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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #102 | How to Restore "What Really Matters" with Tim Goeglein
00:27:07
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm your host, Jen Friesen. And as you know, we like to highlight a lot of different things on the podcast that have to do with marriage and family. We talk to folks who work for other pro life organizations. We get to interview researchers and authors. And today we are going to have a conversation with Tim Gaglein, who is one of the vice president at Folks on the Family. His title is that he's the Vice President of External and Government Relations for Folks on the Family. And he served as a special assistant to President George W. Bush and as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. And Tim has written a couple of books. So you had a memoir called the man in the Middle, Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era. So I actually wrote that one down. I want to read that one. He wrote another one called American Restoration. And now Tim is joining the podcast to talk about his book debuting this week, which is called what really Matters? Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family. So, Tim, thank you so much for joining the theme for us podcast.
- [01:12]
B
Jen, it's great to be with you and thanks for that warm introduction.
- [01:16]
A
You're welcome. So you have a few chapters in this book where you talk about the importance of things that need to be restored in America. We're going to focus primarily on the first two chapters that are marriage and family. But the chapters just for our listeners are Restoring Marriage, Restoring Family, Restoring the American Male, Restoring a well ordered Society, Restoring faith, and restoring the importance of history. So the first question I would like to ask you is what made you want to write this book? Restoring what really Matters. And these are the things you, you boiled it down to six things that you say. These are the essential things. What made you want to write this?
- [01:58]
B
Yeah, I really appreciate being asked, you know, as one of the vice presidents at Focus on the Family and I live and work here in Washington, D.C. and oversee Focus on the Family's Washington office. I travel a lot. I'm out into the country almost every week. And whether I'm in California or Maine, Minnesota or Florida, and all the places in between, after speaking or being on a panel or offering remarks, dollars to donuts, Jen, someone will say something like, but what about the issues that really matter? Which is to say, you know, the political class is preoccupied with border security and immigration and taxes, the war, all of those are incredibly important. But what is particularly surprising to me as a person who worked in Senate for 10 years and at the White House for nearly eight, focus on the family for 18 all here in Washington. By and large, Jen, is that the political class does not focus as a rule on what really matters. Faith, family, all the things that I wanted to write about in what really Matters. And I'll tell you, we are in a time with the lowest marriage and fertility rates in all of recorded American history. History. And so it seems to me that although government cannot save a marriage or tuck a child into bed at night, that the, that the governing class needs to wake up, in my opinion, to what really matters. And, and in that regard, the importance of restoring marriage, the importance of restoring the family, the importance of restoring the American male. The, the, the very important role culturally of restoring faith and religion. And in this 250th year of our remarkable country, the importance of restoring the importance of history. So those are just a few of the things that I write about in what really Matters. And I know they are very simpatico with them before us. And we all agree on these really, really first principles.
- [04:15]
A
Really good. I did wonder as well, why do you start with marriage? So some people might say, well, there's more important things in marriage history, or faith is more important than marriage. But why did you start with that? Why do you see that as the primary thing to restore?
- [04:30]
B
You know, I'm always smitten by the fact that it's the lowest marriage and fertility rates in American history, as I mentioned a moment ago, but that's kind of hyperbole. I think it's important, as I do in the book, to actually share what this means in real numbers. And so what I do, chapter by chapter, is I share what I call, Jen, the sobering news over against what I consider to be, as an inveterate optimist, what the good news or silver lining could be. And let me give an example because I'm glad we're starting with marriage in America. Fewer than half this. This is pretty dramatic. Fewer than half of US households in 2025 were married couples. Now, that is a significant shift from just 50 years ago when nearly two thirds of households were. In other words, today about 47% of US households are of married couples. But when you look at the number just from 50 years ago, that number was well over 60%. So this has been a measurable and a precipitous decline. I think it's sobering that a recent study found that about 40% of Gen Z and millennial men and 52% of Gen Z and millennial women said that they perceived marriage, and I'm using their words as an outdated institution. On the other hand, there is good news that despite this statistic, 78%, I mean, that's a large number. 78% of Gen Z and 73% of millennials hope to get married in the future. So they are very concerned about the institution, needless to say. But aspirationally, they're not saying forever. I never want to be married, I never want to have children. Quite the opposite. They do. But I think they've lived through a remarkable period of brokenness. So what really matters focus like a laser beam on the rising generation of young Americans. And I think it's very important that we tell a new generation, and I mean confidently and boldly, that marriage is a really good thing. Children are a really good thing. Babies are a really good thing. Being married and in a community is a really good way to live your life.
