#933 - Brad Wilcox - Why Are Liberal Women Becoming Unhappy?

27:55Why so reluctant? Well again, I think because the sort of public ethos of our universities and our elite culture more generally is quite progressive. And because it's progressive, it tends to value things like tolerance, it values into a little choice. It values kind of embracing the newest thing, you know, in the sort of whole love and family arena. And all those kinds of orientations towards, you know, more choice, more freedom, more individuality. And just thinking about families unfolding in some kind of progressive way, I think makes people very hesitant to really embrace marriage per se or kind of understand and appreciate how many, of course, not all of the kind of traditions that we associate with family life actually tend to help people navigate family life rather than serve as hindrance to doing so.

28:43Well, you saw this with Melissa Karnie's book, the two parents advantage, two parents privilege. And before it even came out, Melissa Karnie is as sort of policy, wonk, DC, pills, probably central left, I would imagine, a lovely lady, softly spoken, very well researched, and writes this book saying, look, there is kind of the freest advantage that you can give your kids that were the golden sequence or whatever it's called. And I think maybe even the book cover, I don't even think it was the chapter list or maybe it was the chapter list too, but at the very least the book cover got released on Twitter and she gets absolutely flamed for daring to write a book about this thing, which as far as I could tell was coming from a very sort of liberal, we want to raise people up, This is where social mobility can actually come from.

29:33But yeah, not breaking up a household has become so right coded that writing a book that explains the freest way that you can help to give your kids a leg up. I staying together was seen as, like, I don't know, a mind -camp version two. Yeah, no, and she talks to at the beginning and for a book about the way she would kind of raise the sort of marriage issue or the family structure issue doing economic discussions and people kind of pull their aside and sort of say to her, why are you doing this? This is something you should be talking about in polite companies. I think the dynamic here. Although I do think in fairness, I think her book has really helped the discussion.

30:15My book has been treated very nicely by the New York Times, five different pieces on my book, multiple pieces on her book and the Times, the Atlantic as well. So I did think there is a way in which we may be opening up on the part of sort of center left, you know intellectuals and you know in some universities and some you know mainstream media outlets. Hopefully in some public policy arenas to the Democratic Party, to the ways in which you know marriage and family are pretty important for kids. I just actually wrote a piece Richard Reeves, you know, it's written this great book actually of boys and men here.

30:50And the one, I think, big problem I had with the book is it kind of argues at the end that we've got to figure out a new way to do fatherhood apart from marriage. It kind of marriage is sort of, you know, receding into the distance. Not really acknowledging that, you know, kids in married father families just do way better than kids and families where dads don't live, you know, with mom and that's much more the case for unmarried families. And then also doesn't I didn't really appreciate too that we've actually seen a slight uptick in the share of kids Chris who are being raised in intact married families in really the last decade so that sort of idea We're gonna head to you know marriage being completely in out of the picture is no longer kind of True so I'm just hoping you know He wrote a piece as the three days ago It was kind of acknowledging more kind of the importance of marriage both for men and For the kids that they raise and so maybe there'll be some you know rethinking about this issue in the kind of center left more elite precincts going for it.

31:47If fewer people are getting married, does that suggest that the people who do get married are more committed to the institution and that explains the reduction in divorces? Yeah, so there's sort of good news and bad news here, right? So the bad news from my perspective for adults is that fewer Americans are marrying. We're projecting now that about one in three in an adult stable never married. It's going to be a record low. It comes to permanent bachelor's, permanent bachelor's rights, right? And that's problematic because they're more likely to be floundering on any number of emotional, social, and financial measures, contra, and rotate.

32:21But the good news here for kids is that because marriage and family life fertility had become more selective in this contemporary, what that means is that kinds of people today were having families were getting married, are relatively more advantage, more affluent, more more religious and also more conservative, and those families, not surprisingly, what we're seeing is they're also more stably married as well. Yeah. So, people on the left say poverty, people on the right say genetics. What can you learn about the heritability of family desire, family stability, stuff like that? Yeah. And I think it's important to acknowledge that both the left and the right, as you kind frame, you know, that the issue are correct to argue that, you know, poverty matters.

