’d seen it before we actually wrote an article about it by Keith Simon last year at the gospel coalition. But it’s this pew recently revealed that only 21% of parents believe it’s important for their kids to get married, even fewer 20% said it’s important for their kids to have children. Now, by contrast, 88% said it’s important for their children to be financially independent and have a career they enjoy. I’m wondering, Brad, does this mean parents regret their own decisions to marry and have children? Is that what’s going on?

Brad Wilcox
Yeah, that’s a great question, Colin. I mean, I think part of what’s happening here is that Americans think that, you know, the most important kind of foundation for a family is, you know, a good job and a steady stream of income. So that’s, I think, partly what sort of shaping this you know, this surprising set of statistics from Pew, but I do think kind of at a deeper level, there’s, there’s kind of what I call a Midas mindset out there. Where you know, so many Americans think that what really matters is education, work, money building their own brand, and They’ve kind of, you know, discounted the importance of friendship and family, as you know, key life goals and key life priorities. So, and we do see kind of in this sort of broader sociological research on this whole issue, that the rise of these devices, you know, has been pretty important. And I would say pushing, you know, too many folks in the direction of this minus mindset, rather than a more marriage minded mindset.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, well, we’ll come back to these things. A couple of our other previous and frequent guests have been Jean Twiggy, and Jonathan Hite. So a lot of people who are doing similar excellent work to you in sociology and psychology on these subjects. You close a chapter of your book with this question, I think it encapsulates much of your books thesis. And of course, anybody who has followed your work over the over the course of the last decade plus, like I have, you see has come up really often in your work. And you and you ask this question, why do people who privately benefit from the value of marriage work so hard in public to deny or downplay the truth about our most fundamental institution? Now? A lot of people have opinions and you have your own views about why that is? I’m specifically wondering, is there any way to answer this question from the data? In other words, what where are they coming from? why would why would they do this? What do they what do they say that they’re doing?

Brad Wilcox
Yeah, Colin. So we do see that there is a kind of ideological story playing out here and a religious story here playing out as well. And it’s touched on in the book, but I have got some newer kind of evidence, indicating, for instance, that this sort of idea that marriage doesn’t matter, for kids, for instance, is much more likely to be held by college educated progressives, than any other group in the country. And by contrast, college educated conservatives are much more likely to believe that marriage and kids, you know, still go together like horse and carriage. So about 90% of college educated conservatives think that marriage is so important for kids, and only 30% of college educated liberals, you know, hold to that view. And then folks who are less educated, you know, falling between with obviously, the less educated liberal is being, you know, less concerned about marriage, and the less educated conservatives being more likely to be marriage minded. But what we do see is that I think kind of high levels of education and a progressive worldview, certainly push one in the direction of sort of minimizing the importance of marriage as a public ethic that would ground and guide our, our families and our common life more generally,

Collin Hansen
but not as a private practice. And that

Brad Wilcox
is the great irony. So I’ve got a piece coming out in the Atlantic on how a lot of American elites are talking left on family issues, and then walking, right, personally privately. And I talked about the way in which we did a survey in California that found that, you know, California and college educated folks, were the most likely to embrace an ethic of family diversity for kind of their public ethic, but much more likely to personally value having their own children in marriage. And we looked at them and demographically in California, and found that, you know, not surprisingly, college educated Californians had high levels of stable married families. In fact, they had higher levels of marital stability than the country at large. So even we found that there’s this one paper at the center of Hollywood, that has an exceptionally high level of two parent families compared to both California and compared to the country at large. So I think what’s happening here, in part is that people who are well educated are kind of getting the signals, you know, from their professors, from mainstream media, oftentimes now from social media as well, that you should be, you know, tolerant to family diversity, that you should recognize that families have changed a great deal since the 1970s, that you should sort of support an ethic of choice and freedom in the personal sphere. And so all of that kind of basically propels them towards embracing a broadly progressive, you know, position for their kind of public morality. But at the same time, I think there’s a recognition pragmatically, that getting married and staying married is the best thing for oneself, you know, socially, emotionally, certainly financially, and the best thing for one’s children. And then, of course, we are social animals, Calum, as you know, and what our, what our peers are doing ends up being hugely important. And so the irony is that, you know, again in California even we find this in our analysis of communities is that a lot of these elite neighborhoods are populated by a lot of married parent families. And so people again talk left in public but walk right in private.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think one thing that stands out to me as I travel around and and observe these things, I I live in a community that’s perhaps the most uniformly highly educated and conservative in the country. If not, it’s one of the top. And but if you were to look at it from the outside in the ways that you’re talking about in this book, it would look very similar to many other highly educated liberal communities that I’ve lived in, especially the north north shore of Chicago as an example. So let’s just take Lake Forest, Illinois, and mountain Brook, Alabama, from everything you’re talking about would look very similar. And yet ideologically, would be on two different ends of the spectrum in a lot of ways. And so that’s part of that seems to be some of the the, the observation you’ve been trying to get people to realize, for a long time, is the way that publicly speaking that the left will often talk progressive, but live conservative, and so need to look at what they do, not what they say. Yeah,

