Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold,
Managing editor at The Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever
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to email the show, you can do so at radio
at the Federalist dot com. I would love to hear
from you today. I'm so excited to be joined by
Brad Wilcox. Brad is a sociologist at the University of
Virginia as well as a senior Fellow at the Institute
for Family Studies, and today Brad and I dive into
a brand new report about the state of our unions,
the Great Dating Recession. Brad and I talk about how
many young adults actually want to get married, how many
are doing it successfully, and why they're having so much
trouble with it, Plus how churches and married couples and
families and government and everyone can help young adults get
and stay married. There is so much here to unpack.
So without further ado, please welcome to the show, Brad Wilcox. Brad,
thank you so much for joining me on the Kylie
Cast today.
Speaker 2: It's great to be here with you today, so.
Speaker 1: Great to have you. Let's just dive right in. Why
don't you tell listeners who are not familiar with your
work what you do and how you got into the
work you're doing.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: I teach sociology family at the University of Virginia, been
doing that for more than twenty years now at UVA,
and I'm also a fellow at these for family Studies,
and we're kind of both at UVA and IFS really
dedicated to trying to figure out what's happening to the
American family. And I'm focusing especially these days on sort
of marriage and dating and how this is all playing
out both for young adults and for middle aged adults
across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty important topics, though, I would say so. On
that note, let's talk about this new survey that came
out from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatly Institute.
I would love if you could just kind of explain
what this study entailed, the methodology behind it, but also
how you came to the conclusion that you did in
the title that we are in a dating recession.
Speaker 3: So what we did with this new report is we
relied on what's called the National Dating Landscape Survey that
was targeting more than five thousand young adults across the US,
and in this particular kind of project, this report, we're
focusing on eligible young adults who are not married and
you know, could be dating, you know, seriously or casually
in one wey or another and trying to just try
of figure out kind of what's happening with dating, you know,
from the young adults perspective and the ages. We're focusing
on those who are age twenty two to thirty five
in this particular report that's just come out.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're looking at both gen Z and millennials.
In that case, there are there seem to be quite
a few disconnects in the study between what respondents say
they want and what they're actually doing, what they desire
and the steps they're taking to get there. So can
you just kind of walk listeners through what are the
main reasons that young young adults aren't dating? Because the
report shows that young people actually don't want hookup culture,
they want a dating culture that is intentionally forming serious relationships.
Let's see here, it looks like eighty three percent of
women and seventy four percent of men want that. So
that's a pretty overwhelming and that half of them want
to be in a relationship, and yet only one in
three thirty percent about report that they are regularly dating.
So what's the disconnect there? What are the reasons that
they're saying they're not dating?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So it is kind of striking that again, two thirds
of this sample of young adults are not seriously dating anyone.
And I think you know what's going on here in
part is that they kind of told us that they
lack confidence in their skills when it comes to relationships.
Only about one in three of the young men in
the survey indicat that they were kind of confident about
approaching someone to kind of express, you know, their romantic interest.
Only about four intents, that they kind of trust their
judgment when it comes to choosing a good dating partner.
As well, it is kind of like a sense of
do I really know, like how to find a good person.
Here they had concerns about kind of money, you know,
not sure they really had kind of enough money to
go on like a really nice date. This was kind
of you expressed by about half of the respondents. And
then there's also kind of a sense too that they had,
you know, an inability to kind of move past difficult
previous romantic experiences. So only about a quarter of the
response that they can sort of stay positive after a
bad date or after some kind of relationship you know,
messy breakup or earth situation. And then you know, more
than half of our samples said that breakups have made
them reluctant to begin a new romantic relationship. So there's
just I think, you know, a real both kind of
social deficit here that we're facing. And then I think
also there is you know, a lack of confidence and
there is a lack of resilience, and I think, just
to be straight up, my concern here is that the
kinds of sentiments that we're kind of seeing in this
survey are ones they also kind of see in teaching
ordinary students now at the University of Revisions. I think
this is kind of more of a pervasive challenge facing
young men and women today. They often kind of lack,
you know, confidence, they lack social skills, and they lack
a kind of fortitude. Again not necessarily everyone obviously, but
there's just a kind of a higher fragility, if you will,
when it comes to social life that I'm seeing kind
of play out among my students at the University of Virginia.
So this is kind of dovetailing with what I'm you know,
seeing both in the survey and then EVA more particularly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean this is beyond the scope of
the study, but the anecdotes are really helpful. What do
you think is causing this lack of resilience and this
lack of confidence? I mean, is this is this mostly
students who are not seeing healthy relationships play out, so
they're not confident for that reason. Is it that this
is a screen generation that was kind of ruined by
you know, distraction and pseudo relationships.
