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- [00:01]
A
So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores.
- [00:06]
B
Now.
- [00:07]
A
Get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Young people are almost taking themselves voluntarily off the dating market entirely, not walking the walk at all. Like, literally not even pursuing any sort of romantic connection.
- [00:36]
B
It's a huge problem. This is why we are projecting that so many young adults today are not going to get married and not have kids because they haven't been kind of formed in ways that would kind of equip them with the social skills. They haven't been kind of given the social opportunities to kind of mix and mingle. It's important for us to also appreciate that the best things in life tend to involve suffering and stress. When you look at kind of the alternative, what you see, unfortunately, is that people who are single and childless today are much more likely to be lonely. They're much more likely to be unhappy. We've seen unhappiness among young adults who are Single doubling since 1980 in America.
- [01:08]
A
Wow.
- [01:09]
B
And they're much more likely to say their lives are not meaningful. And so this is what I think is not being kind of conveyed in this kind of TikTok discourse is that married mothers in America are about two to three times more likely to be very happy compared to their female peers, who are single and childless. Living a life of service in the context of marriage and family, I think ends up being, you know, most of us, a pathway to living both a meaningful and happy life.
- [01:33]
A
Professor Brad Wilcox, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. I met you in person a few months ago when I was down at UVA to debate with Harry Sisson, which was quite a fun night. And we ended up that same week having a big conversation on my show and in all of my content and even at the debate related to marriage and family, because out of absolutely nowhere, the View decided to come after me for encouraging young people to embrace marriage and family and pursue that purpose and have happiness in their lives. You are a professor of sociology at uva. You're an author. You are a fellow with the Institute for Family Studies, and I'm so excited to pick your brain today about marriage and children and fertility, all the good stuff. But for those who don't know much about the work that you do. Can you let us know what that's been like?
- [02:17]
B
Sure. So I've been kind of studying the impact of marriage really, on kids for a long time, Isabel, and, you know, really wondering and worrying about where we're headed with marriage and kids. But really, in the last. I would say maybe seven or eight years, I've been hearing from more students at uva, especially female students. They're kind of wondering about their prospects for dating and for marriage. They're not sure if they should be kind of investing in a pathway that would lead to marriage and family. And so that kind of got me thinking about the sort of value of marriage for adults. And I've been really thinking a lot about and writing about and researching that topic, and then wrote my book, Get Married, kind of helping adults to understand and appreciate how much marriage matters. Not just for any kids that they might have, but for their own, well being, their own welfare. And then as we kind of look at Americans more generally, trying to think about how what's happening on a variety of fronts, including what's been called a happiness crash for adults, is linked to the decline in marriage in America recently. So, again, the big point I would make to you is my. My focus has been shifting a lot more from, like, worrying about the kids to worrying about the adults and sort of intersecting the role of marriage and family with that whole issue and topic.
- [03:21]
A
What are you hearing as a professor from young women about this concern? Do they feel like people aren't dateable, that marriage just isn't popular anymore? Why are terrified that's not gonna be part of their life?
- [03:32]
B
So I think part of the sort of. One concern that I hear from young women is that guys are just not interested in committing. And I think what that's really revolving around is that there are some guys who are just kind of, like, taking things very casually, and they're just not really kind of treating relationships seriously. But that's been kind of, to be honest, a kind of perennial concern that I've heard articulated at UVA, really, since beginning teaching there in 2002. I think what's newer is that there's also kind of a growing concern that the guys that they're meeting aren't kind of measuring up, that they're not really confident, that they're not really flourishing. They're not really engaged either in classes or in life more generally. And that concern has been kind of echoed across the whole culture. So I think we are seeing kind of what I would call kind of male malaise, where, too Many teenage boys and too many young men, a minority, but a larger minority, are really kind of struggling, and they're not doing well in school. They're not necessarily really killing it in the workplace once they're in their 20s. And they don't kind of present to young women as the kind of confident guys who have a sense of themselves and their future would be worthy of dating and then marrying later. So that's kind of the newer concern that I've articulated, and I think it's driving a lot of the hesitation that we now see young women about dating and marriage. So, for instance, we saw Pew did a survey recently, and it found that 39% of younger single men were saying that they weren't interested in dating. I think that's partly because that they just have the sense that the guys, you know, in their milieu don't, you know, measure up. Now, there are other things going on there, too. I think there's another group of women who are kind of much more career oriented. They're not really thinking about dating and marriage and family. I think they're kind of missing out on some of the opportunities that are there for them at UVA and more generally. So that's another issue that's sort of. That's playing out. But in terms of the concern, I think it's both the kind of classic concern with guys being too casual on the one hand. But now the newer thing is just the concern that the guys that they're meeting don't, you know, seem to be kind of thriving.
- [05:37]
A
This is so fascinating for me, and maybe this is where we jump in with marriage, because I have a million questions for you about it. But I'm surprised to hear this, that it's more oriented statistically toward the young men, perhaps, because what I'm hearing in the political world more often than not is the problem typically lies with young women today that young men have this internal cultural push, largely because of the revival of masculinity as a result of the Charlie Kirks of the world, that their priorities are marriage and children. I think it was Gallup or Pew just a few months ago that put out the list of priorities for young people under 35. Politically, for young men, their second and third priorities were to get married and have children. But for young women under 35, that was like second to last. It was not even remotely on their radar. But you're telling me it's kind of both ways, both directions?
- [06:23]
B
Yes, I think. And if we kind of then think about how this all looks to the young men. So I certainly also hear from guys that I'm speaking to at UVA who actually are more interested in marriage and family. So from their perspective, the concern is at least some share of the women that they're dating or they've been interested in dating are much more focused on their careers and wouldn't even want to begin to think about marriage until they're around 30. And so from these guys perspective, like why would I really invest seriously in a relationship at UVA when many of the young women that I would meet would be much more inclined to just focus on their career for at least the next decade? So there's certainly, and we do see in that kind of famous NBC poll in the fall, just around Charlie Kirk's killing, just before Charlie Kirk's killing, that young women who are voting for Harris were much more likely to prioritize career and deprioritize marriage and family. And young men much more likely to mention fatherhood and marriage as some of their top life priorities. So I think attitudinally there has been a shift where young men are kind of gravitating more towards marriage and family. And that's great. But I think there is also an issue of kind of like how much does their aspiration kind of really match their capabilities?
- [07:33]
A
Interesting.
