Young Men Need Encouragement to Get Married

Many competing theories attempt to explain our national mess, but few are as compelling as the one put forth by Brad Wilcox, sociology professor and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. One of our central problems is that not enough Americans are getting and staying married. “The future of our civilization,” writes Wilcox, “depends on more Americans succeeding in this most fundamental social institution.”

In Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, Wilcox charges the elite ruling class with publicly advocating ideas that devalue and demean the institution of marriage, which in turn destroys the conditions necessary for human flourishing and social order. Meanwhile, the elites privately continue strong and stable marriage and family life that benefits them. Consequently, the married elite class continues to get richer while the unmarried poor and working class continue to get poorer. Wilcox refers to this as “reverse hypocrisy.” Elites don’t preach what they practice.

If you make claims like these, you better be able to back them up with evidence. So, on every page, Wilcox piles up the most recent and reliable sociological studies, surveys, and analyses. It takes 48 pages at the end of the book just to contain the endnotes sourcing his citations. Here’s some of what the research reveals.

Marriage Is Best for Adults

Married men and women with children are happier, wealthier, earn more, are better prepared for retirement, are more successful in pursuit of meaningful life, live in nicer homes and safer neighborhoods, and have access to better schools. They are less likely to experience loneliness, meaninglessness, despair, drug use, and suicide than their unmarried peers. Marriage predicts happiness better than education, work, and money. Odds that men and women are “very happy” are 151% higher for the married.

Marriage Is Best for Children

Children in two-parent families are less likely to be suspended from school, use drugs, fail to graduate from college, go to prison, be abused, suffer depression, and commit suicide than children in single parent or blended families.

According to Wilcox, “The best community predictor of poor children remaining stuck in poverty as adults was the share of kids in their communities living in a single-parent family. Not income equality. Not race. Not school quality. Family structure was the biggest factor in predicting poor kids’ odds of realizing the American Dream.”

Marriage Is Not Being Taught

When young adults are asked what they think is essential to living a fulfilling life, 75 percent say making a good living, 64 percent say getting a good education, and only 32 percent say getting married. Among parents, 88 percent say the most important thing for their children is financial independence and being in a career they enjoy. Only 21 percent of parents said getting married is most important. While in past generations marriage was the normative rites de passage into adulthood, most parents today have bought the notion that financial independence and enjoying a career are disconnected from the institution of marriage.

Marriage Is Strongest Among Four Groups

Wilcox identifies four groups which make up 78% of adults who are stably married with children. The Faithful regularly attend church. The Conservatives value hard work, personal responsibility, sexual fidelity, and gender differences. The Strivers value education, a college degree, hard work, financial success, and delayed gratification. They may publicly hold to progressive policies, but they don’t practice them. The Asian Americans are Striver-style immigrants with traditional family orientation.

Our Boys Are in Trouble

A common theme underlying his book is that the institution of marriage is currently threatened by the failure of boys and young men to flourish. A growing share (20%) of less educated men are not working, and if they are not working, they are less likely to get married. Along with a changing economy that eliminated many working-class jobs, Wilcox notes three reasons why boys and young men are struggling.

1. Big Education uses teaching methods that favor girls and disfavor boys. In school, girls flourish, boys flounder.
2. Big Government rewards idleness and penalizes work. “Two-thirds of prime aged men out of the labor force lived in a household drawing cash payments from a government disability program.”
3. Big Tech offers “electronic opiates” like video gaming, social media, and pornography that addict boys to dopamine hits.

Along with these obstacles, there is the confusion caused by blurring the distinctions between men and women. For decades we have been told that what makes women happy is a “fifty-fifty equality where husbands and wives split paid work, childcare, and housework on a roughly equal basis” (150). “Blank-slate feminism—the idea that there is no fundamental difference between men and women”—does not comport with the facts uncovered in the research.

What Women Want

In fact, women today still find three things attractive in the kind of man they want to marry, according to Wilcox. These three traits are surprisingly traditional and masculine:

1. A man who provides. This doesn’t mean that women no longer want careers, but they are not necessarily longing to be the sole or even the main breadwinners of their family: 74% of mothers are “very happy” in marriage if their husband works full-time compared to 56% of mothers whose husbands work part-time or are unemployed.
2. A man who protects. Men are, on average, bigger and stronger than women. Women are drawn to men who put their superior strength in the service of others, especially to protect their wives and children from danger.
3. A man who pays attention. Another finding is that “wives who are married to men rated high in masculinity are happier and less divorce prone.” Is it surprising that a man who provides for and protects his wife and children is more desirable? But even these traits are insufficient without a third: emotional engagement. Wives are happier if their husbands are loving, affectionate, understanding, communicative, and attentive to her needs. In fact, 95% of wives with men who were rated high on providership and emotional engagement” were very happy in their marriage and sexual relationship.

Advice for Young Men

The problem is that many young men today are not taught about the benefits of marriage, what most women want in a husband, or the skills they need to build a strong family. Long before marriage, from boyhood to manhood, young men should be honing the following skills necessary for a healthy family life.

1. Provide: Steward your intelligence, pursue an education, and cultivate a strong work ethic so you can serve others, instead of demanding to be served.
2. Protect: Develop healthy habits, abstain from food and drink that weaken the body, exercise to increase physical strength and durability, so that you’re always ready to stand between those you love and whatever (or whoever) threatens them.
3. Pay attention: Do the hard work of active listening, discern the needs of those you encounter throughout the day, and find a way to meet those needs. It’s not about you.

As a young man begins to prioritize these things, he will become the kind of man that many women are looking for but can’t seem to find. When he finds her, or she finds him, my advice is simple: get married!

Steve Bateman is senior pastor of First Bible Church in North Alabama. This article was adapted from his newsletter.