33:09Growing up in poverty is very stressful. It really can, you know, it also, it's about networks. To when you're poor, you don't have as many, you know, good models in your immediate network of marriage, family life. The same time, too, the folks on the right who talk about genetics are correct to argue that, you know, we know, for instance, having like a gene that, or genes that would make you vulnerable to depression also makes you more vulnerable to get divorced when you're an adult and then makes your child more likely to be depressed as well. And so some of the things that I would say about the importance of marriage and family for adult and child well -being would be chalked up by the left economics and by parts of the right to genetics.

33:47And they're correct to an extent. We also have kind of good evidence as well from economists. And when it comes to the importance of economics, that that's not the only thing we know from Rice Chetties work in looking at kind of regional patterns in economic and equality for instance and family structure that family structure is actually a better predictor of poor kids rising that rags to riches mobility story so that kids for instance born poor in Salt Lake City are markedly more likely to rise into riches or affluence as adults compared to kids born in Atlanta where there's a lot more single parenthood so again it tells us that it's not just money it's about family structure and looking at one key outcome, kind of the American dream.

34:31On the genetic side, we have more and more Chris twin studies that are telling us that, you know, kids who are born to female identical twins where one twin gets divorced and one twin does not get divorced. The kids who are in the non -divorced household who are being, you know, tracked in these studies do better socially and emotionally. We all said that twin study too of men looking at identical twin guys in Minnesota and finding there that the identical twin brother got married earned about 26 % more than his identical twin brother who did not marry We have a whole body of research kind of telling us that men who get married tend to work harder They work smarter.

35:12They make more money They're for instance less likely to be fired compared to roughly equivalent people You know if they're married versus you know the guy who's who single in there and the workplace They're also more likely if they're upset with their job, the married guy to kind of look around and get that other job Before he quits his current job and by contrast the unmarried guys who are employed and he don't necessarily like their job I just more likely to quit their job without having first identified Another job to kind of move into so we just have I think evidence both from the sociological research kind of on norms and behaviors But also from economists and now from psychologists studying twins that Again, part of the marriage story is about the power the marriage has in institution in encouraging men and women to be more responsible, more prudent, and to enjoy the benefits of having generally speaking a friend in their corner who's encouraging them, advising them to do the right thing in any number of contexts.

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36:51You can run Surfshark on every device that you own unlimited installs on one account. And right now you can get four extra months of surf shark for free by going to the link in the description below or heading to surfshark .com slash modern wisdom and using a code modern wisdom, a checkout that surfshark .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom, a checkout. It's interesting about the childhood environment being so impacted because a lot of the stuff that comes out about twin studies kind of says, this is a lot that you can do in the childhood environment and it kind of doesn't really make that much difference.

37:23I think when you control for socioeconomic factors, even moving your kid from the worst school in the area to the best school in the area is not a huge change. It's not this, you know, vast, oh my God, it's all about, we've got to pick up the house, we've got to move to the new catchment area because this is a school and if they don't go there, they're gonna be on the street and they're on drugs and all the rest of it. And we have something here which seems to be very predictive and very powerful in terms of actually adjusting the outcomes that kids get? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, on the twin study issue, there's certainly some, you know, Judith Harris, for instance, is famous writing this book kind of arguing that, you know, because of genetics, there's not much that parents can do to really influence lives of their kids.

38:03I think on some, you know, key outcomes in terms of education, income, and, you know, maybe some of the emotional stuff that's true to an extent. But, you know, my late mentor, Sarah McLean, Princeton also reviewed a lot of this sort of more biological research and did find that what she found for instance, looking at family structure that on the sort of like, you know, a GPA stuff and you know, standardized testing stuff that seemed like genetics were much more important than family structure, for instance. But on some of the social and emotional outcomes, family structure was a lot more predictive, you know, for young adults.

38:42But I also want to just kind of remind us too that there's mortal life and just, you know, scoring high on the SAT, right? And I think it's important to understand and appreciate the sort of networking point we were making earlier in our conversation. And that is that one of the most important things that parents do for their kids is help to shape their kids' networks, right? And so it's like what you do on Sunday or don't do on Sunday. What you do, you know, in your free time on the weekends or what kind of families you're having over at your home, right? So they're kind of very kind of I think subtle but important things that different kinds of parents do differently when it comes to rearing their kids that end up I think being pretty consequential for their children's sense of what counts in life and how do they find meaning in purpose in life as well.