Brad Wilcox
although it’s interesting, I think, and certainly, you know, I grew up in a relatively progressive world in Connecticut, and as you can probably guess, become more conservative as an adult. But, you know, kind of what we see among more conservative and progressive college educated Americans is that they often live fairly similar lifestyles, right? Yeah. But they do kind of have different ways of interpreting their lives and different politics and different

Collin Hansen
parenting, but they do parent different, that’s yet to be an emerging dementia. Sorry. That’s

Brad Wilcox
right. No, no, you’re right. But one thing that we see in the in the data is that conservative and very conservative, and especially religiously conservative folks are tend to be kind of the happiest spouses and their teams report the greatest levels of happiness. And there’s what we see in the data as a J curve for both marital happiness. And we just published a link from a guy, a Gallup showing the same thing for teenagers. So kids being raised in conservative homes, especially the most conservative homes are, which I think more educated oftentimes, are the happiest, but then there’s the kind of the kids being raised in liberal and moderate homes and spouses in the liberal and moderate kind of category, the least happy. But then the very liberal spouses and very liberal teens are, at least on these two outcomes, marital happiness in general happiness with, you know, their parent relationship doing better. So I think you have a lot of well educated liberals to who are in their own ways, sort of managing to forge a pretty family centered way of life that is good for them and their kids. Perhaps

Collin Hansen
the level of indication indicates a certain level of intentionality with life choices. Yeah.

Brad Wilcox
Yep. No, I think anyway, I mean, it’s, in some ways, just having a clear worldview, that has some relevance for your family, I think is enormous ly helpful. And, you know, progressives who are fairly egalitarian and family centered, I think, have a certain way, I talked about this in New York Times piece of years ago, of generating male familial involvement, but from a kind of progressive position. Whereas more conservative religious Americans have a different way of kind of generating male family engagement, that’s also valuable, and probably, you know, given the data even more valuable.

Collin Hansen
Well, another thing I was going to observe on that point is that, well, my community would look pretty similar to a Lake Forest, Illinois, but might vote quite differently in some ways, interestingly, that within Alabama, two different communities that would vote very similarly will look very different on this front. And education is the primary differentiation between the two, which the income tends to go along with that in many cases. Now, at the beginning of my last season, a gospel bound, my guest was the psychologist Jean 20. I referred to her earlier. And we discussed the generational shift that you’ve already brought up here. It’s the shift from intrinsic values, namely family and community to extrinsic values, mainly money and job. And I’m wondering how this plays into the same dynamics, we were just talking about their the way the ruling class talks about family, in the media, the academy in the government, because one of the things that you observe that I would agree with is that it seems that there’s an undermining of the way that middle and working class families can build a happy, meaningful life based on intrinsic values, when a lot of the extrinsic goals remain out of reach, in part because of the income inequity that you referred to earlier. So how does that work downstream on the education and income level where, historically speaking, a lot of the value was placed on you can still have a meaningful life based on these intrinsic values? I mean, is it the smartphone again, here that comes into play or what? How do you explain this phenomenon? Yeah,

Brad Wilcox
so the book even talks about both kind of class and culture is sort of crucial, you know, predictors of the quality and stability of family life. So I think for a lot of working class and poor Americans, the economic shifts of the last half century have been pretty difficult to navigate. We’ve seen especially men, their connection to the labor force really erode where you know that one in four men who don’t have a college degree are not employed full time in that in those prime years of life. And that means they’re less attractive as potential husbands, it means that if they are married, they’re more likely to end up in divorce court. So I think part of the story here that’s playing out as both kind of an economic and a gendered story where we’re seeing in many working class communities, the men’s financial position is eroding their position and labor force is eroding, even as the their wives or girlfriends position has increased in the last couple of decades. So they bring less to the table relatively than they once did. And that’s a source of frustration, I think, for many of their wives and partners, and it can erode their own self confidence as well. I talked in the book about how, you know, the China trade agreement, for instance, played a role in and undercutting the, the employment prospects for a lot of working class men throughout the US as one example of this process, but we’ve just kind of been seeing a shift driven by automation and global trade, and other factors that have tended to erode the place, especially of men and all this now, what are the things that I would say that I think is, and this is where technology you mentioned, technology comes in, is I think we’re now seeing smartphones and gaming devices, you know, kind of undercut young men’s commitment to work and their experience with work as both teenagers and 20 Something guys in ways that are hurting them and hurting their romantic and marital prospects. So that’s another kind of newer piece. And I talked to a number of, you know, local business owners here. And they were just having a lot of difficulty getting guys in the door, who will show up at 830. And stay, you know, three to four, Monday through Friday. And that’s important, because you know, that our new technological devices are not fostering that same kind of, you know, commitment and experience with with work,

