Why are healthy marriages so vital for a flourishing society? What factor best predicts a high-quality marriage? What are some of the most common myths people believe about marriage today and how can Christians make a difference to encourage a marriage-friendly culture? These are just a few of the questions Sean discusses with sociologist Brad Wilcox regarding his new book Get Married. Dr. Wilcox brings his years of studying marriage to respond to some of the biggest myths about marriage, but also give some practical insights about how to help create a marriage-friendly culture.


Brad Wilcox is Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The author of Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization (Harper Collins, 2024), Wilcox studies marriage, fatherhood, and the impact of strong and stable families on men, women, and children.



Episode Transcript

Sean: Why are healthy marriages so vital for a flourishing society? What factor best predicts a high-quality marriage? What are some of the most common myths people believe about marriage today? And how can Christians make a difference to encourage a marriage-friendly culture? Our guest today is sociologist Brad Wilcox, author of the new, fascinating, excellent book called Get Married. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, and this is the Think Biblically podcast brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Dr. Wilcox, really appreciate you coming on.

Brad: Great to be with you here today, Sean.

Sean: Well, let's just jump right into your book. And I want to ask you kind of a question, of how you began it with. You began with how both sides of the political spectrum, you might say the left and the right, devalue marriage. Explain that to us, if you will.

Brad: Yeah, Sean. So I've been sort of studying the way in which, you know, primarily left-leaning journalists and academics and other culture-shapers have been kind of devaluing marriage, kind of denying its importance for many, many years now. But what kind of struck me in recent years is we now have voices on the right, people like Andrew Tate, obviously, people like Pearl Davis as well. And their argument is that marriage is a bad deal for men. In Pearl Davis's term, she says marriage is a death sentence. And so from their perspective, they think that most marriages end in divorce, and that guys are kind of taken for their money and, often, for any kids that they have with, you know, with their wives. And so from their perspective, men should steer clear of marriage, focus on making a lot of money, being strong, having a good time, but not investing in the opposite sex. Of course, by contrast, the sort of left has been arguing for many years that marriage and family are often a bad deal for women. And so women should kind of steer clear of marriage and family life and focus on their careers and, you know, being independent, and kind of maximizing their options and choices. So it's just interesting, we're kind of in a moment now where both the left and the right are kind of giving us an anti-nuptial message, but also oftentimes an anti-natal message to, kind of, discouraging people from having kids as well. And so that's…these are some of the challenges that face us in the culture when it comes to understanding and appreciating how much marriage and family matter for not just kids, but for adults as well.

Sean: I didn't mention this, but I want to make sure our audience knows that you are coming at this as a sociologist. Now, I've read your stuff for years and for a while…I always wondered about your worldview background, because you write fairly and balanced, which comes through in this book, which I appreciate. But there's a quote I want to draw your attention to, maybe you can unpack for us. And you write this. You said, "Questions of marriage and family are often better predictors of outcomes for people than the topics that currently dominate our public conversation, like race, education, and government spending." What do you mean?

Brad: Yeah, well, I've been living and studying and teaching in Charlottesville for more than 20 years, kind of, almost, literally in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson. And he's rightly famous for penning that phrase, you know, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration. And so we kind of think about those, you know, three ideas as core to the American experiment. What we're seeing now on the “life” front, for instance, is rising deaths of despair, where hundreds of thousands of adults are either killing themselves or dying because of a drug overdose or, you know, alcohol poisoning. So that's kind of one example of the way in which that Jeffersonian vision is in trouble today in America. When it comes to “liberty,” if you think about liberty in economic terms, what we know from the data is that millions of poor kids across the United States have very little chance of rising, kind of realizing that classic rags to riches, you know, story in the American dream. And then, finally, when it comes to happiness, “the pursuit of happiness” that Jefferson talked about in the Declaration…we're seeing that rates of happiness are falling, in Gallup and other data sets as well. And so, you know, when you look at the research that's sort of helping us to understand the predicament that we're in on those three fronts, what you see is that oftentimes it's marriage or family structure that's the most important predictor of why we're seeing deaths of despair be so high in communities across, you know, parts of the U.S. There's a new study from Jonathan Rothwell at Gallup just showing that the number one predictor for the community level of deaths of despair is the share of folks who are not married. And then when it comes to the happiness story in America, we see the number one predictor of happiness trends falling in America is the fact, again, that fewer and fewer Americans are putting a ring on it. So my point here, basically, is that the state of our union, Sean, depends in large part on the state of our unions. And the state of our unions, particularly for adults and for kids - there's a bit of a different story. Happy to chat about that. But for adults, we're just seeing a massive, what I call “closing of the American heart” unfold where folks are not getting married, not having kids.

