Kylie Griswold (2:59)

Thank you so much for joining me on the Kylie cast today.

Brad Wilcox (3:02)

Kylie, it's great to be here with you today.

Kylie Griswold (3:04)

So 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.

Brad Wilcox (3:13)

So I teach sociology family at the University of Virginia, been doing that for more than 20 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.

Kylie Griswold (3:37)

Yeah, pretty important topics those, 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 Wheatley Institute. Um, 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.

Brad Wilcox (3:58)

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 5,000 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 way or another, and trying to just try and figure out kind of what's happening with dating, you know, from the young adult's perspective. And the ages we're focusing on are those who are age 22 to 35 in this particular report that's just come out.

Kylie Griswold (4:36)

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, 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 83% of women and 74% of men want that. So that's a pretty overwhelming majority, and that half of them want to be in a relationship, and yet only 1 in 3, 30% about report that they are regularly dating. So what's the disconnect there? What. What are the reasons that they're saying they're not dating?

Brad Wilcox (5:30)

Right. So it is kind of striking that, again, 2/3 of this sample of young adults are not seriously dating anyone. And I think, you know, what's going on here in part is 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 this survey indicate that they were kind of confident about approaching someone to kind of express, you know, their romantic interest. Only about 4 in 10. So they kind of trusted their judgment when it comes to choosing a good dating partner as well. So it's 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 a view 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 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 I also kind of see in teaching ordinary students now at the University of Virginia. So 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 at UVA more particularly.

Kylie Griswold (7:46)

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 and things like that? I mean, what are, what do you think are the main contributors to this?

Brad Wilcox (8:13)

Yeah, this is 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 at IFS and other scholars are doing is certainly obviously a digital story here. We've seen, for instance, kind of in person socializing among young adults. Adults fall from about 12 hours prior to smartphones per week to about 5 hours today. So just kind of huge decline in, in socializing. We've seen dating fall by about 50% 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, they're called helicopter parents or snowplow parents where they're kind of like clearing out the, the difficult things from their kids lives. They're 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 as younger children, you know, unsupervised or kind of letting a difficult, 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 in 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 know, worried about approaching young woman and kind of being called out as, you know, some kind of, you know, harasser or, you know, evil, toxic, masc masculine guy. 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 in which our boys have been ill served by schools, 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 too. Is there? Our schools are not kind of equipping boys with the kind of experiences and knowledge which would increase their competence and just being young men and then also in approaching women in particular.

Kylie Griswold (10:49)

Mm, yeah. There is so much to unpack. And what you just said, it makes me, it makes me think also when you talked about the. Both the me too, and then the sort of environment that boys, 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, the kind of culture even that grade schools have become for boys where you just kind of have. They're just run by HR Karens. Everything's kind of dominate 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, that's got to be so difficult. Are you seeing, and I mean, the 5,000 or so people who were 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?

Brad Wilcox (12:01)

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, 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 D.C. another school is Woodbury 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. 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. 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.

Kylie Griswold (12:59)

I also wonder about the political dynamics of this too, because I know a lot of the statistics in this 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.

Brad Wilcox (13:34)

So kind of two, I think, points that one could make. I mean, there's a lot you could say about this, right, Kylie? But I think one thing that we are seeing actually, ironically, was put out by a Brookings research brief 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 were much more concerned about the fortunes of boys and men, but liberal parents were much more concerned about their own sons, and conservative parents were less concerned about their own sons. And I think this probably ties into the way in which we do see some, actually some new research from Jonathan Rothwell, who's the senior economist at Gallup. And what he is finding in his work is that teenagers who are being raised by more conservative parents tend to be doing better on the emotion he didn't separate out by boys and girls, but kind of would dovetail with this story from Brookings. And his thought is that conservative parents are more likely to have clear rules and expectations for their kids than more liberal parents and, 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 2014, what's been called, 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, there are about two liberal women who are single young women for every young liberal guy, and they're about two conservative young men for every. About conservative young woman who'd be. Who'd be single. This is based upon some work I did with Lyman Stone, my colleague at 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. Some tensions from my book, forget Married. I 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 it's, 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 partisan and this ideological divide.

Chris Markowski (16:26)

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Podcast Host (16:57)

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

Lowe's Advertiser (17:00)

Hey.

Dan Morgan (17:00)

How's it going today?

Podcast Host (17:01)

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

Dan Morgan (17:04)

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

Podcast Host (17:10)

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion. 1. 20 billion is an insane number.