Collin Hansen
well, doesn’t this coincide. Then Brad, also, with the rise of the meritocratic ruling culture, meaning that more or less you can you can achieve whatever you set out to be able to do? And the goal is to be able to have financial freedom, independence, all that sort of stuff? So doesn’t it seem like we’ve been pushing toward the focus on extrinsic values, while at the same time, a lot of these men’s financial position has eroded relative to women and relative to its own because of these economic changes. So that actually seems like not just an economic story, but almost like a pincer movement from the social side? Money and freedom is what matters with the Oh, and it’s harder for you as a man to be able to be successful. There are two separate issues. Yeah, I

Brad Wilcox
think it’s a fair point that you’re making here. And that is it. I think, with the rise of social media, especially we’re kind of in some ways, a much more materialistic society. You know, I talked about the minus mindset. And I think the minus mindset is kind of propagated on social media and very powerful and profound ways. And if you’re not kind of killing it financially, it can be, you know, either soul crushing, or at least kind of discouraging, you know, in ways that kind of could affect one’s spirit and one’s romantic and mural prospects.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you become an undesirable prospect in that case, as well. Right. As a man, maybe this is the time to jump in as well. I kind of take it for granted, because I’ve followed your work so closely for so long. But you also see, I mean, you’re observing this is not the major focus of the book, of course, but you’re observing a major challenge that we’re facing, with young men becoming more conservative, under these under these conditions, young women becoming more liberal under these conditions. And this is the key point. political ideology, especially bitter from women’s perspective, is a bridge that they are unwilling to cross in marriage. Did I? Did I summarize that accurate?

Brad Wilcox
Great point. So one of the points that I make at the end of get married is that we are seeing ideological polarization. And I just reported on a new study from about new theories and findings from Gallup yesterday on this. And so what I wrote about in the Atlantic on this in a different article is just the way in which for women who are clearly liberal and for men who are clearly conservative and are single and you know, young adults, you know, looks like you know, maybe about 40% of them 50% on them depending upon you know, the sex and what quadrant they’re in liberal, you know, politically liberal and we’re gonna have difficulty finding enough liberal men, you know, if they’re strongly liberal And then conservative men, likewise are going to have difficulty finding enough conservative women. And this is just sort of one more factor that’s making it more challenging for young adults today to, you know, to get married.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. And that which, of course, is the point of your book. And I think it’s important to offer people some context here, which is that historically, other reasons that people have not gotten married include ethnicity, and religion. But those do not seem to be any concern whatsoever. For younger generations, they don’t they, I mean, I would have a concern about that on the religion side of things as a Christian, but the generations don’t seem to think much of that, let alone across Catholic Protestant divides, but even across other religions. So it’s just to say that as those differentiations have decreased, the political ideology seems to have increased quite a bit, you don’t see as many scenarios like the one that I grew up with, with parents voting for different parties.

Brad Wilcox
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that, you know, we’ve seen kind of politics in some ways, take the position that religion once held in the sort of hearts and minds of many Americans, and that’s also sort of shaping how they’re approaching, dating and meeting as well. Now, I think it’s in terms of like, practically, that’d be kind of give people advice, if they’re young adults in their kind of thinking about dating. I think that the big thing that I would say, of course, is it Hamana me, we call them Algemene. Sociology matters. So sort of sharing common values, common interests, hobbies, you know, things that make for a marital friendship over the years over the decades. Now, when it comes to politics, what I would say is, if you can kind of have a civil disagreement about politics, but you have roughly similar perspectives on kind of work, and family and kids and how you want to raise your children, I don’t see it as a major obstacle. But I think we are seeing plenty of cases where politics is closely linked to sort of gender ideology, family, you know, expectations, etc. And so if you’re not on the same page, when it comes to sort of how many kids you’d like to have, or if you’d like to have children, how you want to raise young kids who’s gonna stay at home with anyone to stay at home, and all that kind of stuff. That’s where the rubber really hits the road. And I think I would encourage couples who are getting serious to make sure that they’re on the same page, ideally, religiously, but also in terms of their expectations about no kids and work.