Sean: You know, that was a question I was going to come to, but maybe tell us a little bit more about that. You have a whole chapter on the “closing of the American heart.” What do you mean by that? And what consequences does that have for society?

Brad: Well, I think that we are meant to pair bond and that pair bonds often obviously bear fruit in the form of children. And so we're just seeing, you know, for a number of different reasons, young adults and even middle-aged adults now having greater difficulty dating, mating, marrying, and having children. And so what that means practically is we're now estimating that about one in three young adults today will probably never marry, and that about one in four adults today will never have children. There's going to be a lot of Americans kind of moving, then, into midlife and later life as basically kinless, having no spouse and/or no children. And, I think, given the opportunities that marriage and family afford us for both being cared for, but also, I think more, in some ways, fundamentally caring for others, living for others…this amounts to an enormous tragedy for many. Of course, not all, but many of those adults who, again, will not have a spouse, will be kind of permanent bachelors, permanent bachelorettes, and/or will be childless as they kind of move through midlife and later life.

Sean: You have an example of what has happened in Japan in terms of marriage and the number of kids that people are having. Can you explain what has happened there, and if you think it's a possibility for the U.S. and beyond?

Brad: So what we've seen in Japan is that, really, since the 1980s there's been dramatic declines in fertility and marriage. So the “closing of the Japanese heart” has really been kind of unfolding for about 40 years, give or take. And what that means is, of course, more economic stagnation, more of a difficulty for the Japanese government of paying its bills, because there are fewer taxpayers to foot those bills. But more fundamentally, I think, a rise in loneliness and alienation among middle-aged and older adults. But also we're seeing a large number of young adults not finding a path towards dating, towards marriage. There's also a whole crew of younger men who are not really working full-time oftentimes, just sort of marginalized. They don't date, they don't work full-time, they're just kind of living lives marked by a, kind of, passivity and real devotion to their screens. So when you kind of put all this together, I think a lot of the trends we're seeing unfold in Japan are trends that are kind of now crossing the Pacific and hitting our shores. And so we are seeing, also, obviously a lot of younger adults floundering, especially younger men spending too much time on screens, not working full-time, not dating, not marrying, and then not having children as well. And as you kind of look at how this has played out for middle-aged and older Japanese adults, it's not a pretty picture. There was a striking New York Times story about four years ago kind of just talking about a whole generation of older Japanese kind of left to live and die alone in often large apartment complexes. And I think the most poignant piece of that New York Times story was just kind of a commentary on all these companies that have sprung up or sprouted up in Japan. And to be blunt, they specialize in cleaning out human remains that have been only found two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks after those older Japanese adults have died, just because they don't have kin who are kind of in the mix taking care of them. And so that's kind of, like, a pretty dystopian portrait of Japan. And I think some of those dynamics are now crossing the Pacific and they're playing out in our country as well.

Sean: So let me talk with us about, just kind of on a societal level, why marriage is good for society and objectively good for kids.

Brad: So again, I think we are hardwired to connect, to pair-bond, basically. And so I think for most of us, we tend to flourish more when we have opportunities to be cared for and to care for others. We know also that marriage provides a fundamental level of social support for people and financial security for adults and children as well. And so when, sort of, the family is strong, adults and kids are more likely to be flourishing, and so too are their communities. We know, for instance, that communities that have more married families are more likely to provide mobility for poor kids to, kind of, lift their economic fortunes over time. We know that communities that have strong families are safer. They're less crime-ridden, less violent. We know that families that have lots of married people are less likely to be places where, as I said before, deaths of despair are kind of rampant, if you will. So the point here is that you can think about both the individual but also the ecological ways in which strong families lift the fortunes of both individual kids and adults, but also the neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, and even the country at large that they live in.

