Is Marriage in Decline? Dr. Wilcox Discusses the Future of Matrimony

Are you looking to strengthen your marriage or learn more about the current state of marriage in America? Join Kimberly Beam Holmes and sociologist Dr. Brad Wilcox for an insightful discussion on It Starts With Attraction!

In this episode, they debunk common myths about marriage and explore the benefits of strong, stable unions. Dr. Wilcox dives into data on marriage trends, discussing the decline in divorce rates and the correlation between religion and family stability. They also address the challenges couples face today, including unemployment and unrealistic expectations. Kimberly Beam Holmes leaves the episode on a hopeful note, emphasizing that there is hope for a great marriage regardless of religion, social status, or background. She encourages couples to communicate openly and work together through tough times.

Key takeaways you will learn:
• The importance of spending quality time together as a couple
• How shared values and religious beliefs can contribute to marital happiness
• Practical tips for communicating effectively during unemployment
• Why marriage requires sacrifice and working together to meet each other's needs

Feeling discouraged about marriage? Kimberly Beam Holmes offers words of encouragement, reminding listeners that there is always hope, and a pathway to a fulfilling marriage.

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Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships


Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today I'm interviewing Dr Brad Wilcox. Dr Wilcox is the professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He also is a Future of Freedom fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He's recently written a book called Get Married why Americans Should Defy the Elites, forge Strong Families and Save Civilization. He has studied marriage, fatherhood and the impact of strong and stable families on men, women and children. He's co-authored six books and has written for several scientific journals such as the American Sociological Review and the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy. He's also been featured in New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and National Review. Today we're going to talk about marriage what's happening in marriage, what predicts a happy marriage and what are some of the threats that marriage as an institutional basis may be facing over the next few decades? Let's dive into today's episode. Dr Wilcox, why do you believe that people should get married?

Speaker 2: 1:09

Well, I think, because for most of us, you know, we're hardwired to connect and we're most likely to, I think, thrive when you have opportunities both to be cared for by someone else but, more importantly, to kind of care for someone else, and so there's just a way in which this is, I think, for most of us, the most profound relationship that we have is, you know, this marital relationship, and it's about friendship, it's about sex, it's about kids, and these are all kind of, you know, for many of us, the most important things.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Yeah, Now I'm sure that in the work that you have done and will continue to do, you've looked at the trends of marriage and of divorce over probably the past several decades. What are some interesting things that you are seeing in the trends of divorce and marriage?

Speaker 2: 2:04

bad news to report to your audience. On the good news front, actually, we've seen divorce coming down since 1980, when it was probably about one in two couples getting divorced at that point with the divorce revolution of the late 60s, the 1970s. But since then again, divorce has come down and since 2009, non-marital childbearing has leveled off, and what that means practically is that we're seeing actually a slight uptick in the share of kids who are being raised in stably married families by their own mom and dad typically. So that's kind of the good news, kind of the long decline in sort of stable family life for our kids is over and at least right now we're seeing things move in a better direction. But the bad news is that we're seeing, also for adults, what I call the closing of the American heart Fewer. Adults are dating, fewer adults are marrying and fewer adults are having children, and so as marriage becomes more selective, family life becomes more selective. What that means is the kinds of people who are getting married today are more educated, they're more affluent and or they're more religious. So that's probably why our families are more stable for our kids. But it just means there's going to be a lot of folks going forward. We're sort of estimating about one in three young adults today will never marry and about one in four will never have children.

Speaker 2: 3:28

So there are going to be so many people out there who are kind of heading into midlife and later life without the benefit of a spouse and children.

Speaker 2: 3:33

And my kids and I volunteer at a local nursing home and you know, I think one of the sadder things that I see is just sort of seeing a group of older women kind of sitting in the hallway and they're watching. There's like a big cage they have with all these sort of beautiful and exotic birds in the cage, and so we'll come into this nursing home visiting a particular friend of our family and seeing these other women out there just kind of sitting in the hall looking at these birds. So what I'm saying to you is there's just going to be a lot more adults who kind of in that kind of situation, kind of living on their own, probably without the benefit of too many, you know, family members to come and visit them, or I'd say preferably, you know, have them live with them when they're, you know, in their old age. So again, closing the American heart means more kinlessness for a lot of young adults, kind of as they as they age into midlife and later life today.

Speaker 1: 4:31

I would love to know your your thoughts on this. So you stated that divorce is coming down from what it used to be, but also that there's fewer people even getting married. So is the divorce rate, from your perspective, down or from the research, down because there are less marriages, or is the actual rate of divorce, based on the people who are getting married, still going down?

Speaker 2: 4:56

So what's happening is that the marriage rate has come down. But even kind of when you look at the divorce rate contingent on who is married, the population, you still see divorce, you know, coming down. And when you kind of look at basically sort of marital tables or divorce tables, you know what you're seeing is that each generation is getting married more recently, has a lower risk of divorce than the folks who were before them, and again, I think folks are kind of getting married in the late sixties and the 1970s were kind of in the worst spot. But one reason that divorce is down is that marriage has become what we call more selective in the social sciences and that just means it's a fancy word, obviously, for saying that the kinds of people who get married today are more educated, they've got more money and or they're more religious and all those things tend to reduce your risk of ending up in divorce court.