- [07:34]
B
So you know, you might aspire to being married and being a father, but you know, do you have your life together? Can you ask someone out on a date? Do you kind of, are you in shape? Do you have a decent job? Are you on track to getting a decent job? So I think there's a, there's a kind of issue for some of these guys where they kind of aspire in a sense, what I would call a sort of. So they're sort of talking right then they're not necessarily walking right in terms of being, you know, capable at this point in time of dating well and then, and then marrying well. So that's, I think a bigger issue for guys is that the values there, I think are more aligned with a more family friendly orientation in life. But it's not always the case that their personal life circumstances would basically make them a good prospect for dating and marriage as well.
- [08:18]
A
This is interesting for me to hear because this idea of aspiration versus reality I'm seeing transcend the political divide even in America. The debate that you attended to watch me talk with Harry Sisson at uva, someone I have very little to nothing in common with, it was fascinating when we started talking about this. I articulated that there's this huge cultural narrative encouraging young people not to get married that has, of course, resulted in a massive decline in marriage rates in our country. And I was interrupted by this young man on the left to say, no one is saying that. Literally, no one is saying they don't want to get married. Everyone wants to get married. And he asked the room to put their hand up if someday they wanted to grow up and get married. And every hand of these college students from across the political spectrum shot up, which made me really happy to see. And yet the money isn't really being put where everyone's mouth is, because this generation, and certainly the generation that came just before us and millennials, is not getting married at the same rates that our parents and our grandparents were. And that's, of course, impacting American culture at large. Do you see that prevailing narrative in culture from academia, from Hollywood, from social media, and how is it impacting real life marriage rates?
- [09:25]
B
Yeah. So it was fascinating in that kind of exchange between you and Harry about kind of young adults and marriage, because Harry was kind of making the argument, well, no, kind of. No one on the left is really opposed to marriage and family. Like, what are you talking about? Is kind of his response to you and students here at uva. Aren't you in favor of getting married? It was striking in a good way.
- [09:40]
A
I was surprised, very surprised.
- [09:42]
B
Almost all the hands went up. Everyone wanted to get married at uva, which is, like, really gratifying to me as well. But I think we have to also understand and appreciate there is a lot of elite discourse coming from the left that's sort of discounting the value of marriage and family. There was that famous piece in the New York Times written by a writer from Brooklyn. They're always from Brooklyn. And she said that basically that married motherhood in America is a game that no one wins. So she's clearly discounting marriage and motherhood in this piece in the New York Times. And there's countless sort of pieces written in this.
- [10:12]
A
Oh, hundreds. I mean, you do one Google search.
- [10:14]
B
It's incredible. And what I think Harry did not appreciate, too, is that when you look at who's getting married today, younger conservatives are way more likely to be getting married today than younger liberals. And when you look at kind of people in the sort of general adult population we see today in America is that a majority of conservatives are married 18 to 55, and only a minority of liberals are married. So there's clearly a way in which culture, ideology do shape and structure who is sort of prioritizing marriage in their life, who's dating with an eye towards marriage, and then who's ending up married. And it is the case, I think, that most Americans, be they liberal or conservative, religious or secular, do kind of value marriage, want to marry. But it's also the case, too, that religious Americans and conservative Americans are more likely to really prioritize it in terms of how they're approaching young adulthood, how they're approaching dating, and how they're kind of, you know, making an effort to put a ring on it. And that's, I think, not recognized in morally discourses about this.
- [11:13]
A
Orienting your life around that being the trajectory you want to be on, I think is such an important part of this conversation because you can say, sure, someday I would love to have that experience, but am I really walking the walk, as you say, to put myself there? Most people in our generation are starting not to walk the walk, even if that is something that they are aspiring to. And you guys at Institute for Family Studies just came out with some really shocking information about this. That one in three gen zers will never get married, ever, and one in four are projected to never have children. This is unprecedented in human history, let alone American history, at least in American history.
- [11:49]
B
Yeah. So, no, it is striking that we kind of have seen this sort of dramatic increase in the share of young adults who are, you know, who are not dating and not marrying. And so because of these trends, we are now projecting, as you were saying, that fully one in three young adults will never marry and one in four young adults will never have kids, never become a father, never become a mother. And, you know, I think it's. To me, it's really a sad thing because, you know, as a husband and father, these are the things that really bring my life the most, you know, the most meaning and the most joy and sort of to imagine. There can be literally millions of young adults today, men and women, who are never going to have the. The experience of being married, the experience of taking your kids to soccer games, traveling with your kids, watching a first communion. All these things are not going to be in their life. And then too, even thinking too about as you get older and seeing my own family members who are older, they're benefiting from their spouse helping them navigate the hospital, they're benefiting from their kids helping them navigate, you know, older life. And a lot of the young adults today who are going to be traveling through life without the benefit of a spouse about the benefit of kids as they move into their last chapters is also kind of just incredibly sobering. So that's what's happening right now with a substantial minority of young adults.
- [13:09]
A
I think a lot of that I'm finding when I'm speaking to college students in particular, is attributed to our generation's narrative that you're going to be really miserable if you are married to someone and if you are constantly having to dote on your children. And I'm seeing this growing discourse on TikTok especially, that the best thing you can possibly do for your life as a young woman is to be radically selfish, that your time belongs to you, your job belongs to you, your stuff belongs to you, your vacations belong to you, and all of that will, poof, go away the second you have a baby. Which isn't true, by the way. Nor is it true of sharing your life with your partner. Ideally, your life becomes better in every measurable way because you have your best friend there. But what can you tell us about happiness as it relates to marriage and kids?
- [13:51]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. I think we have to acknowledge, too, that being a parent is stressful. And there's so much, you know, there are so many things that are challenging about being a parent. You know, the lost sleep, you know, when kids are little, you know, the financial stresses of, you know, raising kids. I mean, there's just innumerable stresses and strains. Right. But I think it's important for us to also appreciate that the best things in life, the best things in life tend to involve suffering and stress. So if you're a top tier athlete, if you're a top tier podcaster, if you're. Whatever it might be, it does entail sacrifice and stress. And I think the same thing is true when it comes to being a spouse and a parent, that, yes, it's deeply challenging to be living with the same person for your life, to be raising kids across the life course. Nevertheless, when you look at kind of the alternative, what you see, unfortunately, is that people who are single and childless today are much more likely to be lonely, only they're much more likely to be unhappy. We've seen unhappiness among young adults who are Single doubling since 1980 in America. Wow. And they're much more likely to say their lives are not meaningful. Right. And so this is what I think is not being kind of conveyed in this kind of TikTok discourse or in this elite discourse sometimes, that is discounting marriage and parenthood, is people don't appreciate how much meaning and joy and just a sense of sort of, there's someone in your corner when you're married and when you have kids, your life is just so full. I mean, you're taking your kids to school, you're watching school concerts, you're watching your kids play soccer. If you're religious, you're taking them to church or synagogue. And there's just so much that follows in a good way from having kids in your life in this way that is not, I think, adequately appreciated today. So that's what they're missing. But in terms of the statistics, what's also, I think, not understood is a lot of the polling now tells us. My colleague Dan Cox has done this polling. He's got a new book coming out on this whole topic of young adults and dating and relationships. But what he finds is that Americans in general, young adults in particular, especially younger women, think that, you know, guys who get married and have kids are happier. They think that women who get married and have kids are not as happy as women who are single and childless. So this pervasive sense that sort of marriage benefits guys, but marriage doesn't benefit women. And there's kind of a. A penalty that they're paying. A kind of transition of loss about first getting married, but especially about becoming mothers we see is that in the data is that married mothers in America are about two to three times more likely, depending upon the age group and the sort of stage of life, to be very happy compared to their female peers who are single and childless. And we're also seeing, to Isabel, a growing happiness divide between not just men, but. But also between women who are married and unmarried, where the married women are doing much better on the happiness front. And happiness is really kind of crashing for unmarried, both men and women. So again, there's this disjunction between what people think is true about marriage and women. And what actually is true, and the truth is, is that women today who are getting married and having kids are forging a path into life that's, yes, stressful, entail sacrifices you can appreciate as a mom.