39:28You know what I learned the other day which I feel embarrassed about having looked at behavioral genetics for ages, Steve Stuart Williams wrote about the biggest meta -analysis that's ever been done. It's basically every twin study that was ever ever ever done. it's a five million points of data or something like that. It's every twin per since 1960. And it's kind of commonly touted about the IQ correlates point eight by the end of your life. It's about 80 % of your outcomes in terms of IQ can be explained through your genetics. I didn't realize that for almost everything else psychologically, it goes in the other direction, the direction that you would expect, which is you kind of start off as a genetically predisposed but environmentally blank slate and that over time things happen to benefit and insult you and then you get toward the end of your life and things change.

40:20But that makes it, that makes all of this stuff much more explanatory. It makes you less kind of genetically robust or genetically predisposed, which actually does suggest, well, be careful what you do with your life. Be careful to people that you spend your time around. Be careful to stuff that you put into your eyes and your ears and your mouth. Yeah, I mean, also it's important. Well, so, and we see too, in terms of just kind of this sort of longitudinal Harvard, so you're kind of looking at, you know, tracking first men and that women as well, kind of over the course of their lives, and then kind of finds this to kind of check in with people who have lived to into their 70s and 80s, and they're kind of asked what's most important to you, and it turns out, you know, not surprisingly, you know, at this point that kind of how well they did professionally, well, important was not nearly as important as their friendships and their families, especially their marriages as well.

41:09So that's certainly one point I would make, but I think just also it's important to understand and appreciate that on the genetic side, there's just a lot of evidence too that there's a strong interaction, right? So it's not like you've got a gene for, say, depression that just sort of acts upon someone and kind of some kind of straightforward way. It's more like there's often these interactions and there's been work done by again, my late colleague, Sarah McClanahan, and showing that for boys who have some kind of risk for kind of more anti -I think social behavior, like if they get a lot of time with dad, for instance, they're more likely to be flourishing in exceptional ways, but if they're kind of separated from their father, they're more likely to land in trouble, engaging kind of more risky behavior as well.

41:55So the point is that I think when we're thinking about kind of genetics and sort of family structure or what they should do more generally, it's important to just kind of bear in mind that there's often an interaction between genetics and sort of these profound social experiences that we have or don't have in our lives. Yeah, so looking at, you mentioned earlier on about some of the different sex outcomes that we're getting at the moment, red and article from the Center for Social Justice. From the day they start primary school to the day they leave higher education, the progress of boys' legs behind girls.

42:30The proportion of young men failing to move from education into employment or training has been steadily growing for 30 years. Since the pandemic alone, the number of males aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training needs has increased by 40 % compared to just 7 % of females. For those young men who are in work, the much -avonted gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now outermed by their female peers including among the university educated. What do you make of that? Yeah, so I think there are a couple of things happening here. And there's obviously a very similar story that's servent folding.

43:02It's not quite as bad in the United States as what you're explaining in the UK. But the dynamics, I think, are very similar. So I think when it comes to education, kind of big education is done, kind of profound to service to our boys, in terms of the curriculum, in terms of the ethos, in terms of the amount of recess that boys get. They're just not getting enough kind of stuff happening in their schools. so it would kind of allow them to focus, engage, and really kind of embrace learning. And so that helps to count for why they're more likely to be kind of dominating the lower ranks of school performance and not kind of doing well when it comes to either vocational education and then college later in life.

43:41That in turn then sets them up oftentimes for failing professionally as this report you just mentioned indicates. I think Big Tech is also having a big hand in this. We all know from Jonathan Heitzwerk, from Gene Twingy's work that social media is bad for our teenage girls, for our young women as well. It kind of makes them more anxious and depressed among other things. We haven't talked as much, Chris, about kind of the way in which I think gaming is really undercutting teenage boys and young men's capacity to do well in high school and then other forms of education to develop meaningful hobbies to socially interact with the opposite sex, to date, you know, and then marry later on.