Speaker 1: 5:52

When we look at all of this, someone might say well then, if I'm not religious or educated or more fluent, then does that mean I shouldn't get married, because clearly people like me aren't? What would, what would you say to that?

Speaker 2: 6:07

Yeah, well, I mean, I have looked at you know.

Speaker 2: 6:09

So we also see, you know today that conservatives are more likely to be getting married than liberals. But as I've looked at kind of religious and secular Americans and I've looked at more liberal and more conservative Americans, what I see is that you know, all four of those groups are as likely to sort of benefit from marriage when it comes to their happiness story as one another. So what I'm saying to you is that conservatives and liberals, religious and secular American adults are all more likely to be happy if they are married and they're also in a much better financial position too as well. And the same thing is true for more educated and less educated Americans. Now it's it is true that people who are less educated, more secular, are at a greater risk of divorce. But you know, I would still say that divorce has been coming down for Americans since 1980. And there are ways that my book articulates that couples across the spectrum can reduce the risk of divorce, and so I would kind of also just point those tips out to them as well.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Yeah, well, what are some of those? How can you reduce your risk?

Speaker 2: 7:24

Yeah. So one thing that comes through is I was talking to a woman here in central Virginia and she was talking about how a lot of her girlfriends that kind of focus so much she's in her fifties, um on their kids. They kind of let the marriage kind of um fall by the wayside a little bit. And then some of the husbands in that circle were focusing more on their hobbies could be golf, you know, some kind of other sport or their work. And for those couples, you know, what she found was they're more likely to be in trouble once their kids had flown the nest. They didn't have anything to kind of, you know, bring them together. So I think, on that score, kind of having a regular date night, you know, and just trying to check in on a regular basis, I mean ideally every night, you know, as a couple, is one way to kind of keep that spark alive. So that's one piece of advice that we do see the couples who spend more quality time together are markedly less likely to get divorced. So that's that's one point.

Speaker 2: 8:14

The second point for is really for the men. We don't see a real strong link between unemployment and divorce for women in marriages today, but there still is a very strong association between unemployment and divorce for men, and certainly many of the guys that I knew have gotten divorced personally are guys who had kind of a? Um, more of an unsteady connection to full-time work. Um, so I've definitely encouraged men to be very intentional. Obviously, sometimes you can get fired or laid off and that's you know that, um, I also noticed, too, that the kinds of men who aren't really um, you know, on it, when it comes to kind of keeping a full-time job, seem to be more likely to land in marital trouble. So that's also a concrete point to make.

Speaker 2: 8:56

Um, the third thing that I would say is that birds with feather flock together, um, and so if your friends are the kinds of people and they could be married or unmarried, but who basically value your marriage or they value marriage, they would give you good counsel. They're there for you when times are tough. They're not going to be gossiping about your spouse or their own spouse or their boyfriend or girlfriend in ways that are needlessly negative. You're much more likely to do well in your marriage. By contrast, if your friends have unstable relationships, fidelity issues, other kind of drama in their lives, you're much more likely to end up getting divorced yourself. We know in particular, that having a close friend or a close family member get divorced is a huge predictor of divorce. By contrast, if your friends and family members navigate the ordinary challenges in married life successfully, you're much more likely to kind of take a lesson from them and do the same. So I think being really intentional about who your friends are is a big part of the story here as well.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Absolutely. I want to go back to the second point you made about the strong association in unemployment and divorce, specifically for men. Do you believe that that is stemming from the man initiating the divorce or the woman?

Speaker 2: 10:16

I would guess in most cases it's the wife. Yeah, and I think there are. I mean, there are many dynamics there. But I think one thing that we see, strangely enough, for guys who are unemployed, is they tend to kind of withdraw from, like, housework and childcare even more than the average employee guy. So it's strange, like here you have a guy who has got more time on his hands but he's actually less likely to be helpful when it comes to housework and childcare than the guy who's got that full-time job. And it's just for a lot of guys it's a real blow to their sense of, you know, well-being.

Speaker 2: 10:47

And then, too, what happens in most homes is that, I mean across the board, is that women tend to kind of take more responsibility for housework and childcare and for the management of the home. And so if the guy is not, you know, bringing in some decent income, there's often a lot of resentment on her part. You know that translates into you know, bringing in some decent income. There's often a lot of resentment on her part. You know that translates into, you know, marital problems of one sort or another. So it's just for most marriages even today, it's helpful to have a husband and I'm not saying that he has to make more money. My own research doesn't find that, but it does find that for wives, particularly when there are kids in the household, they're more likely to be happily married, and then also stably married, when their husband is employed full time.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Fascinating Now. Have you done research on the income of each spouse and if that makes a difference, have you looked into that?