Collin Hansen
That’s a really good point. I’m glad you emphasize that, because I’ve also seen that, you know, interestingly, when I mentioned my parents, they did share that they shared that common view of work and culture and family. And that’s and but they didn’t vote for the same party. However, I have seen among peers that when they don’t vote for the same party, now, all of a sudden, it’s totally different views of all kinds of different things. And you mentioned some of those things like gender ideology in there, or number of kids or work expectations, or all that kind of stuff. And and that underscores part of what I’ve been picking up here and there as well is the response from pediatricians beginning to notice significantly different outcomes with kids based on whether the parents are liberal or conservative. We’re almost inhabiting two different parenting cultures. Right?

Brad Wilcox
So yeah, so Leonard Sachs is kind of written about this as a as a pediatrician, I think and as you’re kind of touching on and he finds that, you know, there’s just this major gap emerging where conservative parents are still more comfortable exercising discipline and progressive parents are having, they’re just more reluctant to be authoritative. And that’s actually not good for them or their kids. Right?

Collin Hansen
Yeah, exactly. I’ve had I mean, when you’re talking with other parents of young kids, it makes a big difference when you’re talking about, you know, your child is facing a hard thing. Do you encourage them to press through? And to fight through that? Or do you encourage them to say, no, no, you don’t have to, you know, don’t don’t do it if you don’t want to, and that goes back to what heights and others have written Lukianoff written around the coddling of the American mind and, and whatnot. Let me next question I had here in conversations about public policy, social justice predictors, such as education, government spending, and race, those are the those are the factors that typically predominate. And we’ve heard a lot about privilege, which especially related to ethnicity. And yet, as you point out in the book, marriage and family will often tell you more about outcomes on those justice questions positive and negative. And so you say that the ultimate privilege is when quote, both parents are on hand to love you day in day out, share life, joys and frustrations and devote their combined financial resources to your home, your extracurriculars, and your your schooling. And I have to say with with all of the seeming increase of demands and expectations, many of them good for parents. It’s just very hard to be a parent at all, and to keep your kid going into this circumstance without both for them being there and bought in. So the big question then Brad is why wouldn’t our society including our politics, or governments encourage marriage and childbearing as, as a primary way perhaps the primary to help way to help alleviate poverty, school dropouts, violence and incarceration? Why wouldn’t we do that?

Brad Wilcox
Yeah, we’ll call it first one is kind of underlying though this idea because it’s so foreign to what I would tend to hear here at the University of Virginia. And, you know, if I’m reading the New York Times, which I do regularly, kind of, with a couple of exceptions, right. So that, you know, when you read a New York Times story about schooling, for instance, or the SATs, or Washington Post, when you hear, you know, people at the University of Virginia talking about social justice, they tend to focus a lot on race and money as the key drivers. And then sometimes in things like you mentioned, like, you know, public spending or other kinds of, you know, school equality. And these are, these are all important things, obviously, no doubt, but when it comes to the drop in American happiness, since 2000, when it comes to the the state of the American dream, when it comes to the racial divide in poverty. And when it comes to trends in in child poverty across the states, the number one factor in all these things is not race. It’s not parental education. In the UK, it’s not money, it’s it’s family structure. And so we see from worker Raj Chetty to Harvard, that the number one predictor of mobility for poor kids in communities across the US is the share of two parent families. We see from Johnson and that the biggest driver of growth, growing racial inequality and poverty is family structure. We see from a new study the research Chicago that the biggest factor driving happiness down in America is that a client in the marriage rate in the US so I think it’s important for people to realize that in this whole social justice conversation, that we can’t kind of exclude marriage and family from that conversation. I think we do so because unfortunately, you know, marriage has become coded as a right wing issue. As a Republican issue, to some extent, it’s been coded as a racial issue. And those, you know, factors as well as the fact that we Americans tend to prioritize our liberty, individual choice over obligations to Karen’s and can, makes it hard for us as Americans to really confront the importance of family and all these social justice questions.

Collin Hansen
This is a big question, but I’m not looking for a long answer, though. I know it could be but can you actually from a government perspective, incentivize marriage and childbearing?