Sean: So yesterday I was…I teach a class at a private Christian school. I'm full time at Biola and Talbot but still teach one high school class. And I put a chart up on the board yesterday from your book. And it was a chart that said “Men and Women.” And then at the top it said “Those who are married, those who are cohabiting, and those who are single.” And it was median income. And for men married in the U.S. it was $95,000. For those who are cohabiting, $68,000. Single men, and all other things are equal, is $42,000. Now, I showed it to my students, and they were stunned. They're like, "Wait a minute. This makes no sense. Same person, same age, same job. Why would they make so significantly less in cohabiting relationships?" Those who are single don't even make 50% of men who are married. It's actually about 40% so to speak, or less. Can you break down that chart for us, why marriage in a sense creates a kind of wealth and how it itself, not just cohabitation, actually changes men?

Brad: So what we see, and to be kind of clear here, we're talking about, for your listening audience, Table 3-1 on page 40 of the book. And it is important to acknowledge here that this is actually the household income. So it makes sense that the married folks would have more household income than the single folks, because we're talking about the totality of their income in the household. But we see even beyond that though, Sean, that married Americans, even when you kind of control for household size and things like education and race, have more income in their households than cohabiting households do. And then, also, that married men tend to make between about 10 and 30% more than their single peers. And so what we see with the research on marriage and men and money in particular, is that men who are married work harder, they work smarter, and they end up being more successful as a consequence. So what that means concretely, for instance, is that when a married guy is frustrated with his job, he will look around and find a second job, get that second job lined up, and then quit his first job. By contrast, a single man on average is much more likely just to quit his current job and then look around and try to find that second job and might spend some time, as a consequence, unemployed or underemployed. So obviously, the married guy strategy is much more successful and prudent. We also know that married men are less likely to be fired than roughly equivalent single men. So there's just a way in which, kind of, marriage engenders a sense of responsibility for men that translates into better work performance and more income. And that redounds to their benefit and the benefit of any relationship or family that they're a part of.

The other piece though, and this affects both men and women, is that family instability is super expensive. And so if you're a single parent, usually a single mom, or if you're a non-resident parent, usually a non-resident dad, you're incurring oftentimes a lot of expenses because you're not pulling income with the other parent. You're splitting your households between two parents typically. You may be paying court costs, you might be paying lawyer fees. If you're a non-resident parent, you're often paying child support. If you're a single parent, you're not getting the full income of the second parent. So the point here, too, is that because marriage is a lot more stable than cohabiting relationships are, people who are married are just more likely to have stable finances and to do better over the course of their lives financially.

Sean: That makes sense. Now, there was an article in Time, I think it was about a dozen years ago, about happiness. And it walked through all these things that don't make people happy, and then concluded what does make people happy according to their scientific analysis. And they said married people as a whole are happier, but we don't know if happy people get married or if marriage itself creates a kind of happiness. What is the link or connection between marriage and happiness?

Brad: So, you know, when you talk about the link, what you have to sort of acknowledge on the one hand is that part of the story here, and it's important for your listeners to understand that, I mean, there've been a lot of articles written, like in the New York Times, for instance. It had a piece that said, and I quote here…it was a journalist writing from Brooklyn. There always seems to be some upset people in Brooklyn writing for the New York Times.