Speaker 2: 11:40

I have and I didn't really find. My colleague, dr Wendy Wang, has found that when there's a kind of a reverse situation, so roughly equal earnings or more traditional patterns, where he's earning more or she's a stand-alone mom, that all kind of you know and her research was all netting out pretty you know, pretty equally In situations where the wife was the primary breadwinner, she found less happiness in the case of the wives. In my more recent survey for this book I didn't find that. But what I did find again was just that if the husband is not employed full-time, especially when there are kids in the household, then that is linked to less happiness in the part of the wife.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Yeah, very fascinating. The one of the other books that you've written is was looking at and let me make sure I get the name of it right it was your 2016 book of soulmates. So religion, sex, love and marriage among African-Americans and Latinos. So this is, I mean, these are groups of people that typically are kind of they struggle with staying in one marriage or maybe even getting married. What were some of the things you found in that book about how, particularly in those cultures, marriage is maybe different. Is it different? If they're going to get married? What are some of the hindrances that are leading them or inhibiting them from getting married, and how can they have strong and stable marriages?

Speaker 2: 13:15

So when it comes to the Hispanic community, I would see kind of more for immigrants. There was often tension around kind of more of a, you know, more of a macho ethic on the part of some Hispanic men where they're spending a lot of time with friends on the weekends, you know there's maybe doing sports, soccer, whatever drinking, you know not being particularly helpful when it comes to housework and childcare, and so that was kind of like some of the unique challenges that Hispanics faced. Also, too, there's a lot of like longer term cohabitation, the Hispanic community, and especially for Hispanics who are, you know, catholic or Christian, that could, you know, create some tensions for them in terms of the disconnect between their cohabiting status and what their faith would teach about, you know, marriage and relationships and the like. So that was sort of one unique set of challenges facing you know, a good number of Hispanic couples that I spoke to when I did that book for African American couples.

Speaker 2: 14:10

I would say, um, the issues that I saw were often around this issue of work and men.

Speaker 2: 14:18

Um, and there are more, um African American men who are not working full time and there are relatively more African American women who are not working full-time and there are relatively more African-American women who are working full-time and just kind of like the disconnect there, with oftentimes girlfriends or wives feeling like they're, you know, doing it all.

Speaker 2: 14:37

They're raising the kids more, they're doing more housework and they're also carrying a bigger financial load and that, would you know, could be the cause for both resentment or unwillingness to go ahead and get married. And there's also kind of, you know, a slightly higher level of infidelity as well on the part of, you know, black men. In my research and research of others, and that was also obviously a source of, you know, frustration and conflict and instability in both relationships and dating relationships and then also in marriages as well. And I actually would kind of link that in part to the way in which I think, for men who are not stably employed sometimes or who are not flourishing in some other kind of way or are facing some kind of stress or difficulty, I think there can be, you know, a greater inclination or temptation to kind of look outside the relationship for, you know, validation and that obviously can lead to infidelity.

Speaker 1: 15:39

So there kind of seems to be a theme or a couple of themes among each group that you've spoken about Help with chores and childcare. So household work and childcare seems to be important for everyone, as well as the stable employment of the man, of the husband.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Yeah. So I think it's important to also distinguish between kind of more progressive and more conservative women and more progressive and more conservative couples too. I think for conservative couples what you see basically is that what matters for the wife typically is emotional engagement and his strong involvement with the kids. And his strong involvement with the kids but kind of how housework, you know, gets done and how sort of people dive out of the work and family thing is just kind of whatever works for them basically, and often it's done along more traditional lines.

Speaker 2: 16:35

But but when it comes to more progressive women, the there's a great expectation that you know both work and family and housework are going to be kind of divvied up on a more roughly equal basis, and when they're not, it's more cause for frustration. But I think for both sets of women, sort of the broadly liberal and the broadly conservative women, there still is kind of often a frustration if the husband's not working full time, and I think it's more in some ways more challenging for the more progressive women because they don't necessarily have like they don't have like an ideological perspective that would sort of legitimate that frustration as much as as is the case for the more conservative women. But I'm just sort of saying there's just a frustration. You know, given the realities of of of family life and financial challenges facing most you know families, that if your husband's not kind of making a real financial contribution to the home, that can be a big deal.

Speaker 1: 17:39

I wanted to go back to what you said earlier as well about happiness. So there's kind of this happiness story that occurs within marriage that's fruitful to people who do experience marriage. Can you define what happiness means and why being married or getting married helps people to be more happy?

Speaker 2: 18:00

So what I see in this research basically is that we just, you know, we, we have kind of we measure happiness and satisfaction with words. Like, you know, how satisfied are you, how happy are you? We look at a number of different surveys. You know some of our colleagues look at Gallup. I looked at the general social survey from the University of Chicago. There's another survey called the American Family Survey that's done by BYU. So, you know, they all kind of use somewhat different wording here, but they're often kind of giving people a scale of one to five or one to three, basically to sort of, you know, assess their level of happiness or satisfaction with their lives and with their marriages.

