MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
An invention of the patriarchy, an obstacle to sexual freedom, a waste of money, something for rich people - it may sound harsh, but that's how many people see marriage these days. But Brad Wilcox says that's not only sad - it's wrong. He is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, where he researches the health of marriage in America. He's also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank. In his book, "Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy The Elites, Forge Strong Families, And Save Civilization," he brings together his years of research to make the argument for why some people are getting marriage all wrong. We talk with him as part of MORNING EDITION's Summer of Love series.
It used to be, obviously, people would marry for protection. They would marry to consolidate wealth - right? - or for diplomatic reasons, to protect kids. There are lots of other ways to do those things now. So does marriage still do something for us that nothing else does?
BRAD WILCOX: Well, I think it's important for us to understand and appreciate that marriage still does (laughter), you know, those more kind of fundamental, old-school things. But when it comes to things like loneliness and meaning and happiness, there's just kind of an incredible connection between marriage and family life. And so I think on those emotional and social dimensions, marriage is incredibly valuable and probably, in some ways, even more valuable today because we're living in a world that's less connected than it was, you know, for a lot of our parents and grandparents.
MARTIN: The stereotype - kind of where the sort of - the conventional wisdom, if I can put it that way - is that marriage in the modern era advantages men more than women. Can you talk about that? Is that true?
WILCOX: We're seeing now in the polling that both men and women think that marriage is more beneficial for men than it is for women. And in fact, a lot of younger women think that marriage and motherhood provide no real benefit to them. Even though being a spouse and being a parent can be difficult, burdensome, tiring, stressful, it's still the case that - when we look just at women, for instance, that they're almost twice as likely to report that they're very happy if they're married with kids compared to being single and childless.
MARTIN: The benefits of marriage are very much extolled in conservative circles, but you say they're not so much in kind of more secular, left-leaning environments. Why do you think that is?
WILCOX: Yeah, it is striking. When you look at college-educated Americans, on the right, they're the most pro-marriage on a whole range of attitudes. But on the left, they're the least pro-marriage. They're the most likely to question the idea, for instance, that kids benefit from having married parents. But I think that's harmful, though, because left-leaning elites tend to control the commanding heights of our culture. They're the college presidents. They're the professors. They're the journalists. And so, you know, if they're not kind of, I think, publicly articulating and supporting marriage, that does a disservice to all those Americans who might benefit from kind of getting that message.
MARTIN: But why do you think that is? I mean, could it be that people are being polite?
WILCOX: No, I think that's exactly part of the reasoning. People want to be obviously tolerant, and they want to be accepting. And all I'm asking is for our elites to do a better job of sharing some of their own experience and some of their own insights about how they have forged strong and stable marriages for themselves and their kids with, you know, the broader population.
MARTIN: What is it that you're most concerned about? Is it that more people don't want to get married or are expressing skepticism about it? Or are you most concerned that people seem to diminish marriage in the public space or don't celebrate it?
WILCOX: Well, I think that there are two fundamental challenges facing us. One is that marriage is not sort of a central enough aspiration. There's a cultural challenge facing us among young adults, and they're not kind of prioritizing it in terms of their thinking and taking kind of steps to find someone to be a good spouse. But then we also have an affordability issue where in many parts of the country, it's really challenging to find housing that would be affordable to start a family. And then also, I think Americans feel like marriage is sometimes out of their grasp or having kids is out of their grasp.
MARTIN: Are there just some people who just shouldn't be married?
WILCOX: Yeah, I think - I'm not saying everyone should be married, but we're kind of living, Michel, in a world now where only about 1 in 2 Americans are married. And that's well below where we have been situated in previous decades. And we're also seeing, of course, what I call a closing of the American heart where we're reaching record lows when it comes to both the marriage rate and the fertility rate. So I think we need to be thinking more about making marriage and family life both more appealing in the culture but also more affordable for especially working middle-class Americans as well.
MARTIN: I originally spoke with Brad Wilcox before JD Vance became the Republican vice presidential nominee and before comments Vance made in 2021 resurfaced in which he said the Democratic Party is run by, quote, "a bunch of childless cat ladies," unquote, and that people without children have less of a stake in the country's future. So I followed up with Wilcox to get his reaction to those remarks.
WILCOX: Yeah, I don't think there should be any kind of shift in voting patterns, you know, that would advantage parents with kids. But I do think it's important for all Americans to understand and appreciate that when the family is flourishing, and when more Americans are married, you know, with kids, on average, I think, you know, adults in communities are more likely to be flourishing. What we see, for instance, with women is that married mothers are less lonely. They report more meaningful lives, and they're happier. We also know that the American dream is stronger, you know, when there are more stable two-parent families in communities across the country.
So I think if you kind of move away from the direct character of JD Vance's remarks and think more broadly about the link between strong families and the state of our union, it's really there. And certainly, his remarks have occasioned a lot of partisan debates about all of this. And what I'm just trying to stress is that, you know, all of us - be we Republicans or independents or Democrats - should be paying more attention to what's happening in our homes because it actually ends up really affecting the character and the quality of our country.
MARTIN: That's Brad Wilcox. He's a professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. His latest book is "Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy The Elites, Forge Strong Families, And Save Civilization." Professor Brad Wilcox, thanks so much for talking with us.
WILCOX: Thanks, Michel.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONOBO'S "KONG") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