Sean: [laughs]

Brad: She said, quote, "Married motherhood in America is a game no one wins." So, kind of giving us a sense that marriage and motherhood are a path to misery for a lot of women today. And you've obviously heard similar stories from Pearl Davis about men, but what we see is that married mothers and fathers are about twice as likely to be very happy as their single and childless peers, and that no group of Americans are happier than married dads and married moms on average. So that's often lost in kind of, you know, the public conversation. But in terms of the causal question, you know, is it because the kinds of people who get married and have kids today are just more socially adept, or more religious or more educated, more affluent, or is it because that, you know, marriage and family life actually engender a sense of happiness in people's lives? And I would say, honestly, it's both. I think the kinds of people who are getting married today tend to have better social skills, more money, and also today they're more religious than other Americans. And those things are also linked, too, to happiness, you know, in general. But we also see when we control for things like, you know, education and income and whatnot, that there's still a kind of marriage premium or benefit associated with being married when it comes to happiness. And we've had economists too, like Sean Grover and John Helliwell, control for happiness prior to marriage and then track people across the threshold into marriage and beyond. And they still find, you know, a premium when it comes to happiness, that is, married folks are happier. And that's particularly high in middle life. So what they're finding is that folks in their late 40s and 50s who are married are doing relatively better compared to their similar peers who either did not get married in the first place or didn't stay married in the second place. And I would explain this in terms of just, again, we're social animals and, you know, we tend to benefit from having someone in our corner we can share the journey of life with, you know, our best moments, our worst moments. And we just know that for a lot of us, our friendships and our family relationships, especially our marriages, are the things that end up, you know, meaning the most to us as we go through the journey of life.

Sean: Now for someone who's a theologian and not a sociologist, the data does not surprise me, in part because I think scripture says we are made to find meaning in loving God and loving others rather than focusing on ourselves. When we sacrifice for others, although it might be inconvenient in the moment, it brings a deeper sense of meaning that our lives are about something bigger than ourselves. But in that, you said, if I heard you correctly, men with kids who are married are among the happiest. Let me play the devil's advocate. Don't kids cost a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of stress and a lot of hassle? Why would somebody be happier if they have to deal with kids?

Brad: You know, that's the question we get. And there was just a story I was reading today about Europeans, and they're talking about how difficult kids are, and that's why they're not having them or they're postponing kids. You know, you lose sleep, you know, you've got a toddler who's crying or you've got a teenager who is, you know, moody. And we all kind of know how difficult and challenging kids are, right? But the funny thing about that kind of argument is it doesn't seem to apply to work and sports and other forms of leisure. So, like, if you're a mountaineer, or if you're a marathoner, or if you're a soccer player, or if you're an excellent professor, or if you're, you know, a day trader or an artist. I think we all recognize and realize that being an excellent athlete, being an excellent worker requires sacrifice and strain and difficulty to kind of get to that level of excellence. And the same thing is true of being a spouse and a parent. But if you do that, if you put the work in, you know, you're much more likely to be flourishing as a, you know, as a person. And so I think a lot of young adults today are just not aware of the fact that, again, married moms and married dads are about twice as likely to say that they're very happy with their lives compared to their single and childless peers. And they're also much less lonely than their single and childless peers. And they're much more likely to say that their lives are meaningful. So on three fundamental domains, loneliness, meaning and happiness, on average, married parents tend to kind of top the charts. And that's not to minimize, again, the stresses and strains that we all know are associated with being a spouse, and especially, I think, with being a parent.

Sean: Now I realize you're a sociologist, so you're kind of analyzing the data and doing your best to talk about what lessons follow kind of societally and individually. But I can imagine there might be a number of people who are single either by choice or not, reading your book, listening to this interview, what encouragement or words would you give to them?