Dan Morgan (17:19)

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think, somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

Brad Wilcox (17:31)

Awesome.

Podcast Host (17:32)

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

Dan Morgan (17:37)

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247365 wow.

Podcast Host (17:47)

Dan Morgan from Morgan Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

Dan Morgan (17:51)

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

Kylie Griswold (17:58)

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 candidates, 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, in this report, the most recent one, the state of our unions dating recession report, but I forget the number. Now about people who didn't feel that they were surrounded by dateable partners or something like that. Do you, do you know what I'm referring to?

Brad Wilcox (18:41)

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 UVA and other venues as well, but there's just kind of this, this, this sense that a lot of the, the men in there, not obviously not all, maybe not even a 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 some smoking too much marijuana or they're not really that engaged with, you know, school or work or they don't have 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 UVA who actually are more marriage minded is that a lot of their female peers don't seem to be that interested in kind of getting married and having a 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, 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 men who voted for Kamala Harris, their sort of top priority was career and marriage. 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 listen 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 men, especially on the right, are more likely to express an interest in marriage and fatherhood. Mm.

Kylie Griswold (20:29)

So that kind of gets to another disconnect that I. That I was seeing in this study, which is. Well, I'll just quote directly from the report. Nearly 2/3, 64%, reported that marriage was an important life goal for them, although less than half, 47%, 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, it doesn't really matter for me right now, though.

Brad Wilcox (21:11)

Yeah. So there was another study done by Pew that basically was kind of looking at adults, you know, more generally and find that about 70% of kind of adults were 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 for prioritizing parenthood. In this particular Pew survey 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 Midas mindset.

Kylie Griswold (21:50)

Okay.

Brad Wilcox (21:51)

The Midas 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 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 that kind of the public in 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 a 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, to, in Charlie Kirk's words, kind of travel to Thailand. Right. So kind of like, the thought is that, you know, the 20s are a time when you're really focusing on your. When you're basically working hard, playing hard. This is kind of like the Midas mindset from, you know, from where I sit. 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 20s, they're 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 on the part of many young adults and their parents that you kind of can just turn about 27, 28, 29, snap your fingers and, like, find the perfect partner and get married around 30. You know, this is kind of like, you know, the mindset that I see among a lot of young adults today, both at UVA and elsewhere. What they're not really, I think, realizing is that just because of the newer cultural currents that we're all kind of navigating, it looks like it's just a lot harder for folks in their late 20s and 30s to find, you know, a spouse today.

Kylie Griswold (23:56)

Yeah. Which is interesting because I. 1. One aspect of the report that I found just fascinating was the number of respondents who said that the ideal age to marry is 30. It's so interesting to me because, you know, women's fertility, specifically, gradually and then rapidly declines in their 30s. 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, gonna figure it out later? Where does this 30 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?

Brad Wilcox (24:49)

Yeah. So I wrote a piece called Get Married Young for Compact magazine not too long ago and talked 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, she's conservative, marriage minded, evangelical, but, you know, she said you, 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 in, you know, in Texas as well. And, you know, it wasn't like she was again, she, she wanted to get married, but she didn't kind of prioritize that, both in her undergraduate days and her law school days. And she felt once 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, in Manhattan. So then she hits her late 20s in Texas and now she's 34, 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 broken up with him. So. But I think again, the issue that her story, I think kind of reveals to us is that there are plenty of folks out there who I think are marriage minded, broadly, you know, sympathetic to the importance of all these issues. Could be conservative, could be 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 Midas mindset in practice. And yet she would much more have preferred that she 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, I'm a little bit nerdy and there are plenty of nerdy guys in my college. And if I just been more thoughtful about, you know, dating intentionally back in college, I might be in a different place today than I am currently.

Kylie Griswold (27:22)

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 single.

Brad Wilcox (27:35)

We've gotten at 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 20s and early 30s. So I think, again, there's a lot of, there's the conventional 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 and they're actually a good deal for men. 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 the research indicating when it 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 with Gene Twenge, a noted psychologist, 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 you 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 today.

Kylie Griswold (29:24)

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, 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, to give you those stress releasing hormones or whatever it is. So.

Brad Wilcox (29:44)

Yeah, that's a good point too. I mean, I think we kind of minimize how much work, work for all of us can be stressful. And again, there's just nothing like we have a big family, but there's nothing like kind of like when we had little kids, just sort of like waking up in the morning and there's some toddler, young child kind of just snuggle between you and your spouse. It's just kind of a magical experience.