Speaker 2: 18:40

And so that's what I've done for this book is use those kinds of outcomes and what I find is that the most powerful predictor of general happiness, being very happy with your life in general, is a good marriage. So it far surpasses a lot of things that tend to preoccupy young adults and social media and the media today. Things like education, money, fun, work also is more important than sexual frequency or religious attendance. So just having a good marriage, it just that kind of blows every other factor out of the model. When we look at Americans, overall, you know a sense of happiness with their lives.

Speaker 2: 19:27

And then, when it comes to sort of predicting happiness and marriage, what I find is that things like you know that sense of communion through regular date nights, things like you know that sense of communion through regular date nights, a sense that your husband or your wife is emotionally engaged, a strong sense of commitment, shared religious activity, faith, and also a sense that your spouse is protected, particularly for women and we just gave that word I don't know exactly how they're interpreting it but was also highly predictive of marital happiness as well. So those are some of the things that we would sort of. When you look beyond, kind of what predicts a happy marriage, those are some of the things that kind of leapt out at us in our analyses of this survey we did with YouGov for the book.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Yeah, what would you say are some top marriage myths?

Speaker 2: 20:20

So one myth that I talk about is the soulmate myth, and it's kind of this idea that marriage is about kind of an intense romantic or emotional connection. Marriage is about just kind of the feelings, or life is about feelings, and what I would say is that people kind of have this view are more likely to have difficulty, you know, whether it's six months into the marriage, a year or two into marriage, because you know every marriage sees kind of those butterflies that people kind of flying away. You know the butterflies that you get when you first meet someone and spend you know time with them. There's a lot of novelty, a lot of hormones, you know, kind of racing through your body. But then gradually we get used to the other person and some of those hormones go away and so you've kind of got to make the transition away from that intense romantic and erotic connection to a more companionate or a more friendship-based, you know, connection with that person Doesn't mean that romance doesn't come back, that erotic connection doesn't come back, but it's just not the only basis for sustaining marriage.

Speaker 2: 21:22

So what I would contend is that Americans who appreciate how much marriage is about a number of goods besides just romance it's about often the kids. It's about financial security. It's about having someone in your corner when times are tough. It's about kind of establishing a whole way of life together as a family, often extending to in-laws and parents and then eventually to grandkids of goods being realized in marriage. It's not just the case that your marriage is going to be more stable, but also, I think, more happy, because you're not kind of just looking at one good, that is, this romantic connection, as the foundation for your marriage.

Speaker 1: 22:10

What scares you about the future of marriage?

Speaker 2: 22:13

Well, I think what we're seeing right now is there are a lot of young adults today who really think that marriage and parenthood require a lot of sacrifices and require them to have all their ducks in a row.

Speaker 2: 22:25

They have to have, like, the perfect degree and the perfect job and the perfect amount of money saved, you know, before they either get married or have their first child.

Speaker 2: 22:34

And they have to find the perfect person or the person who is like you know, before they either get married or have their first child. Um, and they have to find the perfect person or the person who is like you know this, that kind of like exceptional soulmate, um, and I think there's just a lack of realism about, kind of you know, um, the challenges of marriage and parenthood but also the way in which, kind of just getting into a marriage and becoming a parent, you know, ends up being so meaningful and joyful for, you know, most of us not all the time, obviously, but but much of the time. So we're kind of in a weird place where people have, I think, too high expectations about where they should be professionally and how intense maybe their emotional romantic connection should be with someone before they go ahead and get married and not at the same time kind of seeing how much it would be good to be married and good to be a parent, you know, in their twenties or in their early thirties.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Yeah, I mean I'm trying to. So I've been married. How long have I been married? I think we just celebrated 13 years. I got married when I had just turned 21. So I was young. Both me and my husband were, and I can, and so I'm trying to think back to if I was 25 years old, not married, and hearing something like well, you're more likely to stay married If both of you are well-educated, if you're both religious, if you're both affluent um, like hearing all these things, it can feel kind of like oh well, then I do have to find this right person. And do you think that some of that stifles people and allows them to be fearful of getting into it, because they don't want to experience the divorce that they may have experienced their parents have, and so then they kind of have analysis or paralysis by analysis. They don't know what to do, so they don't get married.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Yes, that's right. I mean, people think that they have to have all these ducks in a row, and it is true that a steady UVA kind of think either for themselves or they've been told by their parents they've got to wait until they're basically 28, 29, 30 to put a ring on it. And I'm like, no, you can be, you know, in your early 20s and college, educated and getting started in your career, and get married. And then, in terms of, I think it is important that boys obviously tend to mature more slowly than girls. And then, in terms of, I think it is important, though, that boys obviously tend to mature more slowly than girls. And so if you are dating someone just to kind of be aware of you know her, but especially his, maturity, so I wouldn't encourage people to get married if one partner isn't that mature. But on the plus side though, for kind of 20-something marriages and I was married at age 24, what we see is the couples who do get married in their twenties tend to be happier than couples who get married in their thirties. And so I think it's about, you know, establishing a common life together, figuring out new routines, new traditions, kind of figuring out work and family, you know, as a package deal you can have more kids. Obviously You're more likely to be on the same page religiously and ideologically if you get married in your 20s and I think also too, there's not as much baggage that you're bringing into the marriage.