Speaker 4: And things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are what do you think are the
main contributors to this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of a multifold story, I would want
to tell you, obviously, And what I'm sort of seeing
in the research that we're doing an IFS and other
scholars are doing is certainly obviously a digital story.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: We've seen, for instance, kind of in person socializing among
young adults fall from about twelve hours prior to smartphones
per week to about five hours today, So just kind
of kind huge decline in socializing. We've seen dating fall
by about fifty percent in the same time period for
high schoolers in America as well at IFS. So part
of this is about the digital revolution, But I think
there's also ways too in which kind of parents have
been kind of either called helicopter parents or snowplow parents,
where they're kind of like clearing out the difficult things
from their kids' lives, are kind of preventing their kids
from like, you know, walking a quarter of a mile
to a friend's house or spending a few hours in
the forest's younger children, you know, unsupervised or kind of
letting a different called you know, a bad grade, you know,
just sit with them and not kind of call the
teacher and you know, kind of try to, you know,
make the grade be changed. This is kind of a
way which I think parents have been unable and unwilling
to kind of give their kids enough freedom to kind
of be in the world, to risk to fail to
do difficult things physically difficult things as well. So I
think that's also part of the story here for you know,
a lot of young adults as well. But I also
think too, there is kind of there's a way in
which the Me Too movement, you know, has made a
lot of guys, you know, worried about approaching young women
and kind of being called out as you know some
kind of you know, harasser or you know, evil toxic
masculine guid I think that's part of the challenge facing
young men, especially here. And then too, I think we're
kind of keenly aware of the way which our boys
have been ill served by school, middle schools, elementary schools,
high schools, and now by colleges as well, and often
feeling like, you know, school isn't really kind of conducive
to them, you know, flourishing kind of developing, you know,
the skills, the knowledge, you know, the self confidence that
they would have gotten maybe in a different era from
attending you know, school and attending college. I think that's
also part of the challenge to our schools are not
kind of equipping boys with the kind of experiences and
knowledge which would increase their confidence in just being young
men and then also and approaching women in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is so much to unpack, and what you
just said it makes me. It makes me think also
when you talked about them, both the me too and
then the sort of environment that boys are being raised in. Now,
it makes me think of that great essay I brought
it up so many times now but by Helen Andrews
about the great feminization this past year and just how
you know, the kind of culture even that grades have
become for boys where you just kind of have they're
just run by hr Karens. Everything's kind of dominated by
this this feminization where masculinity is so suppressed. Yeah, I
can't imagine growing up in that kind of environment and
then also trying to have the confidence to approach a
woman in a masculine way. I mean, that's got to
be so difficult.
Speaker 4: Are you seeing.
Speaker 1: And I mean the five thousand or so people who
are surveyed for this, you know, that's a great sample size,
and so anecdotally it might be different. But have you
noticed very different dating and marriage success rates among students
who don't have helicopter parents or who maybe are not
as screen dominated in their social lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think what I
have this is now I'm seeking more anecdotally based upon
my UVA experience, is that I have seen, you know,
from some of the guys who are in my classes
who've actually attended single sex schools. One school is the
Heights outside of DC. You know, a school is we
Berray Forest and Orange, Virginia. And some of the kind
of more confident, more kind of masculine guys that I've
run across at UVA are guys who have gone to
these single sex schools, and you know, I think they've
often done difficult things physically, they haven't been their parents
are not in the picture oftentimes in the same way,
and they are kind of encouraged to sort of you know,
develop a kind of healthy you know, pro social masculinity
at both of these schools. So I think that's certainly
interesting to kind of see, you know, again, young men
at Uva from both of these schools seem to be
having more success when it comes to both UVA in
general and then dating at UVA in particular as well.
Speaker 1: I also wonder about the political dynamics of this too,
because I know a lot of the statistics in the
study are there's not a lot of statistical significance between
men and women's answers. But at the same time, you know,
especially as women have so embraced feminism, I imagine even
if it's not true, even if they do desire marriage,
that men are picking up kind of what women are
putting down and you know, not not as inclined to
pursue women who have made independence their personal brand. I'm
curious if you're seeing that trend so kind.
Speaker 3: Of too, I think points that one could make. I mean,
there's a lot you could say about this, right Ketty,
But I think one thing that we are seeing a
suheronically was put out by a Brookings research brief, you know,
a while back. Just kind of what it found was
that in general, liberals were less concerned about kind of
the fortunes of boys and men. Conservatives in general much
more concerned about the fortunes of boys and men, but
liberal parents are much more concerned about their own sons,
and conservative parents were less concerned about their own sons.