44:25And it's really kind of, I think, degrading young men's capacity to do well in a wide range of spheres, including also in the social arena as well. So that's, I think, one, you know, big factor that's in play here. And then I think the other Another major thing I would mention is just the inability or society to paint a positive portrait of masculinity for our teenage boys and for our young men. It gives them a sense of, look, you're important. You're valuable. You have a distinctive mission to fulfill. You've got to get off the gaming device. you've got to focus on either college or vocational, you know, education, take your 20 -something years seriously, job -wise, date, marry someone, you know, get on with it because your important year of valuable, you've got a new contribution to make both to potential family and to your larger community and to our society as a whole.

45:27And so absent, you know, a clear and compelling vision of masculinity, I think too many of our teenage boys and men aren't really motivated. Don't feel like they have a clear path to walk down. And so that helps the count to, for the kinds of statistics you just, you know, touch time. Yeah, there's a lot happening all at the same time, which I don't think makes very fertile ground for young men to do well. It seems like when you take the breaks off women socioeconomically in this new sort of brown based economy. They're just really good. They're more conscientious on average. They're better organized.

46:04They do their homework. They're highlighter girls. They then go into the office. They turn up. They don't get drunk as much. They don't do risky behavior. Sure. That means there's going to be fewer female CEOs because they're not going to go and do the crazy, ridiculous, obsessive stuff that some of them may count the parts well. But I think the middle roles, the relatively desirable middle class, good earning jobs, I already seems to be the case that they're going to be dominated by women, especially ones that have a prerequisite that you've got a college degree because it's two women for every one man completing a four year U .S.

46:34college degree by 2030. Then on top of that, you would expect there to be, I guess one of two things that would happen, either it's sort of bottom up or a top down solution that would step in. If we see any group falling behind in society, typically we don't tell them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. What we do is we say here is a government organization and a fund and research that's going to work out what's going on. So that would be sort of the top -down thing, which I don't think is existing. And then the bottom -up, which would be young men, you can do this. Here is some positive image for you.

47:12There was this really interesting Reddit thread. I think it was in maybe our slash liberals or something like that. It's a little old now. And someone had asked, who do you think of as being a really great positive role model for men? If you we don't like Joe Rogan and we don't like Jordan Peterson and we don't like Andrew Tate, I think the top voted comment was like Arrigan from Lord of the Rings. Like if we have to go to a fictional fantasy character in order to be able to find someone by design, what are you did have the balance of whatever it is that you think that guys should have. And yeah, if a lot of, if anything, approximating traditional masculinity is vilified and seen as horrible misogynistic right wing bigotry, or you know, a return to old traditional patriarchal values that we're not dispensed with this already, you want women to get out of the workforce and back into the kitchen.

48:15And you're not going to be able to get away with that. It's not going go well. Right and so I think obviously we're not going to go back to 1955 Chris but I think we have to figure out again a kind of a contemporary model masculinity that's compelling and it has at least a substantial purchase and you know a decent number of the key sectors of our contemporary worlds. An absent that we're just going to continue to see I think what I call the closing of the American heart. It's the closing of the heart more globally now unfolding where you know women don't find enough of the men in their lives to be, you know, as compelling and as worthy of commitment as they, you know, would have been a previous era.

48:53And so they don't date, they don't mate, they don't marry, they don't have kids. And, you know, that's not, that's not a great scenario. So I think the alternative is to kind of acknowledge, look, you know, we need to offer men a compelling and distinct division that they can get around and that women can appreciate in them and kind of to form again, kind of the basis for some kind of agreement, where there's kind of some division of labor in the relationship in the family and also where you kind of understand and appreciate the minimum or, you know, on average, different in the important ways.

49:30And you appreciate that your boyfriend, your husband, brings different, you know, gifts to the relationship and then later on to the family. and absent that were, you know, we are headed for a kind of catastrophe. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Over the span of about a year, I tried pretty much every green stream that I could to see which one was best. And I came across AG1 and I've stuck with it for over three years because it's the best. It's the most comprehensive, highly tested, and rigorously formulated. They genuinely care about holistic health, which is why I've got my mum to take it, and my dad to take it, and tons of my friends too.

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50:41You can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3K2 and 5 free AG1 travel packs by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1 .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1 .com slash modern wisdom. What do you make of the medium term future for dating if things don't change? Not good right now. So there was a recent study done by my colleague, Dan Cox, at the American Enterprise Institute finding that more than half of both single women and single men are not very optimistic about their prospects for finding a good partner, right? So I think there's a lot of reasons for concern right now.