Speaker 2: 26:07

More experience is good. So more experience teaching tends to make you a better teacher. More experience playing tennis, you know the same thing. More experience playing the piano makes you a better pianist. When it comes to marriage, that's not true. Lots of relationships I'm talking about serious relationships prior to marriage, you know intense ones set you up for, you know, a greater risk of marital failure, both of those being less happy in your marriage and more likely to end up in divorce court. So it could be the case to the people who have, you know, a lot of serious relationships in their in their twenties, for instance. Or you know two or three are more likely to have difficulty kind of transitioning, because they're probably comparing their spouse, you know, in ways that aren't necessarily all that fair to the better parts of their previous partners, or they've just had experience in breaking up and that's, you know, not necessarily the best experience to have as you head into marriage.

Speaker 1: 27:06

What about cohabitation?

Speaker 2: 27:08

So when it comes to cohabitation it relates to our kind of previous conversation what we see in the research is that a lot of people my students certainly think it's a good way to prepare for marriage. But the problem with cohabitation is that oftentimes you have people who are kind of cohabiting for different reasons. One person wants to stay on the rent, the other person thinks it's a good way to prepare for marriage, and then they kind of find out that they're really not on the same page and that can be very painful, can lead to a breakup or some other kind of drama. That's not helpful. But we also see too that a lot of people kind of just drift into cohabitation. You know there's some chemistry and then one person kind of moves their stuff into the other person's apartment or vice versa, and they've kind of never had these serious conversations about kind of where they're headed, what their core values are, where they'd like to live, how many kids they'd like to have, if they'd like to have children, all that kind of stuff, and they kind of just end up being together for a while. They might even get married, but they haven't kind of moved decisively to make a decision to be together in some kind of profound and important way. And so we generally see that folks who are cohabiting before engagement are more likely to have trouble after they get married, and that folks who cohabit with more than one partner are more likely to have, you know, difficulty once they do get married.

Speaker 2: 28:29

So from my perspective, I think that there are many ways you kind of can get to know someone besides living with them that you know are pretty fundamental, and I would encourage people to, you know, volunteer together at, like, a Boys and Girls Center or, you know, habitat for Humanity.

Speaker 2: 28:49

You know, do some hard things together.

Speaker 2: 28:51

You know, see your boyfriend, girlfriend with family members at work or college, you know, in a wide range of contexts you can kind of get a pretty good sense of their character.

Speaker 2: 29:01

But I don't think you have to live with someone to um to make that decision. And I think the other thing that I would say about cohabitation is often linked to some negative behaviors that people carry into their marriages, and so one example is kind of having more of a me first mindset, you know, and so we see this. With money, for instance, folks who cohabit prior to marriage are more likely to have separate accounts, understandably because they're not fully committed and then, once they marry, to keep those accounts separate. What we know is that couples who have joint accounts and have more of a we before me approach to money are more likely to be flourishing in their marriages. And so you know, I think the problem with cohabitation in part is you kind of can because you're not fully committed when you're cohabiting, oftentimes you kind of can maintain that more contingent view of commitment and more of a me first approach to your relationship. That doesn't maximize your odds of flourishing in marriage.

Speaker 1: 29:57

Yeah, I agree. I don't know if you've ever had a comment like this come your way. I know that I have before, where I've talked about the wise idea to not cohabitate or different things like that, the wise idea to be monogamous with one person in a committed marriage relationship, and sometimes people will say things like you're just pushing your agenda, your bias, on me, and it's not healthy or helpful, or they say a lot of interesting things like that. But what would you say back to someone who's like oh, you're just trying to push an agenda.

Speaker 2: 30:40

Well, I mean, I think one thing that I can say is that there's a lot of data out there right now, and probably the easiest data set for anyone who's got even some basic stats skills is called the General Social Survey. It's done by Chicago, it's funded by the feds, it's sort of the gold standard for, you know, um, social attitudes in america and in the gss. You can crunch a lot of numbers, and so you can crunch numbers about how many sexual partners people have had and their marital happiness, um, and their marital stability. You can, you can crunch, basically, numbers um, in terms of, yeah, they just had one relationship, you, you know, sexual relationship in the last year. And it's very clear in that data set that people who are kind of on the more monogamous trajectory, both over time and in the last year, are more likely to be flourishing in their marriages and they're also more likely, you know, to be happy with their lives in general.

