Crossroads Podcast: Marriage Isn’t Dead — But Reporting On It Might Be

Readers need to understand that it’s really difficult for journalists to cover hard, tricky subjects — like the trends we’re seeing about a growing division between the lives of young women and men, a crash in fertility rates and myriad complex issues surrounding marriage and divorce.

I am assuming, at this point, that editors will insist that their reporters talk to highly qualified sources here — including experts on both sides of many moral, cultural and religious debates (if not wars).

This old-school journalism issue loomed over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast as we discussed a new essay in The Atlantic — “Why Marriage Survives” — by sociologist Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

The subheadline for that piece — “The institution has adapted, and is showing new signs of resilience” — pointed to nagging complexities in what was basically a positive piece. “Resilience”? Yes, marriage remains a cornerstone of society, bit does face fierce attacks from all directions.

We will come back to some of the many newsworthy topics in that Atlantic piece. But my main goal, in this week’s podcast discussion, was to stress why journalists and news consumers should follow Wilcox on X (formerly Twitter) and note his interactions with other voices in public life and with news coverage in the mainstream press.

At one point, I suggested that Wilcox may need to create a media-criticism website, maybe something called Get Marriage (hint, hint). That would be logical, with a nod to his important recent book, “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.”

Why should reporters depend on people like Wilcox? There is more to this than finding experts who have the ability to discuss facts in sidewalk-level language that works with readers.

During my years with the Washington Journalism Center, I told my students that it was essential to find quotable experts on both sides of tense, divisive cultural and political issues. But it wasn’t enough to just find people — they also needed to find experts who were willing to engage in fair-minded debates.

For many years, we were able to find liberal and conservative experts — usually former reporters who were working as press aides in think tanks and on Capitol Hill — who would talk to WJC students. Whenever possible, we had them visit a class at the same time. We wanted to hear the ideas they agreed on, in terms of doing solid journalism, and those on which they disagreed.

While working with the best of those speakers I crafted a question that I urged my students to ask at the end of interviews. That question for their sources: Can you name some experts and activists on the other side of your cause or issue that you respect? In other words, ask for sources on the other side that offered information and arguments that they took seriously.

Image via X

When sources are willing to do that, you know that you’re dealing with someone who will be able to help you gather information for years to come.

While following Wilcox on X, I constantly see him interact with reporters, scholars and activists that he clearly thinks are important — especially when he wants to provide new information or critique their arguments.

Shortly after we recorded the podcast, I noticed a Wilcox tweet in which he pointed readers to a post by Leah Libresco Sargeant that critiqued some of his arguments just published in The Atlantic — looking for important gaps.

The bottom line, Sargeant — who writes the Other Feminisms Substack newsletter — thought Wilcox was being somewhat too positive, even though he did mention some sobering developments in marriage trends. The headline on her piece: “Why the Divorce Decline Might Be Bad News.” Here is a chunk of that:

The decline in marriage isn’t just a matter of a shift to cohabitation. More adults are spending their prime years alone. The Pew Research Center has calculated that in 2019, 38% of adults aged 25-55 were unpartnered, compared to 29% in 1990. Cohabiting has risen only modestly as marriage has declined more sharply, and the end result is that more people spend their lives alone. …

Pro-marriage conservatives aren’t out to improve the divorce rate at any cost, but to prepare more people to desire the graces of marriage and be prepared to make and keep the vows that marriage entails. It would be a hollow victory to teach the Success Sequence, for example, if it simply convinced more people that marriage was out of reach. The goal should not be to dissuade marginal marriages but to prepare men and women to make strong marriages.

Why would Wilcox point readers and reporters to her critique of his work? Simply stated: To discuss and even debate important issues, while also pointing to an important source — Leah Libresco Sargeant.

This brings me back to what Wilcox had to say in “Why Marriage Survives.” He opened that article by noting that millions of young men, in recent years, have been absorbing anti-marriage arguments from an online super-influencer who, many would argue, is on the secular right.

However, research indicates that marriage helps women and men, especially those whose values include love and cooperation while building a home.

Thus, here is how Wilcox responds to Tate’s anti-marriage sermons. Try to count the newsworthy trends in this long, but essential, passage:

I believe it’s important for teen boys and young men to hear the entirety of this message. Marriage changes men, but not in the nefarious ways Andrew Tate might think. Men work harder and find more success at work after they get married; they drink less as well. And marriage can channel noble characteristics and behaviors that have classically been identified with masculinity: protection, provision, ambition, stoicism. That’s good for both men and women — and can help young men identify and work toward a model of prosocial masculinity that diverges from the one being peddled by manosphere influencers such as Tate.

Marriage’s comeback is good news for society: Children raised in two-parent homes are much more likely to graduate from college than those raised in other families, and less likely to be incarcerated. Kids who don’t live with both of their married parents are far more likely to be depressed than those raised in intact families. After surveying the research on child well-being, the economist Melissa Kearney concluded that the “evidence is clear, even if the punchline is uncomfortable: children are more likely to thrive — behaviorally and academically, and ultimately in the labor market and adult life — if they grow up with the advantages of a two-parent home.” Her view reflects the mainstream academic consensus on family structure and children today.

But marriage’s comeback is, of course, incomplete. Although the trend may be starting to reverse, the share of all Americans who get married has fallen significantly since the ’60s, and there is abundant evidence that many young adults today are reluctant to marry, or are having trouble finding partners they want to marry.

Actually, most of what Wilcox is saying is sermon-worthy material as well.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, share it with others.