Kylie Griswold (30:09)

Yeah. The stress that comes from work is not stress that will ever love you back.

Brad Wilcox (30:12)

Exactly.

Kylie Griswold (30:13)

Unlike having children. Yeah.

Podcast Host (30:17)

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

Lowe's Advertiser (30:19)

Hey.

Dan Morgan (30:20)

How's it going today?

Podcast Host (30:21)

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

Dan Morgan (30:24)

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

Podcast Host (30:30)

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion one. 20 billion is an insane number.

Dan Morgan (30:39)

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

Brad Wilcox (30:51)

Awesome.

Podcast Host (30:52)

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?

Dan Morgan (30:56)

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 24 7. 365.

Brad Wilcox (31:06)

Wow.

Podcast Host (31:07)

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

Dan Morgan (31:11)

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com or an office near you.

Kylie Griswold (31:15)

Yeah, I had an interesting conversation just anecdotally for me with a young woman, probably mid, mid to late 20s, 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. 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 30s. 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. 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. 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 30, they'll be able to instantly, you know, find the perfect spouse. There's also this assumption that once they're past 30, they will have no trouble conceiving a child. And those are just not realistic expectations for young people.

Brad Wilcox (32:23)

Yeah. So one of the things that, that my colleague Grant Bailey did was kind of look at this from a more kind of demographic perspective and what he found. And it is looking kind of retrospectively for women who are now like, you know, in their late 40s or, or 50s, but for when it kind of got past 30 without having a child, you know, they had only about a 1 and 2 shot of having a child after 30. Now, again, this is for all women, so. And that would include women who want to be childless and women who, you know, weren't married, obviously. But it just, it kind of was. Was a striking finding for us because it kind of dovetailed with something that Charlie Kirk had said, you know, before he was killed, in terms of making the case for earlier marriage for young adults. And his point was that, you know, if you wait until around, you know, 30 to kind of get serious about finding a spouse and starting a family, your odds just, you know, really begin to, 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 men kind of move into their late 30s. And then we also don't kind of, especially now, appreciate the social difficulty that we're seeing now among young adults when it comes to finding a good spouse in their late 20s and 30s. So for all those reasons, we should be, I think, much more open to getting married, you know, in our 20s and also having a kid, you know, or starting having children in your 20s as well.

Kylie Griswold (33:55)

Yeah. There was a quote in this piece that I read this week from the Washington Post, a really interesting opinion piece from Shadi Hamid about this great. This dating recession report. And here's the quote. I think it's really applicable here. Quote, 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 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 to view marriage as something that you do with someone, not that you do once you've arrived and become the perfect partner.

Brad Wilcox (34:34)

Yeah, right. There's a kind of. There are two sort of models that we see in the 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 30. And then, of course, the cornerstone model is sort of getting married often in your early 20s and sort of seeing, you know, marriage and family's opportunity where you can kind of grow together with your spouse, kind of build a family together, and really kind of forge a more we first orientation, both to life in general and into 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.

Kylie Griswold (35:36)

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 divorce landscape?

Brad Wilcox (35:58)

Yeah. So I came out with a book called get married in 2024, around Valentine's Day. And, you know, as I was kind of talking about the book, there was 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 a variety of reasons we've touched on already. But there, of course, are 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 Tate. 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 end in divorce. And, of course, his own parents got divorced when he was a child, which I'm sure shapes kind of his whole perspective on marriage and the like. But what we actually see is that since around 1981, the divorce rate actually has come down by about 40%. 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. Cut. That's sort of the good news that, you know, someone like Andrew Tate's not, Not. Not aware of. From our estimates that these were family studies, about 40, 41% of marriages wanted in divorce. 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 your risk of divorce by between 30 and 50%. And that's based upon just, you know, individuals going. We don't know what the sort of couple effect is, so it probably is bigger than that. We know, too, that 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. So 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 follow from unemployment as well. Regular date nights also seem to be like, you know, good divorce prevention as well. One study that I did suggested that couples who kind of had date nights regularly were about 25% less likely to get divorced. So there's kind of a bunch of things that couples can do to kind of, you know, both, I think, kind of keep the romantic spark alive in their. 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 income relatively steady and reduce their risks when it comes to financial stress. So I just want to give people some hope here, recognizing that a divorce is down and balanced, and then be. There are things you can kind of do as a kind of deliberate couple to keep your marriage headed in the right direction.