- [17:06]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [17:07]
B
But way more meaningful, a lot less lonely, and much more likely to engender happiness.
- [17:14]
A
That's shocking, especially with this idea that the pursuit of happiness is doing whatever you want in any given moment of any day without ever having to take into account someone else's schedule or needs or desires. The opposite seems to be true.
- [17:29]
B
And what's fascinating, too, I think, as you think about, like, this is obviously our 250th anniversary or our birthday as a country, and obviously, I'm in. I'm in Charlottesville. And Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is right up on the hill, kind of over our house, in a sense. And I go to teach at his university, and he's written this, you know, this, this passage about the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration. And so we are, as a country, I think, doing a lot worse when it comes to that pursuit. We're seeing what. What's been called a happiness crash by one Chicago scholar. And yet people don't understand and appreciate that. The founders understood that happiness is deeply related to virtue. So as they sort of were articulating that phrase, as Jefferson even was articulating that phrase, there was a sense in which the pursuit of happiness was understood as something that was related to growing in virtue and that you're more likely to be flourishing, to be happy, even if you are doing something that's virtuous. And so I think being a good spouse and being a good parent is a perfect opportunity to grow in lots of virtues. Oh, yes, but that also is engendering a sense of also for. For ordinary men and women out there, of happiness as well.
- [18:35]
A
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- [20:20]
B
So and this is where I think a lot of Americans don't realize that again, that the pursuit of virtue in general, but also in the context of being a spouse and being a parent, also tends to redound to our benefit. In terms of this sense of happiness.
- [20:35]
A
How much of that do you think is attributed to our loss of faith related identity as a country? I mean, I certainly believe America was founded on Christian principles. We talk about that a lot on the show. Many people and scholars would disagree with me on that. But certainly our founders believed and oriented their life around the pursuit of what is good and true and beautiful, which orients itself toward belief in something larger than ourselves. Today, people would insist, no, my sense of morality comes from within. My sense of virtue even comes from within. Who's to say if I'm a good person or a bad person, except for myself?
- [21:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think there's just no question that I think the founders had both kind of classical and Christian sources of understanding when it comes to this notion of happiness and their ideas about virtue and the republic. But again, I think the point I would make is simply that yes, living one's life in a virtuous way doesn't always, but often does, redound to the benefit of oneself. And we've lost. I think this idea to some extent that pursuing virtue, pursuing the common good ends up generally being better for everyone, and that living a life that's more narrowly focused on one's self interest tends to end up making one miserable. Especially if you're in a marriage and living with kids. If you don't kind of give way to what your spouse needs, what your kids need, if you don't kind of make space in your life for compromise and sacrifice, then not only is your spouse going to be miserable and your kids are going to be miserable, but you're going to be Miserable, too. And by contrast, what I see in my own research is that spouses who embrace generosity are more likely to be happily married. It's interesting is when you look at that particular issue, what I found in my research was that the reports of your spouse's generosity to you increased your happiness in marriage. But an even better predictor of your own happiness in marriage was sort of your own reports of how generous you were to your spouse. Right.
- [22:30]
A
How well you serve the other.
- [22:32]
B
Exactly. So living a life of service in the context of marriage and family, I think ends up being, for most of us, a pathway to living both a meaningful and happy life.
- [22:42]
A
So we're seeing this convergence of the cultural narrative encouraging you never to run away or never to embrace, rather, marriage and children as it's going to ruin your life and destroy your autonomy and make you really miserable. Even if none of those things are true. And at the same time, something I've been really fascinated by is that I'm not seeing that whole be replaced with just dating in perpetuity. Instead, young people are almost taking themselves voluntarily off the dating market entirely. As you've said, not walking the walk at all. Like, literally not even pursuing any sort of romantic connection. Why is that happening, and how severe is it?
- [23:16]
B
Yeah, so we had a recent report that we issued at IFS with our colleagues Wheatley, called the dating recession, basically. And it was just kind of talking about the way in which we've seen kind of marked declines in dating. So dating, for instance, for high school students, has fallen by about 50% since 1980.
- [23:32]
A
50%, yes.
- [23:33]
B
And now only about one in three young adults who are eligible, who aren't already married, for instance, are kind of dating regularly, like once a month or more. So there's just a lot of folks out there in the sort of 20s and 30s bracket who aren't dating. And we also see in this report, too, that only about a third of them, this is true for both women and men, are confident about their ability to date. And then about half of them feel like they kind of lack the money to go on a good date or that they've had bad experiences with relationships that make them hesitate to go back out into the dating arena. So I think what's happening here is that the digital revolution has eroded young adults both social skills and sort of social opportunities to be with one another. We've seen also in our work at IFS that young adult socializing has declined from 12 hours a week to just 5 hours a week. Just in general, I think that's part of it, and then two. With the digital revolution, what's happened too is it's going to push a lot of younger women to the left and younger men to the right. So ideologically they are more separated from one another as well, which makes it harder for them to find common ground when it comes to dating or thinking about marriage as well. So I think the fallout of the digital revolution has been a major driver in making people less socially confident, less socially adept, and also less ideologically aligned. And so kind of where do we go from here? I think it's just to try to figure out newer ways to bring young adults and teenagers sort of together in real world context. So that might be a church youth group. You know, it might be a run club for young adults, but these are the kinds of things that are needed to sort of like increase opportunities for people to kind of just mix and mingle and to also, I think too, for young men and young men to find more common ground in person. And I have a confession on that front too. When I was living at UVA as an undergraduate, I posted a letter that I published in defense of Clarence Thomas on my dorm room door. And unless and unbeknownst to me, my future wife kind of pushed a note under my door disagreeing with my note about Clarence Thomas.