Brad Wilcox
So I think one important critique that sort of issued against sort of my perspective or challenge, I should say is, yeah, Brad, I mean, Isabel Sol is a great colleague at Brookings, for instance, fine economists. And she would say everything that you’re saying basically, is, in terms of the value of marriage, and kids is on the money. But there’s really not much the government can do right now to kind of reverse the tide on this. And to that, I would say, Well, we actually haven’t really tried that much. And there was the bush Healthy Marriage initiative. And they were investing, you know, millions of dollars in in programs that were kind of reaching lower income couples to help them develop stronger relationship skills. And actually evidence on that stronger than a lot of people would acknowledge, but it’s, you know, it’s it’s a fairly kind of modest undertaking to think about it as just sort of reaching a relatively small share of the American population. What I would say is let’s reorient the incentives that people are kind of facing when it comes to our means tested programs, for instance, away from often penalizing marriage, as they often do today, to even providing a kind of a modest incentive for being married. So just to kind of give you a concrete example, in the book, I talked about a couple who did not. They were cohabitating, their two daughters, and I asked him what’s going on here? And he said, Well, we, you know, we get health insurance through Medicaid here in Virginia, and we’re ready to kind of get married, we’d lose access to Medicaid, and that would, you know, blow a hole in our budget, you know, for for the mom and the two daughters. I was at a restaurant here in Charlottesville recently, and the same scenario was playing out with the waitress and one of the cooks there who had heard me talking about marriage issues. So the point I’m making is that some of our public policy firms currently are doing harm to marriage by penalizing marriage. So I think we could kind of realign a lot of Republican senators to make them more marriage friendly. And there actually is one agency, actually the biggest federal agency that over the years has had a tremendously positive, you could argue effect on marriage, and that is the US Department of Defense. So military, you know, folks and veterans have much higher marriage rates than the general population. There racial gap in the military marriage is much smaller. And the class gap is as well. Now, there are obviously other issues in terms of deployments and trauma and things like that. But it just shows us that the US military does not give housing benefits doesn’t give health benefits to cohabiting couples of kids. Only married families have kids. And the consequence is much more marriage in the military. So we already have, I think, evidence that if we were more kind of intentional about structures, more policies in ways that were marriage friendly, that could pay some bigger dividends.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, that’s that’s I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about that. In that way. Even though you do refer to this in the book, I was more familiar with some of the medical ACSs critiques and things like that related to sort of the back end of the Scandinavian, the Nordic model of like they’ve tried, and it isn’t working, as well. But you give a good example of their of where it where it has, and where, again, a lot of those other gaps, economic racial, things like that have been have been closed, compared to the rest of society

Brad Wilcox
much more. And, of course, it’s important to recognize at the end of day, this is much more of a cultural challenge than a policy challenge. But it would certainly help if our policies didn’t penalize marriage for working, especially working class folks, kind of in that 25 to $55,000. Household income bracket.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, well, there’s a whole other side of things that says, well, all of the marriage changes are downstream from previous government policies, in some of the economic things that you’ve mentioned there, or racism or things like that. So that’s why it’s an important conversation for everybody who’s watching and listening out there is because the typical liberal perspective is that marriage is sort of the end of all of these other factors of racism of, of government spent, you know, government inequities, and things like that. And so there is a clear interplay between the two, but we’ve got to really investigate the data to be able to see, to work through that for anybody who’s wanting to deal with this on a local or, or, or national level. Here’s another area, this is probably just more out of my own experience with young kids in my community. But explain to us more about the Neo traditional model of marriage. And you say that women still tend to prefer men who provide and protect but of course, it’s not the 1950s. They also want men who will be emotionally and practically attentive to them and to their children they want they want a partner. I’m asking him an obvious question, is this a good development? Because I can see many advantages. But I also see a lot of families that are run ragged with activities and trips. And interestingly, now I see more conversations about condense, have it all. We’ve had the whole can moms have a conversation that keeps going, but now it’s a little bit more like, Can dads have it all? I see them trying to do this and feeling like they’re never enough? So one way to put it as do we expect too much of the family today? Yeah,

Brad Wilcox
good question. So I think one important point to make is that there’s been kind of like this message in, you know, in much of the pop culture and in more elite context, as well, that kind of has been advancing a fairly egalitarian view about how everything’s going to be divided. And it suggests that there aren’t kind of distinctive desires or needs on the part of women and men in today’s marriages. And so what I found in my chapter on gender is that when it comes to what women are looking for in a marriage, or they seem to be most likely to be thriving in when it comes to married life, is a relationship where their husband or boyfriend, just judging from research more generally, is physically strong and protective of them in certain contexts. Like if they’re out in a, you know, at a, you know, a city street late at night, for instance, and I give an example of a couple on the subway, you know, where this sort of plays out, and he’s protective, and that’s valued by her. So there’s a certain physical strength that I don’t think we talked about much and in public anymore, but that still is valued by women in the part of their boyfriends and husbands. But yes, providership is still so valued by women, when it comes to who they marry, and then who they stay married to. What’s different, though, today is that it’s not so much how much money he makes, it’s just that he’s, he’s, he’s reliably employed full time. But that’s sort of that’s the criteria. Now, it’s not the share of income. So that tells us that her working is not an obstacle to marital quality for today’s couples. And that’s a new thing. Obviously, that’s a NEO thing. But then the other piece, obviously, is that I find that kind of his engagement practically and emotionally in the relationship. And then with the kids is is predictive of her marital happiness. So that’s what I kind of talked about, you know, basically protecting, providing, and, you know, being attentive as things that are all kind of the nutritional mix today for women. Now, are there situations where today’s moms and dads are oversubscribed? I think yep. Plenty especially more upper middle class families where you’ve got work and school and travel soccer and, you know, for some church and just kind of like handling all these different activities in the juggle, you know, is is too much. And so I think you know many of us in that kind of predicament I’m certainly guilty as charged, you know, there are kind of struggling to figure out what we can drop from the juggler. And I would encourage all of us, myself included, to be thoughtful about, you know, trying to, I think, especially in the sports side is thinking about, you know, what’s really necessary and what’s not. So