51:22But I think one of the mistakes that many of us make, including me, Chris, is that we tend to think about a lot of our problems, like unfolding kind of in a linear fashion, you know, kind of things getting worse in some way or, you know, or moving in this direction in some way. And yet I think at a certain point oftentimes, at least the successful societies or the successful subcultures figure out a way to build up a new institution or pattern, you know. And so I do think we're going to figure out, or some subcultures, Chris, they're going to figure out, How do we get kind of dating on track again?

51:58Because they recognize either explicitly or implicitly that this is so vital to adult flourishing and to the future of our society as well. Yeah, there's a, it is interesting to me whenever I see women, particularly liberal women, sort of castigating men for falling behind sort of, oh poor, whining patriarchy, the sort of almost scolding men for not performing the way that they should. And, you know, women are doing it. You can too. Look at all of the advantages you used to have. And then, you know, within the next couple of weeks from the same Twitter account or the same publication, asking where all of the good men are.

52:43But when it comes to dating prospects, and you think you do understand that we're seeing cause and effect occur here, that men falling behind and not them struggling in this new world in terms of the workforce is creating precisely the dearth of eligible partners that you're going to complain about in future. So, you know, it is of benefit to both sexes for both sexes to flourish and it is of detriment to both sexes for either sex to fall behind. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it is kind of ironic, you know, some of the critics of my own book get married It kind of made the point, well, how can Wilcox, you know, argue for marriage?

53:20If it's so hard for me as a, you know, a talented or decent young woman to find a good guy. And, but they're kind of making this argument from the left. And they're not kind of, I think, appreciating how so many of our institutions have gutted, you know, boys, young men's chances of flourishing. And they're not attentive to the ways in which, which again, in education, in even some ways in the labor force today, and in the larger society, we're not giving our boys and young men the kinds of supports and the kinds of challenges and the kind of cultural identity that would allow them to be the kind of man that they would want to date, mate, and marry later on in life.

54:08And they're often opposed to to some kind of distinctive vision of masculinity for fear that that might be you know Massage andistic or in a gallotterna whatnot and get a medicine you have to go back to the that 1950s or the 1550s right But I do think we're not going to make progress Chris Unless and until we can kind of tell young men that yeah, you have some unique gifts you bring to You know to relationships and family life and to the broader society and want you to cultivate those gifts And we're going to honor you for making an effort to be a good guy. Interesting that when Title IX got introduced about 50 years ago, a lot of what was lauded as the sort of traits that women should take on were drive, agency, independence, desire for mastery and conquer and upwood mobility and all of that stuff.

55:01And, you know, low and behold, 50 years comes along. The glass ceiling has been fully fucking blown off. And they're now rising up. And when you hear a lot of the advice from similar sorts of places now for men, it's the opposite. It's your problem is your masculinity. Your problem is your desire for master and concrete and self -agency. And really, if you were able to be more like, look at the girls. Look at how nice and placid and agreeable, but hardworking and conscientious. Look at them. If you were just less masculine, your main problem with your masculinity is your masculinity. And if you were just a little bit more feminine, if you're a little bit more female with it, despite the fact that that was the road, the precisely the road map that kind of got women out of the issue that they were in only half a century ago.

55:51So I want to say something that sort of I hope a purposely nuance to hear. So on the one hand, And one of the things that I find in my book is that women who are married to men, they rate as better providers, Chris, and also as more protective are more happily married. And so I think these would correspond roughly to what we'd classically associate with kind of pro -social masculinity, being a good provider and being protective of your, in this case, your wife. And I, for instance, talking to the book about this, one moment she was in a subway, it was late at night, they've been out, you know, dating and on a date.

56:32And the subway was emptying out. And finally, there was just this couple and then some sketchy guy. And as the subway moves from one station to the next, this guy approaches and, you know, demands their money. And her boyfriend, at that point, stood up and put himself between the sketchy guy and the woman and protected her. Thankfully, the next station was pretty crowded. They just darted out and they were fine. But she said, that was kind of a bookmark moment for her that this guy was willing to kind of put his own body between her and this guy and was clearly kind of protective in the right kind of way.