Speaker 2: 31:37

So, again, I think we are hardwired to connect. There's a sort of fundamental orientation to pair bond in the human, I think, condition. There's also kind of, I think, an orientation to have multiple relationships, and so there's, like this, tension Are we going to go the pair bond route. You know, both as a person and as a culture, are we going to go more towards the route of multiple partners? As a person and as a culture, are we going to go more towards the root of multiple partners? And so I think you know people who do end up kind of doing the pair bond, the monogamy thing, are more likely to flourish, and so that's just kind of an empirical fact.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Now I want to make sure I heard this correct. You said that people who had less sex partners over the past year and over time had happier marriages. Just having one sexual partner in the last year, which is married folks basically being practically monogamous is linked to the highest levels of happiness for American adults in the GSS when it comes to happy marriage. We know that folks who have fewer partners, generally speaking, are happier in their marriages, and I guess that's worth noting because, as we mentioned earlier, the folks who are happily married are also the happiest people overall in general. So this kind of just gives us some sense that monogamy is for most of us and again there's a distinction between kind of recognizing the world as it is and as it should be no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 33:37

Does the general social survey, does it ask at all about like people who only had sex with the person that they're married to that was their only sexual partner?

Speaker 2: 33:42

I don't think it's that specific, but we have Other surveys kind of I think that tap, that and yeah there's, you know, most surveys that have been kind of looking at questions of relationship history find that fewer partners you know are linked to, you know, to more marital happiness. There's sort of like this idea out there you got to sell your wild oats, you know, and lots of the pop culture obviously is sort of thinking about the twenties and late teens as a kind of time to, you know, just have fun and you know all that stuff. But again there's something about this more monogamous track that's linked to and we don't know quite why, but there's just something about it that's linked, I think, to greater sexual satisfaction and greater marital happiness, I think partly because again the spirit of critical comparison is going to be ratcheted way down in that pathway.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Another interesting part of your bio is that companies such as Nestle, procter, gamble, kimberly-clark have asked you to consult with them on fertility and marriage trends in the United States. So why is this? Is it because they're trying to figure out like how much formula they need to create for the coming years?

Speaker 2: 35:02

Yeah, so no, we've worked with companies making diapers, companies who are producing formula just to kind of give them in there, with my colleague Lyman Stone, who's getting his doctorate at McGill in Canada, and they're just trying to understand kind of where are we headed demographically in terms of things like marriage trends and especially fertility trends, and we are seeing pretty dramatic declines, you know, throughout much of the developed world in fertility and we're just trying to figure out, you know, how how far are we going to go down and how quickly, and what's going to happen kind of next year on those, on those questions.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Why do you think there's been such a decline in fertility trends?

Speaker 2: 35:41

Well, I think part of it's. We sort of talked about what I call the mind, the Midas mindset, and that is that people kind of have this idea that what really matters, or what they have to kind of get all taken care of before they get married and have kids, is like the perfect degree, the perfect job, the decent sized bank account, and that all leads into postpone or end up foregoing marriage and parenthood. So that's, I think, part of the story. Think that these devices too now are also kind of inhibiting. Smartphones, social life, dating, you know, sex, and that's obviously all important for fertility. And I think people too, you know they expect more in terms of their housing today than they did in earlier generations. And then we also know too that there's something about urban density that's linked to people, I think, having a reduced interest in having kids or having more than one child as well. So insofar as the global population has become more urbanized in recent decades, it's also a factor too that's driving fertility down.

Speaker 2: 36:53

I mean, secularization would be another factor too. I mean just the fact that there are fewer, you know, people in the developed world who are going to church or some other kind of house of worship on a regular basis and on the religious piece. Religion matters forility, both because of kind of the ideas and the rituals tend to endow, you know, parenthood with some kind of sacred significance, but also practically People who are in religious communities get more practical help with raising kids, and that's also a big factor. There was a study, for instance in Europe looking at the number of priests and the number of nuns in regions in Southern Europe and found that the more priests there were, the more babies there were. But the more nuns there were way more babies. So that's of course because nuns back in the day were helpful in both education and health care, among other things for families with kids.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Now, when you say religion, which religion?

Speaker 2: 37:55

any religion, Christian religion, yeah, I look primarily at religious attendance, and in the US that's primarily Protestant and Catholic. But I would say that there's a fair bit of research indicating that, you know, religion in general is linked to more marriage and more fertility. You know. So the more, the more you practice, the more you're embedded in some kind of religious community um, the more likely you are to get married, have kids um, and kind of value family life. And I think that's because, in part, you know both family and religion are about sacrifice towards some greater good.

Speaker 2: 38:36

You know, and in their different ways, islam, for instance, and Judaism and Christianity all kind of valorize certain kinds of sacrifices. You know this is Holy Week in the Christian tradition, so you know people are fasting or doing other things that you know require them to. You know, live a more sacrificial ethic and, of course, if you're a parent, then there are lots of sacrifices in terms of, you know, late nights, diapers, ferrying kids to soccer practice. You know, helping with homework, all that stuff. But you attach a great deal of meaning to, you know, your faith in the case of, like Holy Week sacrifices, and you attach a great deal of meaning to family life in the case of helping your kids. You know, navigate school and sports and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 39:28

Are you concerned at all that the type of research and stats that we've been talking about today could just lead to further creating a divide, especially in America, between the religious, the non-religious, the conservatives, the progressives, the educated the less educated? Those were a lot of the categories that were kind of discussed. I mean, is it just going to keep pushing us further and further apart, or where is the hope of how we can take these things that we've talked about today and use it to all come together and champion marriage?