- [25:41]
A
The old version of a retweet. Right.
- [25:43]
B
I hadn't done it for a very long time.
- [25:45]
A
That's so cool.
- [25:46]
B
We were on the same page on that issue, but. We were on the same page. But anyways, the point is that we kind of just in getting to know one another, able to kind of move beyond some political disagreements. And so just to encourage young adults to sort of realize you don't have to kind of agree on everything to forge a good relationship and then a strong marriage down the road.
- [26:04]
A
Wow, that's so fascinating. And I'm seeing a lot of this right now with Gen Z dating culture, with the revival of speed dating events happening in major metropolitan areas, people are really, really in love with building church communities right now. I mean, the New York Times just said a few months ago the hottest club in Manhattan is the Catholic Church because so many people are wanting to go to mass together. So I. I see the hunger for that. But to know that so many young people are missing these very important psychological milestones and learning how to share your heart with someone and giving yourself away to someone, that's really interesting to think about the implications of that later on down the line. You're a sociologist, not a psychologist, but how do you think that's going to impact people's ability to pursue romance long term or to even teach our kids how to do that?
- [26:49]
B
No, no, it's a huge problem. This is why we are projecting that so many young adults today are not going to get married and not have kids because they haven't been kind of formed in ways that would kind of equip them with the social skills. They haven't been kind of given the social opportunities to kind of mix and mingle in ways that would be more conducive to getting married and having a family. So I think right now we're kind of facing a pretty difficult moment for this group of gen zers. But I think the challenge is sort of how do we push beyond that and both help them kind of have more opportunities to meet in person and then prepare the rising generation of kids and teenagers in ways that will make them more adept at socializing and dating.
- [27:33]
A
Something else that's really dramatically shifted with teenagers in my generation and headed in now to gen Alpha, which is crazy, as they're starting high school in the next several years, is intimacy and rates of premarital sex. And there've been a lot of great reports coming out that premarital sex is at like an all time low and modern American history. But I also think people are failing to acknowledge that this is also impacting marriages and important long term romantic relationships. The rate of sexless marriages is through the roof, which of course is contributing to a lot of our dissatisfaction romantically. You mentioned the digital revolution, but how much of that is impacting intimacy?
- [28:08]
B
No, it's a huge story. I mean, so we have seen, you know, at ifs, we did a report on what we call this the sex recession. And basically the story there is that in the 1980s, 1990s, a clear majority of American adults were having sex at least once a week. And now we're down to just 37% of adults in sort of their prime age group are having sex at least once a week. So that's just sort of an example of how sex is down in America. It's down for younger adults, down for teenagers, but it's also down, as you were saying, for married adults, which is what would concern me the most here. And I think it is, again, it's a consequence of the way in which we have so many distractions in our life. And you can kind of be, you know, lying in bed, sort of just sort of like, you know, scrolling through TikTok or Instagram or Twitter or whatever. It Might be, or you could be kind of one person's watching Netflix, someone else is watching prime, and you just kind of never get around to, you know, physical intimacy in your marriage. So that's certainly, I think, a real issue that we're kind of. We're struggling with. I also think, too, that things like pornography, I mean, pornography has become much more. I don't even know what the terminology would be, but it's just been much more realistic and sort of whatever. And so I think that's also a way in which too, that I think that it can be kind of an alternative to having real sex in the real world if the pornography that's on offer is so seemingly enticing and attractive as well.
- [29:34]
A
How do you think OnlyFans and AI have also contributed to the explosion of pornography? It's not like we have late night HBO anymore, but. But like, instantaneously on your phone, you can access anything.
- [29:45]
B
Yeah, no, I do think it, again, it's a competitor to real sex in the real world. And so I think it both reduces especially men's interest in having real sex. But it also, I think, can be a source of tension, too, for couples where, like, you know, usually the wife, but not always is concerned about her husband's use of pornography, and then that makes her more reluctant to have sex with her husband as well. So I think it's just kind of. I think the proliferation of things like OnlyFans makes men less likely to initiate sex in the real world, but also less likely to sort of seek out earlier on in the sort of. The whole. The phase of being less likely to sort of seek out someone to date
- [30:31]
A
in the first place.
- [30:32]
B
Yeah, so I think that's also part of the story. But, yeah, it's just that the sort of. The competitors to real sex have become much more compelling, at least from a kind of a, you know, the sort of. The initial. Look, what we know in the research is that people having real sex on a regular basis are happier, they're healthier, they're more satisfied in their marriages, et cetera. So it still is the case that real sex, you know, I would say is good for us. And yet we're not sort of. We're not doing it enough in ordinary
- [31:01]
A
marriages today, while we're talking about how to make everyone's marriages a whole lot happier, let me tell you, we used to wake up really grumpy. We would toss and turn all night. We'd be in a really bad mood when we crawled into bed at the end of the day. But all of that has changed in the last few months because of the difference. That is my mattress. My husband and I switched our mattress to a Helix mattress about a year ago and it has completely changed how we sleep. I'm a new mom, which means I run hot at night. If you know, you know. And their cooling technology has been a total game changer, especially going we both, my husband and I fall asleep a lot faster. We stay asleep a lot longer and we wake up actually rested instead of feeling completely exhausted. And here's the thing. Helix isn't one size fits all. They have 20 different options of mattresses so you can find what actually works for you. They ship it straight to your door for free. You get 120 night sleep trial and they're happy with Helix Guarantee makes it totally risk free. It's also the most awarded mattress brand out there. So if your sleep is off and you're struggling with how it may be impacting your greater life, including your marriage, you got to fix it. Go to helixsleep.com Isabel for 27% off site wide, that's helixsleep.com Isabel how is marriage a qualifier for how much and how good of sex you are having?
- [32:17]
B
So when it comes to frequency, we, we, we see that married Americans have sex more than unmarried Americans. That's true for both men and women. There's also though in terms of the sort of like the quality of sex does depend upon the length of the relationship. So what we see is that people who are first together, whether they're dating or cohabiting or married, tend to report more sexual satisfaction, which is something about kind of being new in that domain that's correlated with sexual satisfaction. But in terms of again, frequency, there's just no comparison to kind of being married and living in close physical proximity to your beloved.
- [33:00]
A
Do you think the values component of marriage also makes a difference there? Like sharing not just your roof over your head, but the way in which you live your life impacts your satisfaction that way.