Collin Hansen
we just, we just published an article at the gospel coalition about club sports and why one family had pulled out. It’s one of the most popular articles that we’ve published in the last two years. I mean, talk to any pastor talk to any youth pastor, and you’re gonna hear a lot about this. It’s a, it’s a major change. And you’re right, more middle class, upper middle class, families affected by it, in part because they can afford to do it, but it’s a major, major shift.

Brad Wilcox
So this is where I actually adjust immunity, I would love to see an athletic world where there were more just local teams, and you’re not traveling. And the and the leagues are much more financially accessible to everybody. So just the problem is that right now, if you have a child who’s athletically inclined, the system is all geared towards pushing them towards travel, right, which is expensive and more elitist,

Collin Hansen
and very hard for the family. And the family has to basically divide and conquer the kids are torn, every which way the parents are rarely together. So that’s a huge, huge change. Now, Brad, this this part is just anecdotal. So I’m wondering if the data is, is a matching this? When I was growing up, I would occasionally hear of a man leaving his family. For a younger woman, it’s the stereotypical babysitter or a secretary phenomenon? I don’t hear that as much today. I don’t know why a number of reasons. But when I hear about divorce, it’s more often and almost always initiated by the wife. Is that a real change that’s bearing out the data? Or is that just kind of my random experience? Yeah,

Brad Wilcox
I call when I was starting graduate school, one of my biggest preconceptions was that, you know, midlife divorce is about, you know, some successful guy, leaving for a secretary or some other attractive woman in his social circle. But no, we see in the research more generally, that about 68% of divorces are initiated by women. And this has been going on for a good while, actually, in the US. And it’s also seen in other cultures and other contexts, too. I think there’s a lot but so wrapped up in this, I think one piece of this is that women are more attentive than men, to the ups and downs of their relationship, my wife could kind of tell you 28 things that I’ve done wrong in the last three days, right. And I couldn’t name one thing that she’s done wrong in the last three days, would be kind of an example of that, you know, that we could think about. And I think the other another thing is, some of the vices that men engage in, in terms of, you know, maybe substance abuse or infidelity, or are more commonly male. But it’s also the case too, that women do have higher expectations about romance and intimacy. Especially since you know, the 1970s, which I talked about, in the book, there’s a kind of soulmate myth that women think that sometimes that, you know, marriage is about kind of this intense romantic connection, emotional connection with their spouse, that’s going to be kind of, you know, delivered consistently on a sort of a steady basis. And that’s, you know, I think hard for any couples to sustain, you know, day in and day out, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be striving to be connected emotionally with our spouse, but, you know, it ebbs and flows. And so I think for some women, you know, the lack of our kind of romantic, high or romantic, you know, dimension to their marriage, at one point in time can be a source of frustration. And then too, I think, you know, with the rise of social media, there’s, there are a lot of, you know, messages that are affecting both women and men that are kind of more consumeristic more romantic in the negative kind of way, like, you know, can I reach can I find that new romantic experience outside my marriage that I’m not finding currently in my marriage, Facebook,

Collin Hansen
The Facebook Effect that we’ve got reigniting the old, the old rings, things like yes, that’s

Brad Wilcox
one of the things that I find is that people who are not following their old flames, you know, are doing better. And of course, you don’t know if it’s chicken or egg. But if you’re following an old like, you know, boyfriend or girlfriend on, you know, on social media, it’s probably not a good sign. And I would, I would encourage you not to. So

Collin Hansen
it’s good, just kind of practical advice that we’re looking for here. On gospel bound. Let’s Let’s continue and want the next next couple of questions to focus specifically on the church because that’s mostly who we serve here at gospel bound church leaders. In particular, so what? What role do you see for churches you write this that religious institutions, one of the few places today where you regularly hear messages underlining the importance of marriage and parenthood, along with sermons, and homilies, on the virtues, from forgiveness to Fidelity, that keep marriages and families strong? I think that’s absolutely the case. Brad, if you had an audience of pastors, which is part of what this is a gospel bound, what’s the most important thing, the most important thing that you’d recommend to them?