Speaker 2: 40:04

Yeah, that's a great question. I do think you know I'm more conservative and I'm Catholic, so that's sort of where I'm coming from. But I do take some comfort in knowing that there are some voices kind of on the scene today who have been kind of articulating the importance of marriage and two-parent families from kind of a center-left perspective. I'm thinking of Melissa Kearney, who's at the Brookings Institution and at the University of Maryland. She's an economist, she's a woman, she's a data whiz, and so she's been very articulate in the last seven months about kind of the importance of marriage and family for the welfare of kids, and she's also kind of happy to talk about kind of marriage more generally as a good institution. So there are certainly people like Melissa who are out there and we need more people like her.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Matt Iglesias is a center left journalist. You know kind of continues and that they recognize that. Again, when you look at kind of human flourishing whether it's just financial, or you know reports of meaning or happiness or less loneliness there's just no question that kind of everyone tends to benefit if they can get and stay married and have kids, benefit if they can get and stay married and have kids. And so I think the challenge is how do we help more progressive minded folks and then working class and poor Americans, you know find a path towards marriage and kind of renew marriage across the board, and that's partly what my book is aiming to do.

Speaker 1: 41:58

I love that. This is going to be probably a very politically incorrect way to ask you this question, so gear up. Do you believe that women shouldn't work?

Speaker 2: 42:05

No, I don't. But I think one thing that sort of is a challenge for us today is that we don't appreciate the ways in which women and men are often different from one another, especially, I think that's true for progressives, and secular progressives especially, and so, you know, one example is there's this great video, I think it's called the Nail, but it's about, like this couple who are sitting on a couch probably seen it and she's got a nail on her forehead. You know, it's just a little sort of thoughtful video and she's talking about how her forehead aches and her husband or boyfriend is kind of trying to solve the problem and he said, well, there's a nail in your forehead. She's like you don't get it, like she just wants him to basically sit there and listen and be empathetic and not and you know, not try to fix her problem, and her husband or boyfriend is like just sitting there trying to sort of at some level trying to take that, you know, nail out of her forehead which is causing her a lot of pain and heartache. But it's obviously done with sort of the whole idea of kind of giving women and men like the sense that you often approach things somewhat differently and when you can appreciate that your marriages and your love relationships are just a lot easier.

Speaker 2: 43:31

And so my wife and I had to kind of figure that out. You know, when I was facing some kind of difficulty or challenge, I just wanted to kind of be left alone, kind of go into my cave. You know, metaphorically speaking, work out whatever, like writing a chapter, you know, just do that. And then when I, when it's done, I'm like I'm fine. And where my wife, she would have a problem at work or with the kids, whatever, and she'd want to talk it through, and she didn't want me to solve the problem, she wanted me just to be kind of a good listener, to say things like, oh, that sounds tough or oh, wow, that's terrible, and again, not to kind of just fix the problem, just to be empathetic and good listener.

Speaker 2: 44:08

So it took us a while to kind of come to the realization that women and men often experience, you know, difficulties and challenges in different ways and you know that's worth bearing in mind. In terms of the work piece, I don't find today that whether the wife works in or outside the home is a huge deal, but what I do find is that you know his stable work is, you know, is a big deal, and so you know, I also find too that women are happier when they would describe their husbands as good breadwinners, as protective, as strong, but also, as you know, attentive and emotionally engaged. So just kind of recognizing that there are some differences, often in terms of what women and men are looking for in marriage and, you know, working with those differences rather than trying to deny them and that's a challenge today, I think, particularly for more progressive men and women who don't have that same, I think, understanding of the ways in which there are some differences between men and women that we find in the social and even the biological literature.

Speaker 1: 45:14

Why are you passionate about marriage and people getting married?

Speaker 2: 45:19

So I was raised by a single mom and I was initially kind of attracted to this whole field because I wanted to make sure that kids had the benefit of being raised by their own married parents, being raised by their own married parents. But the sort of weird thing about my own sort of research and work is that, as I said to you before, we've seen an uptick in the share of kids who are being raised by married families. So, like hooray, that's great. But now we're seeing a lot of young adults facing, I think, more difficulties when it comes to dating and marrying.

Speaker 2: 45:45

I talked to a lot of young women at the University of Virginia who are really concerned about the lack of options they perceive when it comes to men who would be worthy of dating.