- [33:10]
B
Yeah. So what we do see is the couples who are more committed to one another. Again, you can measure commitment in a variety of ways. And couples who kind of would look at marriage as a permanent commitment, for instance, couples who are more religious are having more sex and more sexually satisfying sex as well. Really in my book and get married. What I found on the adult front that was most surprising to me was that today in America, religious couples have sex. A majority have sex at least once a week. And only minority of secular couples who are married have sex once a week, I was kind of like, whoa, that seems surprising.
- [33:45]
A
Wow.
- [33:45]
B
And then the same basic story is true for satisfaction. A majority of religious couples are satisfied sexually, which is with their marriages, but only a minority of secular couples are satisfied sexually. So there's something about religion that is engendering a better sexual environment for married couples in America. And this is interesting, too, because there was a big interview in the New Yorker with a sociologist named Sam Perry. He was kind of talking about all the problems that evangelical men had with pornography and evangelical couples had with. With arguments about pornography. And if you just read this New York interview, you'd have the sense that, like, religious couples were kind of hamstrung by antiquated ideas about sex, and they're all guilty and all mad at each other and everything else. And, yes, it's true. Like, if you are a religious person and you're a religious couple, then, like, pornography is a bigger issue for you. No doubt. Right? That's true. But what was neglected to be addressed in that interview in the New Yorker was just, like, just the facts, which are that religious couples in America have a lot more sex, and they're a lot more satisfied with their sex. And so something, I think, about sort of seeing sex and the marriage more generally as sacred, which is good. And then understanding, too, that aphrodisiacs like commitment and fidelity and a sort of a spirit of spousal generosity are really helpful in the bedroom, and that these seem to be more on offer in religious marriages than they are in secular marriages. And you're not getting that, unfortunately, from, you know, mainstream media outlets like the
- [35:11]
A
New Yorker or even New media. I think I see this dichotomy presented so often on social media, especially from the sex podcasters of the world, that young women tend to be listening to a whole lot, that it's so uptight and rigid, and you never get to experiment or have fun with your spouse when you're this crotchety, religious old married couple. Right? Yeah. The church ladies. How dare you suggest that. But you'll have so much fun if you can sleep with multiple partners or cheat on your spouse or what? I mean, that's totally the message presented of empowerment to young women today. It's always seemed odd to me, especially growing up in the Catholic Church, when you see a beautiful Catholic family with 10 kids in the pew, it's not a secret how they all got there. So you always assumed that parents had this beautiful, thriving, intimate life, and yet we just completely ignore that today in modern culture. Yeah.
- [35:59]
B
And again, I think it's this idea too, that the sort of the more individualistic approach to life, the approach that sort of prioritizes immediate physical gratification, that these two strategies, the ones that are gonna be best in the bedroom and yet we don't appreciate, I think, is that we are pair bonding creatures. Right. And so to have like, just the ability to sort of relax and trust your spouse, to know that there's like this tremendous degree of commitment there that, you know, neither he nor she is going anywhere soon, that you're willing to. We hear in the research too, that kind of couples who are in more committed marriages, for instance, are more likely to kind of invest in the sexual domain, kind of understand and appreciate what their partner wants. So there's just kind of a. Yeah, there's a lot of ignorance about the. About the true link between religion and sex and not also, I think, understanding, appreciating too, that when you're thinking about, like going to church with your spouse, going to pray with your spouse before you go to sleep, whatever else, I mean, these things really engender a profound sense of intimacy spiritually that then translates, it looks like, into also both physical intimacy as well.
- [36:59]
A
I was taught in high school in a Catholic morality class. It was required to take our junior year. Something that I had forgotten about for many years until I was recently talking with a friend about this. That sex, in the right context, from a Catholic religious standpoint, is supposed to be an act of worship and is essentially the closest physical intimacy you can experience with another human being that mirrors our intimacy with God we will experience in heaven. And I love how that was presented because I think far too often the assumption in religious circles is that you just constantly say, sex, bad, sex, bad, sex, bad, sex bad, until you get married. And then all of a sudden the light switch flips that night, and all of a sudden it's the greatest thing in the entire world and you're supposed to love every single second of it with your spouse. And for young women especially, that mental switch can be very, very difficult to accomplish. And yet we know on the other end of that it is religious married couples that are having the most thriving, health, happy, beautiful sex lives. How can we prepare young teenagers who want that in their life to more appropriately go through that process of development?
- [38:01]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that sort of the challenge is to help people understand and appreciate how much kind of this joint sense of commitment, you know, this sense of emotional security, you know, in a relationship really is integral to fostering a strong sexual and just a strong relationship more generally. And to sort of understand and appreciate that sort of approaching sex, but also kind of approaching your relationship in a much more casual and self centered way tends to be self defeating, you know, and that if you're kind of learning how to be a good friend, if you're learning how to sacrifice for, you know, your, your friends and then your spouse down the road, if you're learning kind of how much you need to work through conflict constructively, all these kinds of basically you're learning a set of virtues that prepare you to be a good spouse. And then once you enter into marriage, you have the protection of knowing that you kind of made this deep and profound commitment, that all these things tend to generally not always redound to the benefit of you and your marriage and then your family as well. So kind of trying to help people understand and again, how much virtues and how much this particular institution actually is working to advance human flourishing and not impede it. So again, I think a lot of people look at religion as about kind of, it's a kind of a big hang up that makes life miserable. And of course there are expressions of religious faith and our own Catholic tradition and other traditions that really do impede human flourishing that are deeply dysfunctional. But I think the points about the value of commitment and the value of fidelity and the value of seeing sex integrated into a broader understanding of marriage and family ends up, I think for many people being a very beautiful thing, a powerful thing, a thing that does engender a sense of, of satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness that we're not talking enough about in the culture at large and with our kids more particularly as well.
- [40:18]
A
True. And then just not pursuing it. We've seen a massive decline in marriage and dating to get into marriage, we're seeing a decline in the number of Americans pursuing a beautiful sexual relationship. So it's really no surprise that we're also seeing this massive decline in fertility in our country as well. Although I spoke at an event here in D.C. a few weeks ago at the Italian embassy. They had a little panel of generally conservative creators and then one of left wing creators and we were talking about how to use social media to impact culture and politics essentially. And a bunch of reporters came and this, I think it was CNN reporter from the audience piped up and said, I just need to fact check you real quick. There is no major decline in fertility in America. And I said, what are you talking about? Every single study, even from your own organization would agree that we're Experiencing this color colossal crash in fertility. I keep seeing this old clip of Charlie Kirk pop up. As you know, I worked for him for many years and he started talking a lot more at the end of his life about marriage and children as very, very pressing cultural issues.