57:07So again, kind of having a husband or a boyfriend who's protective and capable of providing financially and meaningful ways is still very much valued in the 21st century. But I also find in my chapter on gender that having what I call a husband who pays attention. So it's three pieces. It's about providing, protecting, and paying attention. Both emotionally and practically, you know, to you as a woman and to your kids when you have kids was also super, you know, predictive of her flourishing, you know, inner marriage BC on the left or on the right. And so I think we have to sort of realize that there are some ways in which this contemporary moment I think is better.

57:47We do expect Mendedium War in contemporary families and was the case for our grandfather's. That's good. But I think the challenge today is we don't have a kind of enough regard for the ways in which, you know, even women themselves, when they're kind of asked questions about what makes them happy in their marriage, are kind of revealing that having a guy who's in some ways more classically masculine is still, you know, a benefit for them. I remember reading a study about maybe it was women who imagined their partner that being some sort of altercation like the one that you spoke about and they're imagining them not standing up and not protecting them.

58:30And it is, I think it was more destructive to attraction than infidelity. So you're actually better off cheating on your partner than you are not standing up for her when somebody comes up to to try and take a purse. Right and obviously my point is like yeah be faithful but also you know that's another justification to be like hey I'm going to sleep with your best friend but I did stop that guy from stealing your purse yesterday. Exactly but but I think and the problem here right is that we don't do enough you know of basically encouraging like so I was raised by a single Montpress And so I didn't have a father giving me all that wisdom about how to treat a woman or treat a girl.

59:14One of the things that surprised me in talking to women for my book was that I can't tell you how many women said that they really appreciated it when a guy walking on a sidewalk, some kind of urban context or some kind of like they're out about town. They appreciate when the guy takes the street side of the sidewalk and keeps them on the inside portion of sidewalk. I'd never heard that right before interviewing these women, but it was a reoccurring theme, but it's just one way again of like the guy sort of is basically physically expressing his kind of, you know, desire to be protective and the woman that I spoke to and again on both left and the right kind of appreciated that that kind of more chivalrous behavior in the part of their boyfriends and husbands.

1:00:01Yeah, it's interesting just thinking about what are the underlying fundamental traits that this is talking about. So I guess cheating is seen as a betrayal of trust, but it doesn't actually indicate weakness. It doesn't indicate cowardice in quite the same way. Again, we're not saying that it's got to be one or the other here. Right. And women, though, it's interesting too, is that one of them I spoke to also mentioned But you know, reasonably successful women living in the Rockies that when she came home in the evenings to her apartment that she would kind of she was somewhat afraid she kind of you know look around looking the closet and things like that.

1:00:42And and her kind of comments just reminded me that you know when you kind of survey women more generally, they're much more likely to be concerned about their physical safety than guys are. And for good reason, obviously, as well, right? And so I think, again, in this kind of modern world that we live in, we don't talk about that that much, right? But I just think that, again, women are more attentive to their physical safety. And given that, having a boyfriend or husband who is attentive to that as well and can kind of stand in the breach, if need be, is definitely appreciated. So I learned from you that young man more likely to end up in prison or jail in the US than they are to graduate from college if they're raised in a non -intact family setup.

1:01:29Do you think that this men's session thing that we're dealing with at the moment could perhaps be due to a disproportionate impact of broken homes on boys versus girls?

1:01:42So I do think surely one of the reasons why young men are flandering in today's world is that they're less likely to have a married dad in the picture than less the case 40 or 50 years ago or 60 years ago. So yeah, that's certainly I think part of the dynamic we're seeing. And it was like the most surprising statistic for me in the book for looking at kids, was just again that we do see today as you mentioned. The boys are more like a land in prison or in jail today. if they're raised outside of the intact household, then they are to graduate from college. It's a pretty striking, at least for me, statistic.

1:02:23But we do see even kind of for boys who are hailing from intact, married families, they're more likely to be floundering than their sisters are. So that's part I think of the dynamic we're talking about today in terms of the relative problems that boys and men are having, but it's not the only factor in play as well. with this tall girl problem of socioeconomically successful women struggling to find a Equivalently or more socioeconomically successful partner is the stay -at -home dad model a workable solution Can we just pivot the flip the dynamic in that way? Yeah, you know, it's interesting Chris.