- [07:08]
A
That's so good. We talk a lot about divorce, no fault divorce in the advent of that, from Ronald Reagan days in, in California, when he was governor of California, he was the one who kind of started that we talk about that's the start of the redefinition of marriage that happened. But if you have a generation of young people who've experienced divorce, they've seen that love does not last forever, that adults will not sacrifice for each other or for me, and then it's hard for them to grow up and think, hey, I'm going to get married and it's going to work out. Or maybe that's part of the reason they want to delay it so long. Why do you think our culture, though, is promoting career or get money? Make sure you go travel? Why are those the messages that are being pushed so strongly at young people, you know, college, high school and college age, and they're told to put marriage and family, even though they might want it, put it on the back burner and do it much later.
- [08:06]
B
You know, I, I must tell you, I really am honored by that question. Because even in the baby boom generation, right, 19 before and before this kind of idea of aspirational ideas about your profession, about college education, about established jobs, about income in the baby boom generation, concurrent to what you're saying, those were the messages then too. But I think what has dramatically changed is that in a polarized era, you have a natural spiritual passion. I mean, we're all spiritual beings, but in a time of very aggressive secularization, I think a lot of young people who are essentially not supposed to express those spiritual aspirations, not only in the public square, but also privately because they feel that they will be punished potentially, professionally or socially. They redirect those natural aspirations not toward religion and faith, but toward politics. And of course, the political class always has an answer for politics.
- [09:16]
A
Yeah, that's good. What would you say are the long term consequences that we've seen or are seeing for delaying marriage and family and prioritizing those other things?
- [09:28]
B
That is the perfect follow up, if I may say, and I think this is the answer. The sobering news, Jen, is that 18%, I should say only 18% of American homes now consist of two parents with children. That is the lowest percentage ever, that, that is less than 2 in 10. The good news is that the average number of children per married couple family has risen from about 1.8 in the year 2000 to over 2 in 2023. In other words, we are seeing a measurable demographic of young people, especially young men, who are saying they want to be married, they want to have children, they want to be part of a faith community. And even though the numbers and percentages of women who are in that same demographic don't match, when it comes to the question of but eventually or someday do you want to, those numbers dramatically rise. So I think that in an era of very large single mother families, particularly, and by the way, we honor what single mothers are doing, it's really quite remarkable. But I think that in that era it's very important that we do what George Orwell, the great essayist, suggested that we do. He said that the first duty of an intelligent person is to restate the obvious. And I think that we have to go tell a new generation by restating the obvious. That despite living through digital distraction, despite living through broken marriages, despite living through Covid, despite living through what seems sometimes to be endless wars and this kind of anxiety producing reality, I mean, the rising generation has lived through a lot of historic brokenness. I think we have to reassure them not just because of what we used to call happy talk, but I think we have to reassure them that actually by every reliable empirical measurement, marriage, family, parenting, children, faith is a really great way to live your life. Everybody does better. Husbands, wives, children. Under that rubric.
- [11:58]
A
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you to share a little bit more. If someone came to you and they're in their 20s and they said, you know, I want to get married, or I have the person I want to marry, where we are going down that, that path. But I'm scared to get married because I see all these things on social media that are saying I'm going to be miserable or she's going to divorce me and take all my money and take the kids, or she think the woman thinks he's going to be, you know, patriarchal and I'm going to be controlled and have no happiness or joy in my life once I get married. What does the data that you write about in the book actually say about folks who get married and happiness and fulfillment?