- [41:16]
B
Correct.
- [41:17]
A
To examine from the 30,000 foot level. At the women's conference that he spoke at a few years ago, he said that you only have a 50, 50 shot of having kids by the time you have waited until you are 30 years old. So if you don't have kids before 30, you only have a 50% chance of ever having them in your life. Is that correct?
- [41:34]
B
So when I heard so once, unfortunately, once he died, I was looking through a lot of his clips on marriage and family and was really struck by his powerful prophetic voice on that front. But he did say that. And I thought, now that's completely exaggerating the story. And yet what my colleague Grant Bailey at the Institute of Family Studies found was that basically he was on the money. Now it's important to sort of like. So what we're seeing in looking at trends over time using federal data is that if you are a 30something woman and you have not had kids at that point in time, your odds, based upon previous trends in the data would suggest that you have only a 50, 50 shot of ever having children. And it's always possible that something could happen in the future that would change that basic pattern. But the point is that that group includes a lot of different people. And so it includes like women who don't want to ever have kids. Right. But it also, you know, women who would like to have kids and don't get married. So for instance, I think, like, if you're 28 or 29 and you're in a serious relationship, then that stat doesn't really apply to you, but it does apply to women in general. And so in that sense, Charlie Kirk was on the money and we were surprised it was that large.
- [42:43]
A
Wow.
- [42:43]
B
But again, in terms of giving hope even, obviously he got married to his beautiful bride when she was over 30. If you are dating, if you're getting married around that time, then your odds would be obviously much higher. But for the average woman who's turning 30 today without any kids, you know, what it does look like is her odds of having kids in the Future are just 50, 50 and kind of no one's really thinking in that mode today that, no, if I wait until my late 20s, early 30s to really kind of get serious about a family, it could be really difficult and challenging.
- [43:11]
A
Back to it with Brad in a second. But first, here's something that, as a business owner, genuinely shocked and surprised me. Nearly half of people who are hiring for a job say that a job candidate's enthusiasm about that job is the most important factor when they're deciding who to hire. Not your gpa, not the laundry list of credentials on your resume, but the excitement you have when you're applying for a job in the first place. And the more I thought about it, the more that made total sense to me. So if you are hiring for your business, here's the real question. How do you actually tell who's genuinely pumped about your opportunity versus who was just rage baited to 50 different jobs on their lunch break? That is where our friends at ZipRecruiter come in. ZipRecruiter has a brand new feature that puts puts the most interested qualified candidates right at the top of your list. So you're not wading through a pile of meh. You're meeting the right people and you're meeting them fast. Candidates can even tell you in their own words why they want your job specifically, which is such a green flag in the hiring process. And it's no wonder that ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. If you use ZipRecruiter, you can find the enthusiastic talent that your job needs fast. Four out of five employers who post on the site get a quality candidate within the first today. And now you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com Isabel that's ziprecruiter.com Isabel no, I hear the opposite every single day. It's my prerogative as a young woman to wait as long as humanly possible to have children for a myriad of reasons. I need to have my life together. I need to financially prepare to have children because it's so unbelievably expensive. Although not as much as the mainstream media and many of the experts will tell you. I want to get all of my crazy out in my 20s before I ever have to settle down. You know, all of these reasons we hear every day, and I am watching an entire generation now of women get to 30 years old and say, oh my gosh, what have I done right? Have I missed the boat on this entirely? Certainly. I think women also have a separate set of concerns that we often fail to take into account with this concept of a biological clock. We don't have the same end all, be all. I can wait forever as men do and yet our society is encouraging you to completely ignore that internal instinct and that ticking clock because of the cultural values that we're pushing right now. What are you seeing?
- [45:17]
B
So, yeah, I think there's a kind of Midas mindset that we see among particularly more kind of college educated young adults where they're kind of really prioritizing, you know, education, building their own brand, traveling, especially work. They think that kind of work is the source and summit of their lives. It's going to give them a lot of meaning and purpose and they don't understand and appreciate that. When you look actually at the data, it is true that folks who are college educated, folks who've got, you know, better incomes and folks who've got good jobs, are happier than other Americans. But simply being married is a better predictor of happiness than being employed, for instance. And being happily married is the best predictor that I saw in what's called the General Social Survey, the gss, a major social barometer from Chicago. Being happily married is the best predictor of adult happiness. Way more powerful than being kind of happy with your career. So I think the challenges that a lot of our young adults don't understand and appreciate that sort of investing in dating and marriage and family is a much better pathway to forging a meaningful and happy life than really kind of prioritizing your career. And so again, that's a kind of a, sort of a finding. It's not percolated enough to young adults today. But there's just no question that our friendships and our family relationships end up being a lot more important to us over the life course than sort of what we did at work and how
- [46:40]
A
much money we made, which seems intuitive.
- [46:42]
B
One would be, yes, but we've kind of forgotten it, right? So there's always also like a pew, you know, another Pew kind of poll showing that parents today are prioritizing for their children, their kids schooling and their career over their kids marital future. You're just like, oh my gosh, folks. Like, you're not going to be a very happy person, right, if you're hitting 65, 70, 75, 80 without any grandkids in the picture. And yet if you're prioritizing for your kids just education and work, you're much more likely, I think, to have an adult child who's not going to be getting married or not having kids. And this is not gonna work out very well for you down the road.
- [47:19]
A
I've always been bothered in my adult life by this false dichotomy of choice between Career and family also, that seems to be intensely presented to young women more than it is to young men that either you get to do the kid thing or you get to do the really cool career thing. I certainly have not experienced that to be the case. I have a thriving career and professional life and also a beautiful family that I. I'm so, so happy with and certainly is the center of my identity. But we've created this illusion of choice between one or the other. And I wonder how much of that has to do with, like, the micro culture within corporate America, who you are surrounding yourself with. And do you think if we change the cultural narrative in the workplace, even that family should be your priority and your work family is not your real family? I hear work family all the time. It is very, very problematic. We could see a major change that way.