1:03:05I think there are certain I mean, I know plenty of guys who have you know been successfully You know at home for periods of time while their wife is out working to provide financial for the family and I've done fine, right? But at scale, Chris, the answer is no. And the reason I say that it's both in my book, I do find that for married moms, they're less happy when their husbands are at home, you know, as stay at home dads, than women whose husbands are employed full time. We also know that when it comes to divorce, when women lose their jobs, no effect on the risk of getting divorced. when men lose their jobs, their risk of divorce goes up 33%.

1:03:44So just can tell us that, you know, again, even today, there's a way in which providing is still coded, you know, more masculine. And then the other thing too is that in the average marriage, even when guys are at home, they're just not as attentive to all the kind of details and nuances of kids' schedules and of kind of keeping the home as sort of clean and well functioning as the average wife would like it to be. And so what often happens is that when the wife is the primary earner or the sole earner, she feels like her husband isn't doing his share when it comes to kind of managing the household and also kind of managing the kids' lives.

1:04:31And the other thing that's interesting here too, Chris, is that what my book shows is that, you know, there's been a lot of talk about kind of the rising number of female breadwinners out there in today's world. But people haven't really kind of focused on how it's incredibly stratified. And what I mean by that is that we're seeing that sort of female dominated, you know, breadwinner households are overwhelmingly working class and poor kind of pattern. And upper middle class and upper class households are much more like you did a kind of roughly you know similar earnings between mom and dad or to have dads kind of leading out when it comes to their earnings.

1:05:12And what do you see in general you see obviously upper middle class, upper class homes much more marriage much more stable marriage because again I think we still associate for or a number of important reasons, bread winning with men and marriage and family stability. So again, at scale, I don't see kind of trying to have large numbers of men stay at home and care for their kids as being a good way of handling the challenges we're facing now. It's also interesting that we have some new work at IFS since the family study is kind of just showing that there's this kind of continuing gap. When you look at who's getting married today, Chris, even though women are outperforming men educationally, it's still the case that when you look at who's getting married, you know, men are way more likely to be earning more money than they're, you know, newly married, you know, their spouse.

1:06:04Okay, so in that way, do you think that the decline in marriage rates could be laid at the feet of the economically less desirable men? Right, and so I think what we have seen also, So there's a new piece for Richard Reeves group showing that almost all of the recent decline in marriage is among less educated women, not college or educated women. What's fascinating about the college or educated women is that even when they're marrying guys who are less educated than they are, they tend to be marrying guys who have good income. So they're marrying cops, firemen, guys on the trades. So they're picking the cream of the crop financially, even when these guys don't have the same kind of educational credential that they did, right?

1:06:46And so the fact is that we're seeing, you know, a lot of guys who don't, you know, have as much education, they're doing less well in the labor force. So one statistic that I find in my book, for instance, is about one in four, primage guys, who don't have a college tree, are not working full time. Of course, that's a huge, you know, issue of financial and otherwise, and would be one reason why we're seeing kind of, you know, less marriage in working class and poor communities in the US and the same things true for the UK as well. Yeah. Why you mentioned to me about the South Korean election with a twist.

1:07:26Why do you think that's a good analogy to draw? To Trump you were saying? Yeah. So, what we saw as seeing South Korea in the most recent presidential election was just that the more conservative candidate managed to kind of win the election because he got a lot of younger, matured, kind of in a more conservative direction, more anti -feminist direction to vote for him. And what's fascinating about sort of South Korean case, I think as well as in part the American case, is that it looks like when young men are floundering and they're feeling they're not really doing that well, like in school and in the workplace, they're more likely to identify with a kind of anti -feminist or kind of hyper -masculine ideology, a kind of androotate ideology, if you will.

1:08:12And I think that helps to explain why South Korea turned to the right among young men in the recent election. Of course, young women in South Korea were kind of turning to the left culturally. And we saw kind of a similar dynamic playing out here in the US to some extent in the most recent elections where young men voted one and served with on 56 % young men voted for Trump, and by contrast, 58 % voted for Harris. And this is kind of emblematic too of the way in which I think a lot of young men are kind of frustrated with their performance in school, their performance in the workplace, and it makes them gravitate sometimes to a more kind of anti -feminist or hyper -masculine ideology.