I think this probably ties into a way in which
we do see some actually some new research from Jonathan Rothwell,
who's the senior economists to Gallop, and what he is
finding his work is that teenagers who are being raised
by more conservative parents tend to be doing better on
the emotional He didn't separate out by boys and girls,
but kind of a dovetail with this story from Brookings,
and his thought is that conservative parents, you know, are
more likely to have clear rules and expectations for their
kids and more liberal parents and also kind of demand
more of them in like things like housework and you know,
yard work, you know, to kind of make more demands
upon them, and that that creates a more resilient teenager,
which is, you know, a good thing. So I do
think that conservative young men may have some advantages when
it comes to kind of that masculinity you know sort
of story in terms of just being more confident and whatnot.
But ideologically, we've obviously seen since around twenty fourteen what's
been called the you know, the Great Awokening, that a
lot of young women have moved pretty far to the
left and some young men have moved to the right.
So what that means is that ideologically speaking, they are
about two liberal women who are single young women for
every young liberal guy, and they are about two conservative
young men for every about conservative young women who'd be single.
This is based upon some work I did with Wmonstone,
my colleague get Ifs. So there's obviously a gap, you know,
where conservative men are going to find it difficult to
some extent to meet conservative women, and vice versa for
liberal women as well, And so yeah, I think that
does create some tensions. From my book Forget Married, to
talk to a young woman for instance, in the Southeast,
and she'd had three serious relationships and two of those
ended because the guys were supporters of Donald Trump and
she was not a fan. So the ideological piece is
certainly part of the picture here. And so of course
I think the case too that the algorithms are often
pushing young women and young men in different directions online
in ways that kind of accentuate this this partisan in
this ideological divide.
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Speaker 1: So interesting because also the research seems to indicate that
women become more conservative after they are married and have children. Also,
so it's interesting that they are more or less disqualifying
themselves from marrying these decent candidate. It's you know, these
these conservative young men. Yeah, because that two to one
ratio both directions just just doesn't quite work. And I
think there was a statistic in this uh in this report,
the most recent won the State of Our Union's Dating
Recession Report. But I forget the number now about people
who didn't feel that they were surrounded by datable partners
or something like that.
Speaker 4: Do do you know what I'm referring to.
Speaker 3: I don't know that particular Okay, that particular finding, but
certainly I think one thing, you know, and I hear
this from you know, both liberal and conservative young women,
both at EVA and other venues as well, But there's
just kind of this this this sense that a lot
of the men in there, not obviously not all, not
even majority, but a large minority of guys, from their perspective,
kind of don't measure up. That they're you know, they're
struggling with maybe spoking too much marijuana, or they're not
really that engaged with you know, school or work, or
they don't have big the emotional skills to really you know,
be good boyfriends. That's only one, you know, kind of
concern that I've heard articulated by women. But at the
same time, what I hear from the guys at EVA
who actually are more marriage minded is that a lot
of their female peers don't see me that interested in
kind of getting married and having family anytime soon, So
from their perspective, like why really engage when it comes
to sort of dating seriously when you know their their
female prospects are not going to be looking at marriage
and family in the short term. And of course you
saw that that survey back in September NBC News kind
of finding that for young women who voted for Kamala Harris,
their sort of top priority was career and marriage and
motherhood were kind of way down the list. And by contrast,
young men today who are voting Republican are way more
likely to kind of list fatherhood and marriage kind of
at the top of their you know, their priorities. So
we are kind of in this really weird new world
where you know, historically women are more likely to be
sort of family minded, family oriented, but we're today seeing
is that, you know, young men are more career oriented,
and young memen, especially on the right, are more likely
to express an interest in marriage and fatherhood.
Speaker 1: So that kind of gets to another disconnect that I
that I was seeing in the study, which is, well,
I'll just quote directly from the report. Nearly two thirds
sixty four percent reported that marriage was an important life
goal for them, although less than half forty seven percent
said marriage was a top priority for them at this time.
In their life, and that the younger and older respondents
were not significantly different on this question. But these are
all people of marriage age who are being pulled on this,
So you know what gives if you're saying that this
is an important thing, you really value it, but fewer
than half of the respondents think that, well, that doesn't
really matter for me right now though.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there was another study done by Pugh the basic
who's kind of looking at adults, you know more generally
find it about seventy percent of kind of adults we're
sort of prioritizing career, especially, but also you know, money
and education to some extent, and only about you know,
one fifth really prioritizing you know, marriage, only about one
fifth we're prioritizing parenthood. This particular Pew server that I'm
thinking about, and we've kind of seen this pattern across
a range of different Pew surveys, both looking at teenagers
and looking at adults, but also looking at parents and
kind of their own priorities for their own children. And
so what we've seen kind of emerge in recent years
is what I call the mightst mindset, Okay, the mightest mindset.