Speaker 2: 45:56

You know who are commitment oriented and you know potential husbands down the road are more conservative or more religious. But I've also heard, including from critics of mine, that you know one. There was a New York Times journalist who basically said you know Brad is telling people to get married and yet it's so hard for us women, you know, to find men who are worthy of marriage. There aren't that many marriage women out there. She's kind of writing this from a progressive left-wing perspective. So her idea is like you can't promote marriage because there aren't enough good guys out there to marry. So this is kind of a common complaint that we're getting from women across the spectrum, and so I wrote this book in part to kind of both motivate both women and men young adults to go ahead and get married and then kind of give them some ideas about how they can forge a marriage as well.

Speaker 1: 46:53

I love that. Dr Brad Wilcox, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find out more about you and buy your newest book, Get Married?

Speaker 2: 47:03

So I'm at Brad Wilcox IFS on Twitter, and then familystudiesorg is the website for the Institute for Family Studies, which has a lot of material on marriage and parenthood and fertility, and now we're doing more and more on teens and tech as well, so that's also a good place to see my work and the work of others who are kind of working on the family sets of issues.

Speaker 1: 47:27

Yes, I get your Friday emails every Friday for years that include kind of the three to five recent, some recent articles, some kind of in the past couple of months, of of the things that you and your team have done, and it's been incredibly insightful. I've loved it. And, of course, your book get married is available online wherever books are sold, so people can pick up a copy of that as soon as they would like as well. We'll include all of that in the show notes for people to join, to get the book and to look at y'all's website as well, with all of the research and stats that you have on there. Great Thanks, kimberly. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 48:03

So this episode was a little bit different than the normal type of episodes that we have on. It starts with attraction and I appreciated Dr Wilcox coming on and talking about the different things that he has found in his research and there's a lot of really good things that we can glean information from. As I was sitting here processing after the episode, there was kind of a heaviness that I thought man like. If I wasn't married and didn't love marriage, I may have heard that episode and feel kind of depressed or uninspired, and I hope that's not the takeaway that you have, because here are the great things that I see from what we talked about. Even though there were different ways that the data was divided in terms of how it was talked about, in terms of religion or social status or political ideation, whether someone leaned more conservative or more progressive, here's what I hope you know. I believe that for every single group of people, that there is hope for a great marriage and that marriage is important. Of course I believe that, but I believe that, no matter what you believe, how much money you make or what religion you have although I do hope that you one day have an encounter with Jesus, because I believe he loves you very, very much but no matter where you fall in any of those items that we talked about, that there is hope for you to have a great marriage.

Speaker 1: 49:30

I understand that, because of the work that I do at Marriage Helper, I probably experience a little bit of a bias in terms of the people that we typically see at Marriage Helper who are going through crisis are the affluent, religious, well-educated people. The group that he said and I don't necessarily disagree with him, but it's the group that he said, and I don't necessarily disagree with him, but it's the group that he said tended to have the lowest divorce rate. Hearing that may make you feel very alone. If you're in that group going through it, you're not alone. People still have problems, they still have crises, they still can end up getting divorced or on the road to divorce, but there is still hope for you.

Speaker 1: 50:10

So what are some key takeaways that we can take from this that we can use to have better marriages? Well, the first one and I loved this spend time together. More time together means you're less likely to divorce. I agree with that. He actually went on to state even more of what can predict a happy, healthy marriage Communion together, this time together like date nights, emotional engagement, commitment, being committed to each other and to the marriage, having a shared faith and having a spouse that you feel is protective of the relationship. That tended to be especially, even more important for women. Those were all things that we talked about and I agree that all of those things are important for healthy marriages.

Speaker 1: 50:55

I also think there's an interesting thing to explore, and I don't know that I necessarily have the answer to it right now, but I can see how it can be difficult for marriages if there's a husband who is unemployed, it definitely takes a blow to his self-esteem and to his sense of provision and his want and desire to provide for the family. Here's what I encourage If you're going through a situation where your husband doesn't have stable employment right now, or maybe you are the husband who doesn't have stable employment right now then I believe it's even more important to talk to each other and to show support for the other person. That is one of the best things, because the more that a man, especially in this situation, feels like he's not providing and that his wife is badgering him about it, it can continue to have a downward spiral effect on his self-esteem, which would continue, or can continue for him to kind of get in this shame cycle and stay stuck there. So if unemployment is an issue, then don't let that be what drives you apart. It absolutely does not have to be. You can come together and work through it together in order to still have a great marriage. And then my final takeaway is that marriage requires sacrifice, and so when you and your husband, you and your wife, can get on the same page and understand what each other's needs are and then work together to make that happen. That's really where the gold or the bread and butter whichever metaphor you want to put there happens.

Speaker 1: 52:27

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I want you to remember that there is always hope, no matter what situation that you've gone through or are currently going through, and even if you are divorced, there is still always hope for you in your future relationships. You can always go to marriagehelpercom that's the company that I'm the CEO of which is a sister show or a sister to this podcast of. It Starts With Attraction, but we have another podcast with Marriage Helper called Relationship Radio. That tackles a lot of these marriage issues that I've discussed in these takeaways and I hope, if you're looking for hope, that you go and find hope there. That's Relationship Radio. We'll link to it in the show notes Until next week. Stay strong.