- [48:13]
B
We are kind of talking at ifs about, we call kind of like the third Oikos. And it's this idea that, you know, we had kind of like the. The agricultural age, where a lot of families were working on the farm together. You know, mom and dad were. I mean, they would be somewhat different things, but they were kind of working together on the farm. And then we had the industrial age, where oftentimes mom was at home and dad was in, you know, the factory. And that was leading to a kind of division between husband and wife and also, I think, taking men out of the home in ways that were not great as well. And the third Oikos is this idea that because of the Internet, more and more couples can work from home and either on a kind of family business or working kind of creatively like you are, in ways that allow mom and or dad to kind of be at home and be kind of engaged in the work of the home and the life of the home in a much more present way than would have in the industrial age. That's sort of like an encouraging development. I think the challenge is twofold. One is just kind of a class divide. I think it's much easier for more educated adults today to kind of do the third Oikos thing, to work from home. And we haven't yet seen it, I think, penetrate a more working class pattern. That's, I think, a challenge. But the other thing I think too is it's still the case that in our best high schools, in our best colleges, in our most prestigious fields of work, in the marketplace, there's often kind of an assumption that the best life is a life centered around an intense career that is taking place away from the home. And so that's just a cultural challenge we need to face, especially if you want to, I think, help people have the marriages and families that they, I think, would like to have, if they kind of are able to sort of wrap their heads and hearts around the truth about the value of marriage and family.
- [50:01]
A
I imagine it's really difficult when you're constantly in that environment and surrounded by arguably narcissistic, very self motivated people or.
- [50:10]
B
Yeah, or people. I mean, the term I use in my book is strivers. I mean, they've kind of been, you know, they've done well in school and they've gotten sort of like the message from their teachers and their parents oftentimes and their peers that the best life is one, you know, where you do really well in school, you go to the best possible college you can go to, and then you just kind of kill it in the workplace, you know, and you get a high, high powered, high paying career, you live in a nice neighborhood, you've got nice cars, all that stuff. And the problem, of course, with that perspective is it tends to in practice minimize the importance of, again, of real friendships and of dating and marriage and family. You know, doesn't sort of understand, appreciate that we are, as Aristotle said, social animals and how, how our relationships end up being a lot more important for us than the amount of money that we're making or the degree on our wall or milestones or the career.
- [51:04]
A
I imagine it's hard when you're in that type of environment where you're always striving for the next thing and you see everyone around you striving for the next.
- [51:11]
B
That's exactly right.
- [51:12]
A
To break free of the pattern and to think, okay, I want something a little bit more than this. Because if that's not a cultural norm in your immediate community, why would you ever think that that's something you need to immediately prioritize? It's been really interesting for me as a young mom throughout this first year of my daughter's life because I know objectively there is this fertility crash out there and no one is really pursuing marriage or children. And we have a generational crisis on our hands. And yet every single one of my friends is getting married and having babies. Everyone is pregnant, everyone has a new baby. It is so fun. And we are just constantly surrounded by that all the time. I have like eight group chats going on with all my new mom friends and we ask each other questions at 3am how much of this crisis of fertility do you think can be attributed to the narrative that you are hearing every day and the who you surround yourself thing, Are you more likely to have kids?
- [52:00]
B
Your friends are. So, yeah, Again, I think the Midas mindset is being kind of broadcast on a number of fronts in the mainstream media, in pop culture, and now on social media as well. And so a lot of people are kind of also kind of like the idea that you gotta travel to Thailand in your 20s to really kind of live the life. And Charlie Kirk talked about that whole idea in his Witness. So, yeah, that's a big part of the problem. But I think there's also, as you were kind of hinting, there's a network story, and my colleague Lyman Stone is a new report out from. IFS talking about the value of both friendships and also kind of like even celebrities and kind of structuring how people are thinking about having kids. And so what we're seeing is that when people see their friends having kids and enjoying it like you are, they're just way more likely to jump into having children. So there's a kind of a friendship story there. You know, that much of American life is heavily networked, so your odds of divorce, for better and for ill? Well, they are heavily networked by what's happening with your own family, your own intimate family members and your friends. And so if your family has done well on the marriage front, if your friends are managing to kind of keep things together, you're way more likely to navigate marital difficulty and not get divorced. The same thing is true for babies. If your friends are having babies and generally enjoying it, you're way more likely to have kids. So that's part of the story that Lyman's telling in his new report. But then also even on the celebrity front, just sort of seeing if the people that you admire on social media or in the pop culture or in some other domain, maybe if you're in politics or having kids in large numbers, you're way more likely to aspire to have more kids as well. So the point here is that our culture and our social ties really profoundly impact our aspirations and our behavior around fertility. And so it's helpful when some celebrities and some institutions and friends kind of dive into family because it tends to sort of have a ripple effect in positive ways in their networks and the folks who follow them.
- [54:00]
A
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- [55:20]
B
And we obviously have too many geriatric politicians right there in Capitol Hill who haven't really kind of, you know.
- [55:25]
A
You know, I just learned from a young member of Congress who I've become friends with over the years that there was not a single place, a single bathroom anywhere on Capitol Hill in any of the multitude of buildings of offices or at the Capitol complex where they had a changing table in a bathroom for her baby. She had to, like, rage against the machine so that she could change her baby's diaper. That's crazy to me. But nobody thinks about young families in that realm. And I think we also see that in the realm of pop culture and that type of celebrity, too. So it's this novel crazy thing when someone like Anne Hathaway is pregnant with her third child, because even she has dedicated much of her adult life to talking about the importance of abortion and how abortion is mercy. And that's what it means to be an empowered woman. So everyone kind of scratches their head and doesn't really know what to do with the fact that she's pregnant and glowing and beautiful on the red carpet. Similarly, Taylor Swift has just gotten married and there's been a lot of prediction on whether we'll see a marriage boom because of that or more importantly, maybe a baby boom. And the result of that, if it has to come from Taylor Swift, I'll take it. Even if we don't have a lot in common. But do you think that's possible?
- [56:30]
B
I mean, certainly. I mean, I think our new study at IFS suggests that when celebrities kind of make a move, it can be kind of encouraging to their followers. And certainly Taylor has a big following. So yes, I would love to see both a marriage boomlet and a baby boomlet following in the wake of this wedding. And hopefully they can have kids soon as well. And that would be, I think, a good thing. It's also the case too that what we see, and actually interesting enough too, is that when people get married and have kids, they tend to move culturally more to the right as well. They tend to become more cognizant of the ways in which building a more family friendly culture, protecting kids from certain influences is good for their kids. So one could imagine too that maybe Taylor Swift will become a bit more, you know, conservatives.
- [57:14]
A
Boy, would that be interesting.
- [57:16]
B
Has kids as well.
- [57:18]
A
I love thinking about that. And I do see a lot of hope and promise for this generation. Despite all of the doom and gloom data out there. I do think there is a pendulum swing happening, right?