It's kind of idea thinking about the fable myth from
from you know, from Greece, is this kind of idea
that what really matters is money, kind of building your
own brand and now kind of career, doing things that
are kind of basically high status. That's what kind of
really matters. And what we're seeing is the kind of
the public and general has sort of downgraded the importance
of love and marriage and family. And so I think
a lot of young adults, Yeah, they would like to
get married, it's it's a goal. They would like to
have family, it's a goal. But what really kind of
is preoccupying them is, you know, a great career, a
decent income and a good education and these And then
I think too kind of even having some freedom in
their twenties, you know too, in Charlie Kirk's words, kind
of travel to Thailand, right, So kind of like the
thought is that, you know, the twenties are a time
when you're really focusing on your when you're basically working hard,
playing hard. This is kind of like the midesst mindset
from you know, from where I set. The problem though,
is they don't realize is that today it's much harder
Kylie to date and I think that if people are
not kind of prioritizing finding a mate, either in college
or in you know, in a church, or in a
work context or with a group of friends, you know,
in their early twenties, are just going to experience a
lot more difficulty than I think their parents and certainly
their grandparents did. So I just think that there's kind
of like this assumption that part of many and adults
and their parents that you kind of can just turn
about twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, snap your fingers,
and like find the perfect partner and get married around thirty.
This is kind of like, you know, the mindset that
I see among a lot of in and outs today,
both the EVA and elsewhere. What they're not really, I
think realizing, is that just because of the newer cultural
occurrence that we're all kind of navigating, it looks like
it's just a lot harder for folks in their late
twenties and thirties to find, you know, a spouse today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is interesting because one aspect of the report
that I found just fascinating was the number of respondents
who said that the ideal age.
Speaker 4: To marry is thirty. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1: To me because you know, women's fertility specifically gradually and
then rapidly declines in their thirties. And I just wonder,
you know, do do young people not know this? Do
they not want children? Are they banking on you know,
artificial reproductive technologies. Are they just kind of like going
to figure it out later? Where does this thirty number
come from? I guess you just kind of said, you know,
people are just expecting that once they hit a certain age,
they'll just be able to boop get married like without
you know, without really thinking about maybe what the dating
pool around them looks like or how many opportunities they'll
have at that time. But are they just not thinking
past step one of dating and getting married or what
gives there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wrote a piece called Get Married Young
for Compact magazine not too long ago and talk to
a number of young adults for that piece. And one
woman I spoke to is from Texas, Elizabeth, and she
kind of mentioned that, you know, and she's conservative, marriage minded, evangelical,
but you know, she said, you know, she went to
a good college, you know, in the South, and then
she went to law school in the South as well.
She worked in big law in New York for like
a year and a half, I think, and then she
came back to work for Big Law you know, in
Texas as well, and you know, it wasn't like she
was again she wanted to get married, but she didn't
kind of prioritize that both in her undergraduate days in
her law school days, and she felt and when she
got to New York, she was interested in dating, but
it was just hard to find a good person from
her perspective, you know, in Manhattan. So then she had
he early twenties in Texas and now she's thirty four
and she's had one serious relationship and it turned out
her boyfriend in this relationship did not want to have kids,
and this was a kind of you know, this was
a big surprise to her, devastating surprise to her. And
she's now working up with him. So but I think again,
the issue that her story and I think kind of
reveals to us is that there are plenty of folks
out there who I think our marriage minded broadly, you know,
sympathetic to the importance of all these issues. Could be conservative,
good religious, but they're just they're swimming in a culture
that really prioritizes work and that great career. And in
Elizabeth's case, she said to me, you know, I recently
visited my sister who's got three little kids, kind of
financially stressed out with you know, with her husband, and
she was just sitting on the steps with her sister,
you know, playing with her sister's baby. And she got
news from her big law firm that she'd gotten a
promotion and you know, a bigger salary. And she said
to me, you know, I would have given every dollar
in my bank account to have my sister's life right now.
So here's a kind of perfect example of where Elizabeth
is sort of an example of this minus mindset in practice.
And yet she would much more have preferred that she'd
kind of taken a more marriage centered mindset, you know,
in college even I mean, she was kind of saying,
you know, look, I'm a little bit nerdy, and there
are plenty nerdy guys in my college and if I
just and more thoughtful about, you know, dating intentionally back
in college, it might be in a different place today.
Speaker 2: Than that I am currently.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, what a poignant anecdote, But it does it
matches with the research which shows that married women with
children are what like three times happier, report being three
times happier than yeah times.