Brad: So I would say, you know, at least two things for folks who would like to, you know, to be married…or folks who don't want to be married actually, or don't feel like they're, in your tradition, called to be married. One is that even if you're not married, generally speaking, you know, you're going to benefit if your community is a community where marriage is the norm, right? So if you think about, you know, young, young adult kind of walking through the city streets at, you know, at night on a Friday night or Saturday night, for instance. Like if you're living in the kind of community where marriage is the norm, your streets are going to be safer. You know, your odds of being a victim of crime of one sort or another are going to be much lower. So that just kind of gives you one example of the way in which there's more prosperity in communities where marriage is the norm, there's more mobility for poor kids. So, just on a whole host of kind of communal outcomes, it's just kind of important to realize that even if you are not personally married, kind of living in a place where marriage is the norm tends to boost the welfare of, you know, of your community and your neighborhood compared to the alternative. But for folks who would like to be married, I think it's important to basically encourage people to be more deliberate about finding potential partners, at least in the circles that I travel in at the University of Virginia. I know plenty of students who are kind of marriage-minded: they'd like to get married, but they're not really doing anything about it. So to kind of give you one concrete example: I was talking to a graduate student and he had a very clear plan for his graduate education and his career, kind of maps it all out. They asked him, would you like to be married? He said, “Oh yeah, I'd like to be married.” I'm like, what are you doing to, kind of like, you know, realize that life goal? And he kind of acknowledged, like, basically nothing. Like there was silence when I asked him that question. And so I encouraged him to ask someone out in his circle, you know, on a date. And he actually did ask someone in his circle on a date, and I've seen them around our local church since then. And I don't know where they're headed, but…just, obviously it was a good move, you know, on his part. And that's the kind of message we need to get to young adults - to be more intentional about, you know, for instance, going on dates, but also, kind of, if they're religious, getting involved in their church communities. If they're not religious, volunteering in community organizations that would allow them to meet other young adults. If they're in college, being more intentional about, you know, asking, again, people out on dates and making good use of their time when they're going to be exposed to so many potential, you know, partners and spouses. So I just think we have to be more intentional about encouraging young adults today to socialize and be open to dating in ways that they're often discouraged by the broader culture, even their parents today.

Sean: We hear a lot today about toxic masculinity, and yet you have a chapter in your book that pushes back on some of the narratives, namely the narrative that kind of traditional roles of masculine men are going to harm marriage. And you say in many cases the data seems to point to the contrary. Can you help us understand what you think the data shows?

Brad: Yeah, so I think it's striking that when you read a lot of the media and even academic commentary on things like gender, there's this idea that androgyny or gender fluidity are the things that are going to make people happy. But when you look at what kind of predicts women's marital happiness and their kind of inclination to get married and stay married, you often find that some kind of traditional markers of masculinity still very much retain their appeal to women in general, even women kind of on the left. I was speaking for instance to an accomplished Southern attorney who is, you know, I think sort of center left in her ideological orientation. And she acknowledged it when she was kind of thinking about marriage, you know, a while back, like ambition was certainly one of her, you know, criteria that she was kind of looking for in a future husband. She also mentioned to me how much she appreciated the physical strength of man - that she found that to be, you know, a point of attraction for her as a woman. So, you know, in the chapter that I write about gender, I talk about protection, strength, provision, and ambition as the kinds of factors that still retain their appeal to women today. And that's provided that they're kind of married, and pun intended there obviously, to an attentiveness on the part of the boyfriend or the husband, that he is kind of emotionally engaged in the relationship. So that Southern lawyer that I mentioned, for instance, talked about how important it was for her to spend time with her husband with phones down.

Sean: Amen.

Brad: And just eye to eye time together as a couple. So the point I'm getting at is, I think for a lot of women today, there is still a kind of a high regard for a lot of these classically masculine traits. But it has to be linked to a capacity and willingness for the guy to be engaged emotionally in the marriage, but then also practically with the kids. Did not find kind of the division of labor when it came to housework and childcare, which kind of in general would be hugely important. But what I did find was that women both on the left and the right, religious and secular, were a lot happier when their husbands were kind of deeply engaged in their kids' lives if they had children. So again, this kind of paints a picture where what I call kind of like a “neo-traditional model” ends up being often especially attractive for women who are more religious and are more conservative where their husbands have some of these classic male traits like being kind of protective, being attentive and, you know, sort of being a decent breadwinner, but they're also marrying that to being attentive emotionally to their wives and being practically engaged in a real, substantial way with the children.

Sean: So you have a chapter at the end that talks about politicians and how both the left and the right can potentially and often do harm marriage on a society level, which of course trickles down to individuals. And yet you also have a study that you cite that said the strongest predictor of high quality marriages is perceived partner commitment, which means it's something you bring to the marriage that's not external like government. So if there's these internal factors that are most influential in a lasting marriage, what role does and can the government play in actually affecting marriages, or what should it play?