- [12:36]
B
Yeah, those questions are absolutely cornerstones. By the way, as I say, in the academic year on behalf of Focus on the Family, I'm on a different campus every two weeks. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell or Azusa Pacific, Concordia, Liberty and Hillsdale. I mean, the absolute ideological gamut. And regardless of where I go in my interaction with Americans who are in college or in graduate school. The questions that you have posed, Jen, are exactly the ones, especially as one of the vice presidents at Focus on the Family, those are precisely the kind of questions they ask. And I can categorically reassure them, not from my opinion, but from what the best social science says that getting married and having children and establishing a family, connecting with a faith community, overwhelmingly by any reliable objective data set, says that you will get married and stay married, you will have children inside of your marriage and probably not beforehand. Your faith commitment will be profound and your work ethic and your connection to good employment actually increases. In fact, in what really Matters, my new book, what I Do, as you know, categorically, is I go through the most important recent measurements of the impact of family on young people who are married in their 20s and very early 30s. And I went through every reliable data set to find where there was a disjunction, and I couldn't find one. If you want, you know, greater levels of satisfaction, contentment, happiness, even joy, overwhelmingly those models come from married couples with children who are serious about their faith and living in a community that is undergirded by good employment. And by the way, Jen, it's one of the reasons that I devote an entire chapter to Restoring the American Male, because we find great aspirations and goals among American men 18 to 30 years old. But there are remarkably, remarkably concerning statistics about where and how femininity and masculinity, where they are being applied and identified now in the larger common wheel. I mean, it's really concerning.
- [15:13]
A
This is a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I read this phenomenal post. You know, as people are listening to this, this search and rescue operation just happened in Iran.
- [15:22]
B
Amazing.
- [15:23]
A
USA moved heaven and earth to rescue one man who is trapped in Iran. They built a base, they flew Guys in, they ended up abandoning their planes. And I read this post, kind of a little bit of an essay on X about it where the guy said that this is why American soldiers will do what they do. They will fly where they're told to fly. They fight so hard to stay alive and they fight so hard they know their people will come to get them. And obviously there's some women in the military, but this is primarily a male dominated job and it really is the best, it calls, calls the best out of men. Those, those concepts of being so afraid and going in where you know you probably will die to go and rescue one other man who's your, you know, your brother in arms. And you know, those kinds of stories are the way we sort of restore and give men this again, aspirational call. It's like, that is good. That's what masculinity is. I had someone say there's real masculinity and then there's false masculinity. So toxic masculinity isn't being rough and competitive. And all those, you know, people say toxic masculinity is really, sometimes you, they just define it as masculinity at all. And true masculinity is self sacrificing. It's competitive. It's the strong sacrificing for the weak and protecting others. And we do need a resurgence of that. Tim, just shifting a tiny bit and please comment on that after this if you want to.
- [16:55]
B
But yeah, sure.
- [16:57]
A
You talk about technology a little bit in both your marriage chapter and your family chapter. I'd love to hear your recommendations that, that you discovered and that you wrote about how people who are looking to get married or maybe they're newly married really need to be careful and thoughtful about what they're doing when it comes to technology.
- [17:19]
B
I'd like to address both those topics. And you're right, they go together. So on point one, my friend Nicholas Eberstadt long of the American Enterprise Institute has done remarkable social research on men and employment or men and what they're doing. And as you know, he has found that there are gigantic, I might say sobering percentages of, of, of American men, 18, let's say to 25. They are not in school, they are not seeking to be in school, they're not working, they're not looking for a job. And the question is, with all of that, are they marriageable? And I think that the answer mostly is no, because when women are looking to be married, they are, despite the era that we're in, they are looking for continuity, stability, order, a reliable partner for employment reasons and a reliable partner for children if they have them. If you have this kind of relatively large percentage of young men who otherwise would be of marriageable age, but they're essentially, you know, not options, you cause among American women an identifiable problem in identifying a potential spouse. So I think if we are to restore the American male, if we're talking about masculinity, I think it fits right in that, that it's got to be the idea of employment, it's got to be the idea of education and a measurable aspiration for the way forward. For women who want to be married, and especially women who want to be married with children, they're looking definitively for a certain type. Okay. Secondly, with regard to the digital age, I cannot overstate the importance of. Of the best social science that confirms one big thing, with no exception, and that is how terribly the digital age gets in the way of human relationships. We are made to be in relationships with one another. And I could go on and on, and I sort of do in part of the book, to actually discuss how this is impacting what I call a dating recession, an epidemic of loneliness. Jen, I was stunned. I mean, in a world of statistics, I was stunned to find a huge percentage of American men who say they have no friends, like none. That number is somewhere around 15%. So even if we're talking about dating and marriage, that's a huge concern. But an equally big concern is the importance of having friends and having a reliable community and people you can pour into. But 15% of American men who have no friends is a weak foundation for relations of another kind.