Speaker 3: You know, we've done an ifs, have done a number
of different surveys, but yeah, we are finding that depending
upon the survey, married moms are between two and three
times more likely to be very happy with their lives
compared to their single and childless peers. And that includes
younger women in their twenties and early thirties. So I
think again there's a lot of there's the commercial wisdom,
as you know, Kylie, kind of runs in the entirely
opposite direction. So my colleague Dan Cox at the American
Enterprise Institute has done some survey work indicating that a
majority of young single women today think that marriage and
motherhood are a bad deal for women.
Speaker 2: Even they're actually a good deal for men.
Speaker 3: So they have the man piece, you know, correct, Kylie,
But they just think that the sacrifices that marriage, especially
motherhood you know, tends to you know, require of women
are such that, you know, married moms are worse off.
They're completely oblivious though to their research indicating what comes
to happiness when it comes to reporting a meaningful life
when it comes to loneliness. There's just no question that
married women, including married moms, are doing better than their
single and childless peers. Now it is true in our
work we find this is a gene. Twangia noted psychologists
that women are more stressed out when they're married moms.
No surprise there, you know, there's more sleepless nights, no doubt. Right,
So I want to be clear and honest about that.
But you know, having a baby, you know, raising a baby,
slugging with a toddler, you know, watching your kids, you know,
play soccer or the piano, whatever it might be. You know,
all these things are just so meaningful and often magical,
and we've just been I think, doing a terrible job
of kind of telling the full truth about the power
and the meaning and the beauty of you know, of
marriage and motherhood for the you know, for the ordinary woman.
Speaker 1: Today right right Well, and it also, you know, we
need to be honest about the stress levels of of
women who just climb the corporate and career ladder as well,
because I'm sure they would also report high levels of stress.
You know, if you're at the top of your career,
you're not going to be not stressed, but you're not
going to have a baby to snuggle at the end
of the day to give you those stress releasing hormones
or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a good point too.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we kind of minimize how much
work for all of us can be stressful. And and again, yeah,
there's just nothing like, you know, we have a big family,
but there's you know, nothing like you know, kind of
like when you have when we have little kids, you know,
just sort of like waking up in the morning and
there's some you know, some toddler young child kind of
just snuggle between you and your and your spouse.
Speaker 2: It's just just kind of a magical experience.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, the stress that comes from work is not
stress that will ever love you back, like i'mike having children,
and yeah, yeah, I had an interesting conversation just anecdotally
for me, with a young woman probably mid mid to
late twenties who this was in a religious context, but
she was just talking about how, you know, her experience
with her boyfriend. They'd been together for a period of time,
but they weren't planning to get married yet, and she
just kind of mentioned offhand that, yeah, well, I don't
want to have kids until I'm in my thirties, and
I just I kind of pushed back a little bit
on that, or at least dug into to ask her,
you know, why, why is that? Because it's just, I think,
to your point, the feminist messaging is just kind of
the water that women swim in. It's just so become
a part of the way that we think and the
things that we believe that things are just better if
we can accomplish all these things first, that like marriage
and motherhood are a secondary priority. And I think just
like many young people just assume that once they hit
that magical age of thirty, they'll be able to instantly,
you know, find the perfect spouse. There's also thisssumption that
once they're past thirty they will have no trouble conceiving
a child, and those are just not realistic expectations for
young people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that my colleague Grant Bailey
did was kind of look at this from a more
kind of demographic perspective, and what he found it is
looking kind of retrospectively for women who are now, like
you know, in their late forties or fifties, but everyone
who kind of got past thirty without having a child.
You know, they had only about a one and two
shot of having a child after thirty. Now, again this
is for all women, so that one clomen who want
to be childless and women who you know weren't married obviously,
but it just kind of was was a striking finding
for us because it kind of dovetail was mean that
Charlie Kirk had said, you know before he was killed
in terms of making the case for earlier marriage free
am adults. And this point was that you know, if
you wait until around you know, thirty to kind of
get serious about finding a and starting a family, your
odds just you know, really begin to come down, for
both social and biological reasons. And again to your point,
I think we just don't appreciate both the kind of
medical story here for fertility in terms of you know
how it does become more challenging, especially as when kind
of move into their late thirties. And then we also
don't kind of especially now appreciate the social difficulty that
we're seeing now long adults when it comes to finding
a good spouse in their late twenties and thirties. So
for all those reasons, we should be I think much
more open to getting married, you know, in our twenties
and also having a kid, you know, or starting having
children in your twenties as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a quote in this piece that I
read this week from the Washington Post, a really interesting
opinion piece from Shaddi Hamid about this great this dating
recession report, And here's the quote. I think it's really
applicable here.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: The dating recession won't be solved by any single app
or matchmaker or cultural sermon, but it might begin to
ease when we stop treating marriage as something that happens
to you after you've finished becoming yourself and start treating
it as one of the ways you become yourself in
the first place. And I think that's that's really important,
of your marriage as something that you do with someone,
not that you do once you've arrived and become the
perfect partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, there's a kind of there are two sort of
models that we see in that social sciences around marriage.