Kylie Griswold (39:07)

Yeah, 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. Correct.

Brad Wilcox (39:18)

So, yeah, so I talk about kind of, there's. There's sort of good news and bad news to kind of convey about marriage and family. America and sort 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 in three young adults will never marry and about one in 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 the bad news is that I think for adults, they're having greater difficulty in 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 so in ways that tend to be, you know, more stable. And this means also that we've seen actually a slight uptick in the share of kids who are being raised in stable married families. 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 more conservative, 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.

Kylie Griswold (40:48)

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 this. You kind of just have, you more or less have a built in spouse. I 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?

Brad Wilcox (41:28)

100%, yeah. I mean, there's no question that really since 1960s, 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 the 1960s, we see today there's a kind of marriage penalty facing working class couples with kids. And for my book, I talk 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 a real issue the way in which public policy and it's not that anyone in D.C. i don't think anyone was sort of sitting in D.C. and saying 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 who are 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 so.

Kylie Griswold (42:39)

Yeah, yeah. The incentives are just all wrong.

Podcast Host (42:43)

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.

Dan Morgan (42:46)

Hey, how's it going today?

Podcast Host (42:48)

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

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Brad Wilcox (43:18)

Awesome.

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Podcast Host (43:34)

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

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Kylie Griswold (43:43)

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, it's sort of the antithesis to Tinder or some of these other like doom scroll type constantly swip 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 solution to the dating recession and a matchmaking app like this?

Brad Wilcox (44:40)

Yeah, so I, what I would say is two different things. One thing that I would say is it does look, you know, based upon some work done by my colleague Dr. Wendy Wang, that couples who meet in person, in religious communities, in college, at kind of real parties with friends in the workplace, are more happily married. So 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 they're like, they have like a decent character or they've got a good reputation, you know. So I think that's the best way to meet someone.

Kylie Griswold (45:18)

It's like built in vetting, which can be very, very helpful.

Brad Wilcox (45:22)

So, and 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, is one good 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 interested in a committed relationship. And again, I would, I would look at that as kind of as a backup option if you're, you know, heading into your, you know, your, your mid to late 20s or 30s and, and not, you know, finding someone who makes for a good match in person.

Kylie Griswold (46:32)

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, other like other people in your social circle who can help sort of matchmake. But what else can be done? What's, 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 not?

Brad Wilcox (47:12)

So I think one thing to do is really kind of like communicating the value of marriage and of 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 on his career and he had a very clear kind of plan for his career for the next decade. After graduating from uva, I asked him, you know, do you want to get married? Big nod, 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, and later marriage as well. So 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, we should and can do. I think we do have to kind of think about bringing back matchmakers in some way as well. Kind of like people who 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 Bound 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 that snowplow or helicopter parenting 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 a decent, in physical shape, dressing nicely, doing well at school, you know, and therefore being prepared to do well at work in their, in their 20s. 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 a table or 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 too, to be volunteering through religious and secular organizations in their communities as one other way to kind of meet people who would be good folks to date, mate, 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, a kind of developing a more technological aestheticism, 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 lead to dating and marriage as well.

Kylie Griswold (50:14)

Yes. How about on a policy level, what are maybe some policies that, that create disincentives or maybe do you have any policy blueprints for something that you think this would be an easy thing to do?

Brad Wilcox (50:26)

Yeah. So, I mean, so Limestone, my colleague's done, you know, some work on really the child tax credit. So we're certainly kind of advocating a much more generous credit than what is currently on offer from the federal government. That's more kind of once people are already, you know, married. But I think there are things we can do as well in terms of the marriage penalty, which is primarily about, I would say Medicaid, but there are other, you know, federal programs that could be basically recalibrated. 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, 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 getting behind 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 to not kind of move in like a China style direction where there's like, you know, 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.

Kylie Griswold (52:29)

Yeah, good stuff. 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?

Brad Wilcox (52:42)

Yeah, I think the main thing is, is my book Get Married with Harper Collins, that's really kind of the book that's most relevant. I've written on religion and family and previous more academic research 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.

Kylie Griswold (52:59)

Great. 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 2026 state of our unions report, the dating recession from the Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. Brad, thank you so much for being here today and helping break down this really, really important work.

Brad Wilcox (53:20)

Thanks Kylie. I appreciate it.

Kylie Griswold (53:26)

Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Kylie Castle. 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 second and it is such a good way for you to help out the show. As always, I will be back next week with more. So until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.

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