- [20:38]
A
So what do you recommend in terms of marriage that folks do when it comes to their cell phone use and the technology that they are engaging in?
- [20:50]
B
This may sound unrealistic in 21st century America, but putting aside all digital distraction is one of the best things you can do for yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, and above all, spiritually. I have written about at some length the, the. The. The way that the digital age gets in the way of faith and religion in our natural, organic, spiritual lives. It's very important because as I said just a moment ago, God made us for one another. We're in the Easter season. You know, you can't even understand the importance this side of eternity, of the. Of the community of disciples and the way that they were sent out by Jesus, the things they achieved, not as in an era of individualism, but working together. So I think that this discussion is one that I'm eager to deepen, widen and broaden. And it's why I did another chapter, simply called Restoring a well Ordered Society. You know, what is a good way to live? I think that that is perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves. Why was I put on this earth? What is my purpose? What is my reason for being here? I think we have a high calling and I, and I write in what really matters about why that is and how to think about it.
- [22:26]
A
So good. You have so many statistics. Someone reading through the book might think, wow, we're really in pretty bad shape as Americans. But sort of just as your final thought, you still write with a hope for the future. You still think that there's a way to turn the negative things around and go in a more positive direction. Why do you have that hope? What is that hope?
- [22:47]
B
Well, may I say I am, as I said earlier, a bottomless optimist, but I'm also a Christian. I'm a hopeful list, but I also believe strongly that faith and reason go together. They're not opposed. And by every reliable bit of human rationality, there is renewal, restoration and regeneration underway in America today. That is absolutely the case. In another book, Stumbling Toward Utopia, I wrote, I think, an informative study about the social and moral revolution of the 1960s and 70s and, and how that moral and social and cultural revolution directly impacted the time that we are in. I'm very pleased to say that that era is over. It's not that we don't have a problem in culture in 21st century America. Yes, of course we do, in part. That's why I wrote the book. But I think all kinds of measurable seeds have been planted and are germinating in opposition to much of what we are talking about today. I believe we will see and are seeing a restoration of marriage. If we see that restoration, Jen, I think we will ipso facto see a way to restore fertility and the arrival of expanding families. I think we're already seeing a restoration and renewal of faith in America. I was on Sirius XM last week in a Real Clear Politics interview much like this one, and one of the last questions was, you know, what's the basis of hope? And I was doing this interview on Good Friday and I said, I predict that even though it's Good Friday, whether you're in blue America or red America, I think you're gonna see packed churches on Sunday. And there's a reason for that. There is something afoot in America, and it is a restoration of faith, religion, family, marriage, and Families, it takes a while. Social and cultural change takes a while. But I think we are not regressing. I think that we are seeing a gentle trajectory upward from a plateau. And I think there are authentic reasons to be hopeful, which is why I wrote what really Matters. I want to set out the sobering statistics and reality, but also the limitless numbers of, in my view, good news, things that are happening. Homeschooling, school of choice, vouchers, there, there. There's a lot of silver linings in the time that we're in.
- [25:37]
A
That's so great. It's so important to know the negative, to know where we're at. So we have a way to see forward and a plan. We can make a plan to go forward. And I think you're right. It's seeing all the sobering statistics, but then having the hope for the future is really important. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us for your time. I know you're heading probably to some more interviews or more speaking events. Can people find you on social media or a website? We will put a link to your book in our show notes, but let people know where they can find you.
- [26:08]
B
Yes, Focus on the Family is easily gettable and I am there. And wherever people like to buy books, from Amazon to Barnes and Noble, to all the places that you would know, by God's grace, it's widely available. And I hope that people and their, you know, 50,000 best friends will all get a copy of what really Matters, read it and then I pray, share it, because we want the kind of American restoration that we all pray and think about. And I think, you know, a book like this can be a tool in our toolbox because it's a very practical way to discuss these things and to move the country forward.
- [26:48]
A
Yes, we agree. All right, we're going to put a link to, to Tim's book, what really Matters, Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom and Family in our show notes. So make sure you go check it out. Thanks so much for joining the Them Before Us podcast and we will catch you guys next time.