One is the kind of capstone model and the thought
there obviously the more common model today is that you
get all your ducks in a row. You know, you've
got all your education, you've made you know, a real
big mark career wise, you're fully kind of comfortable in
your skin supposedly, you know, and it's at that point
that you date and get married. That's again the Capstone model,
and it's it is kind of getting married close to
the age thirty. And then of course the Cornerstone model
is sort of getting married often in your early twenties
and sort of seeing you know, marriage and families opportunity
where you can kind of grow together with your spouse,
kind of build family together, and really kind of forge
a more we first orientation both to life in general
and to your family in particular. And so I think,
you know, I'm more about kind of the Cornerstone model
because it tends to be a more family first model,
a less individualistic model than what the Capstone often ends
up being.
Speaker 1: So true, let's talk about kind of what's happening with marriage,
stability and divorce across the board, because the report gets
into this a little bit. It seems like in some ways,
in some ways, there's a lot of reason for hope there,
but there's also some troubling takeaways. So can you kind
of explain what's happening with the with the marriage stability
and divorced landscape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I came up with a book called Get
Married in twenty twenty four on Valentine's Day, And you know,
as I was kind of talking about the book, there
is concern not just from the left, where a lot
of like progressive voices have been kind of telling women
that marriage is kind of a bad deal for reasons
we've touched on already, but there, of course you're now
voices on the right who are telling young men, Kylie,
that marriage is a bad deal for guys. And the
probably foremost voice here is Andrew Tait. He said, for instance,
that there is zero statistical advantage when it comes to
marriage for men today, and a big part of his
sort of critique of marriage is his belief that most
marriages today and a divorce, And of course, his own
parents got divorced when he was a child, which I'm
sure shapes kind of his whole perspective.
Speaker 2: On marriage and the like.
Speaker 3: But what we actually see is that since around nineteen
eighty one, the divorce rate actually has come down by
about forty percent. And what that means kind of practically
for most people getting married today is that a majority
of couples who are marrying now will go the distance.
Kind that's sort of the good news that you know,
someone like anditates not aware of. From our estimates that
these sort of family studies about forty forty one percent
marriages will and then divorced. It's still too high, you know,
from my perspective, but it does mean again that most
marriages will will go the distance. And then in my
research I kind of point to things that are kind
of noteworthy in terms of reducing your risk of divorce.
So one of those things, for instance, is going to
church regularly, depending upon the study, reduces the risk of
divorce by between thirty and fifty percent. And that's based
upon just you know, individuals going. We don't know what
the sort of couple effected, so I probably bigger than that.
We know too, the guys who are stably employed full
time are markedly less likely to get divorced than guys
who are not. What's interesting there, too, is there's no
effect of women's employment on divorce. It's all about, basically,
I think, you know, the husband sort of feeling like
he's a decent provider and being viewed as such also
by his wife, and just also obviously kind of reduced
into the financial stresses that might you know, follow from
unemployment as well. Regular date nights I'll seem to be like,
you know, good divorce prevention as well. Once today that
I did suggested that couples who kind of had date
nights regularly, we're about twenty five percent less likely to
get divorced.
Speaker 2: So there's just kind of a bunch.
Speaker 3: Of things that couples can do to kind of you
know both I think, kind of keep the romantic spark
alive in their marriages as well as be surrounded by communities,
you know, religious communities for instance, that kind of reinforce
the importance of the marriage and the family. And then
also financial steps they can take too that kind of
keep you know, the income relatively steady and reduce the
risks when it comes to financial stress. So I just
want to get people some hope here recognizing that a
divorce is down, and then be there things you can
kind of do as a kind of deliberate couple to
keep your marriage headed in the right direction.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it does seem that the reason, well some
of the reason that the divorce rate is down though,
is because it's people are not getting married as much.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I talk about kind of there's sort
of good news and bad news to kind of convey
about marriage and family in America. And some of the
bad news, I would say is that we are seeing
what I call kind of like the closing of the
American heart in my book, where a record share of
today's young adults will never marry and never have children.
About we're projecting probably at least one or three young
adults will never marry and about one and four will
never have kids. And these, you know, if our projections
are true, these will be kind of records that we're
setting and not not good ones. And so that's certainly
that the bad news is that I think for adults,
they're having greater difficulty and kind of finding their way
to the altar, both literally and metaphorically right now. The
good news, though, is that the couples who are getting
married and starting families are doing some ways that tend
to be you know, more stable. And this means also
that we've seen nextually a slight uptick in the share
of kids who are being raised in stable, married family.
