Does Marriage Really Bring People Happiness? A Discussion
February 20, 2024
Brad Wilcox is the director of National Marriage Project and a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. In his new book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, he makes the case that the decline of marriage, the rate of which has dropped 60% over the past 50 years, has brought with it a decline of happiness and prosperity. He criticizes "liberal elites" for encouraging alternatives to marriage while themselves being married and coming from married parents. In an interview with TIME, he explains why he thinks marriage is better for people and for society, how Medicaid and education spending are making marriage harder, and why we should swap electric-car subsidies for more child tax credits.
Today in America the Jeffersonian vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is in trouble. When it comes to life, what we're seeing is that scores of especially men are turning to drink, to pills, or the barrel of a gun, and record numbers are dying in what’s been called deaths of despair. When it comes to liberty, a lot of Americans understand that in terms of the ability to rise from rags to riches, and there are too many places in America where poor kids remain poor as adults. And when it comes to happiness, we've been seeing in both Gallup polls and the General Social Survey that happiness is down.
