On Her New Album, Taylor Swift Sings a Pro-Marriage Tune

Taylor Swift entered her 30s with a new gusto for progressive politics, campaigning against Donald Trump, leaning into her childless cat lady era, and lamenting “1950s sh-t.” At the age of 35, though, Swift is literally singing a different tune. Engaged and happy, Swift is like many Millennial women who flirted with rebellion but eventually succumbed to tradition. One only needs to listen to some of the songs on her new album to hear it, as the pop queen openly admits to lying about not believing in marriage, dreams of having kids, and takes a few shots at Hollywood decadence. 

As Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family studies pointed out in July, “The rate of new marriages among prime-age adults, which hit a nadir during the pandemic, has risen in each of the three years of data since 2020.” According to data in 2023, the rate hit an annual high in the years since 2008 and, though it could be attributed to a “post-pandemic bounce,” in Wilcox’s expertise, “the share of all prime-age adults who are married has also leveled off in the past few years.” That could very well mean marriage rates are turning around after decades of decline. 

The feminist writer Jill Flipovic analyzed these numbers through a generational lens. “With the youngest Millennials turning 30 next year and the oldest in our 40s, that means that this nationwide marriage resurgence is largely thanks to Millennials,” she explained. 

In 2022, Swift released “Lavender Haze,” a song that contained lyrics like, “No deal, the 1950s sh-t they want from me,” and “All they keep askin' me is if I'm gonna be your bride, the only kind of girl they see, is a one-night or a wife.” Fans on Reddit wondered if she was swearing off marriage. 

Fast forward to 2025, and Swift returns to this theme on “The Life of a Showgirl,” released to a record response this past Friday. On the track, “Eldest Daughter,” Swift admits, “When I said I don't believe in marriage that was a lie, every eldest daughter was the first lamb to the slaughter, so we all dressed up as wolves.” The lyrics are a bit clumsy, but the message is clear. Lying about marriage was a “wolfish” self-defense mechanism for the children of Baby Boomer parents, growing up after the Woodstock-era sexual revolution. 

On “Wi$h Li$t,” Swift goes further. “I just want you, hon. Have a couple kids, got the whole block lookin' like you.” She adds, “Got me drеamin' 'bout a driveway with a basketball hoop,” and — in a Vance-ian flair— mocks other people with “Those three dogs that they call their kids.” Swift memorably endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024 by posting a picture of herself with a cat, nodding at Vice President JD Vance’s infamous “childless cat lady” comments. 

Flipovic has argued it was “Millennial feminism” that “saved” marriage, writing, 

One of the less predictable turns my life and my politics have taken is that I — a long-time marriage-skeptical feminist — wound up a woman in my 40s who is not only happily married, but increasingly convinced that marriage is a broad social good worth promoting and investing in.

“It’s not a coincidence,” Flipovic argued, “that Millennials are the marriage generation, and also a generation that is more feminist, better educated, and less likely to be incarcerated than those that came before it.” 

She goes further, noting: “Gender equality and individual stability are the keys to getting and staying married. On both counts, Millennials are finally finding our footing.” 

Flipovic is not wrong about happy marriages and perceptions of fairness, nor is she wrong to suggest socioeconomic factors are important. “I suspect that part of why marriage rates have increased is that Millennials have increasingly found professional and financial stability,” she wrote, “and Millennial women have found egalitarian-minded men to marry.” 

Swift and her fiancé Travis Kelce are both famous in their own right and have been for many years. But she’s been in other relationships with similar power dynamics. It’s hard to read class dynamics into this particular case study, important as they are overall. Instead, Swift’s confession on “Eldest Daughter” suggests the singer used progressive feminism as a shield and a cope to make up for finding herself with the wrong men. And this is a real challenge for young women right now. 

Swift seems to finally be personifying the gradual pivot young people in the West are making right now, saddled with the baggage of abrupt sexual upheaval, shedding the snakeskin of political feminism, and returning to tried and true methods of fulfillment. 

In this sense, Swift’s happiness with Kelce appears to have given her permission to embrace what she always wanted, and to melt away that “wolfish” exterior. This is a cultural block to marriage and children more than a socioeconomic one, though of course both factors are always intertwined. 

Yet her arc is illustrative of the Millennial women who, like Flipovic, are surprising themselves by leaning into the institution and finding fulfillment. An IFS report released last year found that never married and childless Millennials are less happy and suffer more mental distress compared to those who follow the path of marrying before having kids. And as Wilcox notes in The Atlantic, married men and women are twice as likely to be happy as their nonmarried peers, as well more financially secure.

Marriage really does make people happier. And as women see their friends settling into fulfilling marriages without feeling like they live in one of Betty Friedan’s “comfortable concentration camps,” the right man makes marriage seem all the more appealing for Millennial women. 

Back in 2020, Swift seemed to be experiencing a phase of arrested development. At the time, I wrote

Like many suburban girls in the 2010s, Swift discarded some of her traditionalist notions, had a political awakening, and embarked on an urban journey of self-fulfillment, brought about by friends, glamor, cats, and wine. 

It wasn’t clear where she was going, nor was it clear where our generation was going. “Maybe Millennials will change with marriage and motherhood, finding real maturity along the way,” I wondered. “Maybe Swift will forever personify the sexual and technological revolution’s consequences on a slice of our generation.”

Maybe that’s still true. But Swift seems to finally be personifying the gradual pivot young people in the West are making right now, saddled with the baggage of abrupt sexual upheaval, shedding the snakeskin of political feminism, and returning to tried and true methods of fulfillment. 

Let’s hope she also represents our declining divorce rate. As Wilcox reminds us, 

the idea that marriage will end in failure half the time or more—well entrenched in many American minds—is out-of-date. The proportion of first marriages expected to end in divorce has fallen to about 40% in recent years. 

Conservatives may be tempted to claim Swift as some sort of “trad wife” in the wake of this album. But pining for a basketball hoop, stable marriage, and block full of kids need not be partisan. Like the rest of us, she’s just another Millennial woman who fell in love. 

Emily Jashinsky is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She is the DC Correspondent at UnHerd, host of After Party, and co-host of Breaking Points.

*Photo credit: Taylor Swift, The Life of a Showgirl, TAS Rights Management