So both marriage and parenthood have become more we call
selective you know, for people who are generally more educated,
generally more religious, and generally market service, especially on the
marriage front. And so I think that means basically that
family life is stabilizing at least a bit right now.
And that's good for kids. But the worry I have
is that, you know, more American adults, women and men
are not going to have the benefit of being married
and having a family of their own.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the drop in you know, you
said one in three Americans will never get married. Do
you think that part of that can be attributed to
even the way that government has kind of stepped in
and become a spouse to many people. I mean, I
think of like the Obama Life of Julia campaign, and
there's been plenty more government messaging like that. You kind
of just have you more or less have a built
in spouse. Mean, it's an abusive one, to be sure,
but from cradle to grave, I mean, somebody to take
care of you, socially, financially, all the rest. I mean,
do you think that's a significant contributing factor here?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean there's no question that really since nineteen sixties,
particularly for lower income Americans, government has become a kind
of you know, provider, you know, a kind of breadwinner,
and it provides real material support, and so it's made
you know, husbands more optional in many lower income communities.
Obviously since nineteen sixties. We see today there's a kind
of marriage penalty facing working class couples with kids. And
for my book, I talked to a number of working
class couples, you know, and adults who are reporting that
they're kind of deciding between marriage and medicaid, you know.
So it's it's a real issue the way in which
public pos not that anyone in DC. I don't think
anyone was sort of sitting in dcsay I'm going to create,
you know, these marriage penalties that are going to reduce
marriage among first kind of poor Americans and then later
working class Americans. But that's sort of the way it
works today, is that, you know, they're just public policies
that unintentionally end up penalizing folks for getting married and
kind of joining their incomes together. And that's that's a
huge problem and one that Congress you know, could address
if it chose to do.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the incentives are just all wrong. So let's
talk about one interesting potential solution. I want to go
back to that Washington Post opinion piece because I thought
I learned about this app that is kind of fascinating.
Apparently there's an app called date Drop I believe that's
used by many, like elite Ivy League type students use
at Stanford a lot. Apparently it's the students fill out
a lengthy questionnaire, pretty intensive, and then an algorithm will
pick one match for you per week. So it's sort
of the antip this is too Tinder or some of
these other like doom Scroll type constantly swiping apps sounds
kind of interesting. I mean, it makes me a little
bit sad because this is just diving further into sort
of the the screen focused, non communal ways of meeting people.
But is this good a good pollution to the dating
recession and matchmaking app like this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what I would say is two different things.
One thing that I would say is it does look,
you know, based upon some work to my mccullague doctor
Wendy Wang, the couples who meet in person in religious
communities in college at kind of real parties with friends
in the workplace are more happily marrits. I think It's
just something kind of very granular about just meeting someone
in person, and often kind of if you're in a
social network, you can kind of hear things from friends
about this person, you know, make sure that they're like
they have like a decent care or they've got a
good reputation, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's the best way to meet someone.
Speaker 4: It's like built in vetting, which it can be very
very so and.
Speaker 3: I would and I would encourage you know, both parents
and professors and you know, priests and pastors, you know,
just to do a better job also of kind of
like putting people in touch, you know, both in social
settings but also kind of you know, just setting them
up as well because of that social dynamic. But we
have to also be clear that people are struggling to
find someone to date nowadays, and so I think there
are you know, apps that can be used to as
a kind of backup option, and so I think this, Yeah,
this particular app that was mentioned in the most Journal
article too, is uh is one good, you know way
to do that. There's also another app called Keeper, which
is kind of designed to kind of promote serious, committed relationships,
primarily with an eye towards you know, marriage as well.
So if you are going to use an app, I
would just kind of encourage you to kind of find
one that's really designed to help you meet someone who's
interest in a committed relationship. And again would I would
look at those kind of as a backup option if
you're you know, heading into your you know, your mintal
a twenties or thirties and not you know, finding someone
who makes for a good match in person.
Speaker 1: So before I let you go, let's get into some
more practical things. I want to offer people some hope
and some tangible stuff that they can do if they
are in this cohort of people who desires to be
married but is not and or feels like they lack
the confidence that they are marriageable or that they are
struggling to find somebody who is as well. You already
mentioned you know priests, like other people in your social
circle who can help sort of match me. But what
else can be done? What's the role of married couples
generally in this churches, communities, government, like on a policy
level all the way down to like what parents can
do for their own kids, Like how can we help
young people who want to be married but are.