Brad: So great question. I think we're seeing, and this has kind of been new for me as a scholar, we're seeing more and more evidence that public policy, at least in terms of just, you know, incentives in one direction or another is important, but not the most important thing in terms of just material incentives. So for instance, you know, I mean, Canada has pretty good family policies in terms of things like a child allowance and, you know, childcare, parental leave, like a lot of the sort of items that, you know, a lot of progressives would tend to value the same things true for Finland, for instance. And yet both Finland and Canada have seen just dramatic declines in marriage, pair bonding and fertility in recent years. So I think one lesson from this recent research on countries like Canada and Finland is that having, like, the right family policies, while I think helpful and just, doesn't necessarily, kind of, get us towards a pattern where we're kind of at sustainable fertility rates and where people are being kind of encouraged in the ways that they should to get married and have kids. And so I think the bigger challenge for us is culture. But here it's important to recognize that there is sort of a role for public policy in the American context, for instance, I think we could think about, you know, PSAs either being funded by federal or state governments that would kind of directly promote marriage and parenthood. In terms of like, here are the facts about things like, you know, prosperity and happiness that we think young adults should know and often don't know today. But then also recognizing, too, that public schools are enormously important in culture-shaping ways. And so having our public schools do a better job of, you know, teaching about marriage and love and family. And then recognizing too, given the challenges we now face with public schools to do more to advance school choice in state legislatures across the country. And that's obviously happening right now in states like Texas, and Arizona, and Indiana, West Virginia - all states that have either moved already to kind of promote school choice or are currently considering doing that in the case of Texas. So there is a place, I think, for public policy to sort of help parents do a better job of educating their kids about the value of marriage and family. And then also pursue, you know, PSAs that would kind of directly educate adolescents and young adults in their formative years about the ways in which they should focus more on love and marriage and less on career and just having a good time, you know, apart from starting a family.

Sean: Good stuff, Brad. Final question for you, if this is okay. What encouragement would you give to married couples to have a lasting high quality marriage that not only is fulfilling to them, but contributes societally in the way you're describing society also needs to flourish well? What, like, one word of encouragement would you give to them?

Brad: I would say that, you know, the paradox of marital happiness, Sean, is that people who directly pursue it often don't find it. And people who aim to be good spouses generally do. And so our culture often thinks that love is a feeling, but we know in Western, sort of a Western tradition, that St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as pursuing the good of the other. And so as I think about marriage, I would just encourage, you know, your listeners to recognize that marriage is about pursuing the good of the other, your spouse, and the good of the others, that is, any kids that you might have. And it's, I think, a lot easier to do that in the context of a community that values the goods of marriage and family. So I would encourage your listeners to do more to, if they're not already plugged into a religious community, to do that because we see in my research that couples who are, you know, attending services together are much more likely to be flourishing in their marriages and also more likely to be stably married, because they're part of a larger community that honors these core goods that redound to the benefit of, you know, adults and kids in those religious communities, Sean.

Sean: I love that you describe it, “the paradox of marital happiness.” I've spoken and written on happiness for some time and described it as a paradox. Same thing, the more we seek to make ourselves happy, the less we become. But Jesus talked about seeking the kingdom of God, which is really loving God and loving others. And then all these things shall be added unto you. So it's true to marriage, it's true to our lives as a whole and our other relationships. I was speaking to my class here at Biola on Monday night, and referencing your book, and a group of my students already had gotten it and were working through it and thoroughly enjoying it. So for a book of its kind, I could not more highly recommend our book by our guest today, Bradley Wilcox, it's called Get Married. Check it out. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Brad: Thank you, Sean, for having me on board. I appreciate it.

Sean: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture. The Think Biblically podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. So we have programs in person and online, including the Institute for Spiritual Formation. To submit comments, ask questions or suggest issues or guests you'd like us to include, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please give us a rating on your podcast app and consider sharing it with a friend. Thank you for listening and remember, think biblically about everything.