Brad Wilcox
Well, before we jump into that question, I just want to also just acknowledge, too, that, you know, we’re getting a lot of negative messages in the culture about faith. So I mentioned in the book, there was this big New Yorker piece that was kind of charging Christian men with sort of being like porn addled, you know, just completely, you know, floundering in their marriages and divorce was rife in Christian communities, because, you know, they were guilty about, you know, the use of pornography. And I just want to sort of underline that, that yes, of course, there are Christian men out there who are struggling with pornography, and it can have a hugely negative effect on their marriages. That’s entirely true. But what these kinds of articles kind of don’t tell us the center of the big picture, and that is that overall, Americans who are going to church together husbands and wives going to church together are, you know, about 15 to 20 percentage points more likely to be happy in their marriages, I see on when it comes to sex that Mrs really surprised me is that couples who go to church together, typically have sex at least once a week, whereas couples who don’t go to church have sex less than once a week, I was really surprising to me, you know, given the culture. And they’re also, you know, about 15, to 20 percentage points more, like I said, they’re very happy with their sexual lives compared to their more secular peers. So and then, as you mentioned before, when it comes to divorce, people who go to church regularly are about 30, to 50%, less likely to get divorced than their peers who are not church going. So what I want us to sort of at least appreciate here is that for ordinary Americans, connecting to a church community is linked to happier marriages, more stable marriages, and better sex lives, on average, compared to the alternative. Now, of course, we also know that they’re, you know, in any given Sunday, judging from the data, maybe one in 10, one in five husbands and wives sitting in the pews who are really suffering or struggling in their marriages. So for pastors who are thinking about these issues, think it’s important to appreciate that when they are, you know, teaching or preaching about marriage and family that they’re recognizing, you know, in their, in their head. And in, in their, in their speech, that there are folks out there who are struggling, and they should be kind of factoring them in and acknowledging the pain that can follow from, you know, a difficulty in your marriage or your family. But actually kind of articulating the sort of pain and pathos of family life is is actually helpful, kind of recognizing that you know, that your pastor, or your religious leader is there with you and for you can be really helpful. So I think, doing more of that, you know, talking about the tough times in marriage and family and then the kinds of virtues and graces it can help people forge a strong marriage family is helpful, and then doing more to have at least an annual marriage retreat for couples in your congregation, and connecting them with mentor couples as well, newly married couples or people who are engaged, we see that folks who get some kind of premarital counseling are more likely to be flourishing post the wedding date, for instance. So I think just kind of doing more to make sure that you know, your church is either doing its own ministry or connected to a ministry in your area that provides good premarital counseling, good marital counseling, and regular retreats, and then messages to both from the pulpit and then from other venues about, you know, the challenges and the joys and, and the virtues that are required to forge strong families, a teaser

Collin Hansen
for folks to go ahead and read the book. There’s also a good bit on date nights in there that you can also check it out. Now, this is a read this question. I find this conversation within the church, my little corner of the church is very confused. People are coming from what seems like almost opposite ends of the spectrum. Some think that given in light of the concerns that you raised in this book, we need to be talking a lot more and doing a lot more to encourage people to get married. Some people are coming from the complete opposite end of the spectrum are saying no, the last thing we need to do in the church is give more pressure to young people to get married. I mean, they’re already under so much pressure from their Christian colleges or their families or their churches to get married. Now we Gotta emphasize, you know, the Bible is encouragement to singleness. The reality that you lay out in your book is that for many reasons, many young adults who want to get married will never do so. Right, one of the tragedies that you point out in the book they want to get married, and they will never do. So. What do you recommend to churches then, and other Christian leaders about that, that navigating that dynamic of should we be doing more to emphasize what the Bible encourages for singles, because it gives it gives a lot of encouragement and dignity to singles, or in light of all the other concerns you’re sharing? Should we be doing more, to help them get married, to find a spouse be successful that,