Speaker 3: Not, so I think one thing to do is really
kind of like communicating the value of marriage and being
more intentional about dating. So, you know, I had an
ra for instance, two years ago at UVA, you know,
marriage minded guy, but he was really focusing again in
his career and he had a very clear kind of
plan for his career for the next decade. If we're
graduating from UVA. I asked him, you know, do you
want to get married? Big no, yes, And I said,
what are you doing to get married? Big silence? Right,
And so, as the professor, just encouraging my students to
be much more intentional about dating, getting out there, you know,
meeting people and just being open to serious relationships and
then you know, in a later marriage as well. I
think that's part of kind of giving them permission to
devote as much attention to dating as they do to
oftentimes their education career. That would be one thing that
I think we should and kind do. I think we
do have to kind of think about bringing back matchmakers
in some way as well, kind of like people might
have some kind of unique gift for bringing folks together.
Would be I think a helpful step as well. I
think we have to basically work on. This is for parents,
you know of school aged and especially teenage kids, kind
of give them more opportunities to do hard things to fail,
whether it's like sending them on an outward pound course
or you know, having them do it, you know, make
sure that they're doing like a teenage job, not sort
of interfering with their you know, interactions with teachers, letting
them kind of navigate schools more on their own and
less you know, kind of of that snowplow or helicopter parenting.
That is part of like the challenge as well. And
then I think too for young men, just being much
more honest with them about kind of the importance of
being in decent physical shape, dressing nicely, doing well at school,
you know, and and therefore being prepared to do well
at work in their in their twenties. I think we
haven't told them kind of like the truth about the
importance of being perceived as decent protectors, providers. And then
also guys who can kind of what I call pay
attention to my book, you know, who can put that
phone down and just really engage, you know, eye to
eye with someone across you know, a table right in
some kind of social setting as well. So these are
the kinds of things that we need to be doing. Also,
would encourage young adults to to be you know, volunteering
through religious and secular you know, organizations in their communities,
and as one other way to kind of to meet
you know, people who would be good you know folks
to date, made and marry as well. So these are
the kinds of things that we should be doing. But
I think a lot of it really comes down to
as well, kind of developing a more technological asceticism. You know,
where you're you're not as plugged in to the to
the virtual world, and you're much more engaged in real
world activities that allow you to have real world relationships
that can lend lead to the dating and marriage as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how about on a policy level, what are maybe
some policies that create disincentives or maybe do you have
any policy blueprints for something that you think this would
be an easy thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so Lamanstone my colleagues done you know,
some work on really the child tax credits. So we're
certainly kind of advocating much more generous credit than what
is currently on offer from the federal government that's more
kind of once people are already married. But I think
the other things we can do as well in terms
of the marriage penalty, which is primarily about I would
say medicaid, but there are other federal programs that could
be basically recalibrate it so you'd have a different threshold
for married folks with kids compared to single parents in
ways that would kind of reduce that that marriage penalty.
Is one other idea that we have on the marriage
penalty front. But then I think culturally just have to
be much more aggressive when it comes to advancing school choice.
So we've seen in our research at IFS that young
adults who have gone to private schools tend to be
more likely to be succeeding on the marriage and family front.
And so it would be great, I think, to have
more young adults kind of getting out of a public
school system that often I think is you know, either
directly or more likely kind of indirectly discouraging kind of
focusing on marriage and family among kids today. And then
also when it comes to messaging both in schools and
then more generally going by what's called the success sequence,
which kind of stresses the importance of education, full time work,
and marriage as three key pillars to kind of forging
both a financially secure life and actually even an emotionally
resilient one as well. So I think the government could
do more too, not kind of move in like a
China style direction where there's like, you know, a whole
marriage apparatus, you know, being directly run by the government,
but at least kind of telling young adults and kids
in schools, many of whom are going through public schools obviously,
that marriage is a good thing both for kids and
for women and men, and that you know, it should
be a greater priority given sort of all the different
goods that it advances for again, children, men and women today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, great good stuff.
Speaker 1: If people want to find more information about this or
other topics, well, let's see, Brad. Can you actually tell
us what books of yours our listeners can read if
they want more information about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the main thing is my book Get Married
with Harper Collins. That's really kind of the book that's
most relevant. I've written on religion, family, and previous more
academic research or book called Soulmates, for instance, but I
do think Get Married is the book that's most helpful
for these issues we're talking about today.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 1: Great, So everybody should go get a copy of Get Married.
And if you want more information about the particular stats
we've talked about today, you can look into the twenty
twenty six State of our Unions Report the Dating Recession
from the Wheatly Institute and the Institute for Family Stife. Brad,
thank you so much for being here today and helping
break down this really really important work.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Kylie, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode
of The Kylie Cast. If you haven't done so already,
please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Leave
us a five star review. It'll only take you a
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Speaker 4: As always, I will be back
Speaker 1: Next week with more so until then, just remember the
truth hurts, but it won't kill it.