- [57:28]
B
So, I mean, I think certainly one of my own, I think prejudices has been as a sort of, as a scholar, you know, observer of American family life is we've been kind of in my discipline, sociology, in, you know, social sciences more. We've kind of been in this sort of mode of just sort of assuming that everything is going to get worse and well, they would say better and better, my colleagues and I would say worse and worse, you know, but it is interesting that some of these trends really do change. And so, for instance, I had a piece in the Atlantic last year showing that basically we've reached bottom when it comes to single parent in America. So since 2014, the share of kids being raised in stable married families has been heading upwards. Now it's a modest move, but it's a shift, right, from just kind of like the trajectory in the 60s of downward, downward, downward, fewer kids being raised in married parent families. So that's changed. So one could imagine too that, and that's partly because marriage has become, and fertility has become more selective for people who are more religious and more educated, more affluent. And all those folks are less likely to get divorced. But the bigger point I'm making here is that we don't have to assume that everything's going to relentlessly move in one direction. And so certainly the hope here is that we could help both culturally, but also, I think institutionally and even economically think about ways to make it easier for folks to date marry and have families.
- [58:42]
A
Right. It's actionable and we don't have to just accept our fate of the constant decline of the West. That's a choice, right? But it does involve a choice. So I'm curious on two fronts as we wrap up today. First from a policy perspective and then from an individual young adult perspective, what can we intentionally do as a society to reverse these trends and to prioritize the return of the American family as our foundation?
- [59:07]
B
Again, great questions. So I think that it's really important for conservatives to understand. I appreciate that there's this idea out there that the family's challenges are only cultural. Economics has nothing to do with them. And that perspective, I think is wrong headed in so many ways. But I'll just kind of make two points about how that's wrongheaded. One is there is a huge class divide in America. And so yes, it's true that red Americans are generally doing better on the family front than blue Americans. But there's also just this way in which for a variety of reasons, working class Americans are just struggling when it comes especially to marriage. And we have to understand that this is like there's this huge class divide and we need to be thinking about ways to bridge it and help working class Americans thrive on the, on the relationship and marriage fronts. And then economically we have to understand and appreciate too that there is very clear evidence that there are factors like the cost of housing that are closely tied to the fertility rate.
- [60:01]
A
Oh yeah.
- [60:02]
B
There's a new study out from Toronto from an economist in Toronto, just sort of talking about how a large share of the decline in fertility America can be attributed to the increasing cost of housing. So if we want to kind of fix the American family, we need to be thinking not just about kind of making the culture more family friendly, but making the economy more family friendly. And one of those things that we need to work on is, you know, bring down the cost especially of single family housing, most young family families want to live and making them smaller and on smaller lots, but just to bring down the cost of having your own first home. I think as a working class or middle class married couple. Now, on the policy front, besides kind of working on the housing issue, we need to also I think understand and appreciate that again, a lot of conservatives have this idea that you can't do really anything to sort of move the dial on the marriage and fertility fronts. And it's true that. But something like a child tax credit only tends to move the dial modestly when it comes to fertility, based upon international work that my colleague Lyman Stone has done. But it does move the dial. And the more generous you are with the credits, the more it moves the dial. But the other piece here is that most smart folks on the right and the left think that nothing the federal government can do would change the marriage trajectory and yet they're unaware of the biggest federal agencies impact in America on marriage. Do you know what I'm talking about here?
- [61:24]
A
I'm guessing maybe the irs, but you never know.
- [61:28]
B
Biggest in terms of the, well, the size of who's employed by this agency.
- [61:34]
A
The military.
- [61:35]
B
The military, yes. Right. So what we see in the data, Isabel, is that young working class men who are in the military, who are veterans, are way more likely to be married than their roughly equivalent working class male peers who are not in the military and have never served in military. And why is that? Well, it's a complicated question in some ways. Some cultural pieces there certainly. Right. But the US Military heavily favors marriage when it comes to the policies of military. So when it comes to health insurance. So if you are dating someone, if you're cohabiting with that someone, she's not going to get any medical coverage. She will if you're married to her. What about your housing allotment? If you're dating or cohabiting with someone, not going to change your housing options, if you're married to her, you're going to get much better housing in the military. Right. And so there are other benefits too, that sort of flow to married folks in the military. But these are real clear benefits that the military steers just to married members of military, and they are clearly linked to much higher rates of marriage in the US Military than you would see among this particular group of guys, especially in the broader population. So it's just one example of how when you do, I think, incentivize marriage in discreet and meaningful ways, you really can move the dial.
- [62:53]
A
I love seeing how other countries have been approaching this as well with really creative solutions. I think often we limit our potential on it because we think, oh, that's crazy. Like who would ever vote for something like that? Or how could we accomplish that? But Hungary and Poland, for example, have become the first countries in the world to say forever more here on out, if you are a woman who is married with two children, you will never pay a dime in federal income tax for the rest of your life. That's fascinating. And obviously, it's a different economy, different portion.
- [63:21]
B
Right. And there are just, There are. There are important debates about how effective, like, Hungary has been. And on the fertility front, they weren't incredibly effective. But it's interesting to note that on the marriage front, they also did a couple of things that were very, you know, marriage friendly, and they really did kind of turn. Turn the marriage story around in meaningful ways in Hungary. And again, I think it's important. I mean, I'm the first person to sort of say, I think the bigger issue, the bigger challenge is cultural, for sure. But I think it's also important in a moment in time when we've reached record low rates of fertility and family information, to think about what policies can do both in kind of free market ways when it comes to housing and in kind of more explicitly profiling ways when it comes to child tax credits, you know, to make it easier to get married and start a family here in America.
- [64:06]
A
Let's end with that cultural component. If you're making the elevator pitch to a young person in this country under 35, why marriage and family is still worth pursuing, what would you say?
- [64:17]
B
That's a great question. I think the elevator pitch basically is that we are living through a happiness crash in America today in the wake of the revolution, where people are just not having enough of an opportunity to be with real people in the real world. And there's just nothing today in America like a marriage and kids to bring you into contact with real world and real relationships. And what we're seeing in America today, the sad truth is, is that Americans who are not embracing marriage and family are really suffering on a variety of fronts, including happiness. And Americans who are embracing marriage and family are not just doing better, but they're doing comparatively better. So don't listen to the naysayers, understand and appreciate that sort of making a gift of yourself to your spouse and to your children is for most of us, including you, the best pathway to forging a meaningful and happy life.
- [65:13]
A
I love to hear it and certainly has been the experience I've had in my young adult life. Thank you, Brad, so much for the work that you are doing to impact this generation. It is hugely important now more than ever before. Where can people continue to follow you and your work and grab a copy of your book, which I think should be required reading for any college graduate.
- [65:30]
B
Yeah, thanks. So Get Married is available at HarperCollins. And if studies is where our website is for Institute for Family Studies, then I'm at Twitter Rad Wilcoxifs Amazing.
- [65:39]
A
I may have to audit your class next semester. That would be awfully fun. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
- [65:44]
B
Okay. Thank you.