Brad Wilcox
yeah, the church has to walk and chew gum at the same time, you’re right. And I I’m actually been surprised and talking to some, you know, local ministries, you know, at the mercy of Virginia, that are kind of reluctant to talk about marriage with the students here at UVA. Because they, you know, they, they recognize that there are some students who, you know, are not likely to get married, or some staff who are not married, and they know that they’re more singles out there. And so there’s kind of like this reluctance to sort of talk up the value and virtue of marriage. And I mean, I’m certainly, you know, appreciative of the importance of single people and their place in the broader Christian community. But I think we have to recognize that for most folks, you know, getting married and having families is kind of the most important thing they’ll ever do. And the fact that we’re going to see a record share of today’s young adults in their 20s, never marrying about 1/3, I estimate in the book, should people kind of on sort of high alert, if you will, and trying to figure out what are the what are the creative ways that we can work with our 20 Somethings, and our college students and you know, to give them the skills, the opportunities, the resources, that will allow those who think they have a vocation to marriage, to find a spouse, and marry that person, and then to succeed as husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. So I think we need to do more to kind of, basically get our young adults aware of how much marriage of me matter, and then to give them opportunities to meet people, and to date and marry. And then give them advice too, and then also kind of do more of the sort of matchmaking thing too, as well. So like if someone makes it clear to, you know, a friend and church that they’re interested in getting married, that that friend is more deliberate about trying to find someone who would be a good match for them. And, and then just sort of making this sociological point here, too, that over time, we know that religious traditions that succeed in fostering a strong marriage and family culture are much more likely to flourish than than ones that don’t I, you know, I’ve thought about writing an article kind of on the shaker syndrome, right. Yeah, I had this group in New York, that discouraged marriage and parenthood.

Brad Wilcox
Yeah, so our kind of elite evangelicals have gotten so reluctant to to tackle the marriage issue head on, if they don’t realize they’re kind of creating a context where they’re going to turn their communities into this, you know, shaker, I mean, longer term, right, I’m just saying, but. So that’s, I think, a concern, at the same time, given the fact that probably a third of the Middle State will never marry. The other challenge, though, is that the church should do a much better job of reaching out to singles, and encouraging families to incorporate singles into the warp and woof of their lives. So that means dinners means social events, you know, you include the single adults in the community, in your family life and in your social life.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, the way I put it, Brad, is I’ve got a friend in Boston. And what she often encounters is women who are incredibly dedicated to their faith. They’re doing PhDs and in a high academic context, but there’s something in them whether it’s from their church, or their family, or just themselves, they want to be married. But for a variety of reasons, it hasn’t worked out, and they’re fairly skeptical about how it works out. But they feel guilty. And they think, Well, does my life and my faith even matter if I’m not married? Because that’s the kind of I feel, it seems like there’s one message to that person versus my friend in Southern California who’s discipling 20 year old men who are telling him, maybe I’ll start thinking about marriage when I’m about 30 or so maybe? It seems like the message is very different to that, in that context than it is to that woman. And that’s to the point of being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Brad Wilcox
I mean, either, and I’ve talked to both. I’ve talked with 30 Something women and 30 something men who are not married and are single and very lonely and and trying to figure out how to navigate this new world that we’re living in. So, yeah, I think you have to be pastorally sensitive to those folks. But at the same time to be more intentional about getting your your 20 something folks to, you know, recognize that this is a good time to meet someone. And we can organize, you know, dances, lectures, charitable activities, where people are being encouraged to meet and mingle.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, well, I want to end with a quote, but you guys have been hearing and are watching Brad Wilcox here, talk about his book get married, why Americans must defy the elites forged, strong families and save civilization. I mean, I could keep talking all day. Unfortunately, on this, we got to end it. But I want to end this way. And your book, of course, Brad is a work of sociology. And we focused in this conversation much about as you do on the social benefits. And as Christians, we have a lot more to say about God’s design, his picture of Christ and the church and marriage, and the spiritual fruit of children raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And obviously, as Christians, we also want to love and see our neighbors flourish and to love them as we would want to be loved. And as a result, we’ve got to talk about the goodness of God’s design for marriage. So I wanted to say thank you for doing that in this book. And, and this summary was just too good for me to not end with and it says your excellent excellent summary about marriage binds men to the children they father. It stabilizes the romantic relationships with adults in the family lives of children. It bridges the gender divide between men and women, and douse the lives of women and especially men with a deeper sense of meaning, direction and solidarity, and above all provides the ideal context for the bearing and rearing of children. And doing these things the institution of marriage helps men settle down work harder and smarter and steer clear of trouble. It maximizes the prosperity and financial security of men, women and children. It increases the likelihood that children are raised well flourish in school, avoid incarceration become productive members of our society. It minimizes the odds that men and women are lonely and unsupported as they move through life. So thanks again, Brad, for that summary for fighting for marriage, and for writing this book, get married and for being a guest on gospelbound.

Brad Wilcox
Thanks for having me on, Collin.