1:08:57And they would certainly see that in some ways, I think, with parts of the Maga coalition, including Trump himself. Yeah, well, a lot of people thought that the rise of black votes, immigrant vote, Hispanic vote, single vote, would fuel the Democratic sort of coalition, the emerging democratic majority. How come it didn't work out that way, do you think? Well, in part because larger numbers of black men and especially Hispanic men, voted for Donald Trump. And some of that dynamic is about, again, younger guys who are kind of finding it difficult to find a good footing or a foothold in the economy and society, and even I think, relationally, and worrying about their prospects as breadwinners and potential husbands down the road.

1:09:49And so they kind of find Trump's message, which is both more macho and We saw Trump win a majority of the voters in this round. Yeah, well, it wasn't it. Trump's success was really, it was pretty much everywhere. Like his 46 % of women voted for Trump, 55 % of white women voted for Donald Trump, 45 % supported Kamala Harris. So yeah, I mean, it's in the case that, you know, it wasn't just the general dynamics that we're talking about today that were in play for Trump. I think there was also kind of a real sense that obviously the cost of living and inflation had been pretty high under Biden. So there are a number of different factors kind of driving the Trump story.

1:10:40But I think certainly part of the story here is that men have gravitated towards Trump and move towards the right, including Black and Latino men to some important extent. And they've done so in part because they feel... Tell her, Cohen wrote about this last story. not the vibe shift before Trump was elected. He was already anticipating this vibe shift. And he was arguing that one reason the vibe is shifting again is that too many guys feel like they're not doing well. They feel like when they're dominating their institutions, their workplace, their schools, et cetera. And they look at Trump and Republicans as vehicles for boosting the fortunes of men in today's America.

1:11:26Yeah, another really shocking start. Trump gained support among every racial group, except for white people, where he lost 1%. Wild. Right. Super wild. I mean, look, it's another case, I think, of rules for the, but not for me, or the sort of talking left, but walking right, or the luxury beliefs thing from Rob Henderson. It's largely the rubber meeting the road with this stuff. Okay, what's actually going to happen when my potential future is on the line? Am I going to behave or vote or procreate or design my household or have, you know, move forward in my career in the way that seems to be fashionable?

1:12:10Are I am I going to do something that, I know, ultimately, people sort of vote with their efforts? And it seems like, I don't know, a little bit of a falling away of the able to say this while doing something else, I don't know how long that can continue to go for. Right, and I do think one of the more hopeful signs is that I would look for from the center left is just kind of a growing willingness to sort of speak, you know, simple truth that had been kind of hidden for a while just because they would like to kind of reengage their possibilities of speaking to the broader electorate. We have seen, for instance, pieces in the Atlantic recently, on the importance of cities taking a harder line when it comes to public safety.

1:12:56I think this is kind of the kind of thing that the left needs to do if it wants to kind of move back to the center and have a greater shot at, again, winning a majority for the next presidential election and just elections in general as well. What is most interesting from a research perspective over the next couple of years. So what are you going to be focused on? Yeah, the big question I'm thinking about is whether or not it's not just that marriage matters, Chris, but it might matter more than ever for both kids and for adults. And what I mean by that is that I think in a world that's more technologically distracted in a world that's more economically unequal and a world where a lot of our core civic institutions are weaker now than used to be.

1:13:35It could be the case that, you know, getting married and having a family for adults is more valuable emotionally and socially and financially. for kids as well because, especially nowadays, when dads are more engaged with their kids. So the point is, again, that having a spouse, having a family, couldn't matter more than ever for our adult men and women, and then also for our kids. And I've already seen this with kids. And college graduation, for instance, we're seeing that the link between having an intact family and graduating from a college is stronger for millennials than it was for boomers.

1:14:08So I'm just exploring the possibility and empirically that on some key outcomes So might be finding in the near future that again, having a family getting married, staying married could be more viable in a world that in some ways is more precarious now than it was, you know, 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Interesting stuff. Well, I look forward to seeing what you discover. Brad Wilcox, ladies and gentlemen, why should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything that you do. So familystudies .org has a lot of interesting stuff from my colleagues at IFS and through family studies and I'm on Twitter at Brad Wilcox IFS.

1:14:39I can. Brad, I appreciate you. Until next time. Okay. Thanks Chris.