Why read a book about the importance of marriage? After all, doesn’t just about everyone know that marriage is a vital social institution that is at the core of building a family and is the very foundation of a healthy and thriving society?
Actually, no. For example, Andrew Tate, a former kick boxer and social influence on social media with 12 billion views on Tik Tok, inveighs against marriage, advising young men that marriage is a ball and chain, best avoided if you want to maximize your money and pleasure, minimizing constraints.
The author of Get Married, Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at University of Virginia, chronicles how the elites in America have turned against the institution of marriage. Professors, progressive journalists, and other professionals now celebrate singleness, childlessness, and divorce as the path to greater happiness, a freer lifestyle, and greater wealth. The Atlantic, the influential progressive publication, publishes an article “What You Lose When You Gain A Spouse”; Newsweek publishes “The Case Against Marriage”; while Time magazine writes about “Having It All Without Having Children.”
But Wilcox documents through a wealth of data and statistics the lie that single men and women are, on average, happier and wealthier and find more meaning in life. For example, in 2020 married mothers ages 18 to 55 had a median family income of $108,000 compared to $41,000 for childless single women. Moreover, approaching retirement, married mothers have accumulated $322,000 in median assets compared to $100,000 for their single childless peers. Similarly, married men heading into retirement have dramatically more assets – ten times more – than their never-married or divorced peers.
How about happiness? Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor and former president of the American Enterprise Institute, has made a career of studying what brings people happiness, and he enthusiastically endorses the concept that marriage and family, along with faith and earned success, are the keys to happiness. Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at University of Virginia for the past fifteen years, documents in overwhelming detail that married men and women are, on average, much happier than single folk.
Wilcox also demonstrates that children whose parents get divorced are twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school, 75 percent more likely to use drugs, and about half as likely to graduate from college.
Since George Floyd’s death in 2020, we have been subjected to a torrent of propaganda about “white privilege.” As Thomas Sowell documents in his 2023 book Social Justice Fallacies, the real privilege in America is coming from a two-parent family. He also shows why. He writes that “white, female-headed, single parent families have had a poverty rate more than double the poverty rate of black married couple families in every year from 1994 to 2020, the latest year for which data is available.”
In Get Married, Wilcox writes: “having the benefit of a family headed by stably married parents, where both parents are on hand to love you day in, day out, share life’s joys and frustrations, and devote their combined financial resources to your home, your extracurriculars, and your schooling ends up being the ultimate privilege for the millions of today’s boys and girls across America who are fortunate enough to grow up in an intact family.” What matters in America is family privilege, not white privilege.
In his book, Wilcox cites Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues about economic mobility for poor children. They found that the best 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 race. Not school quality. Family structure was the biggest factor by far in predicting whether poor kids will – or won’t – realize the American Dream.
The reason that Getting Married is such an important book is that, as Wilcox writes, “a large and growing minority of men and women will not marry or have children, leaving them without any immediate kin as they head into midlife and later life.” In China, they call men without such kin “bare branches.” If things don’t change, many millions of men and women in this country will be “bare branches,” and will not experience the happiness of family and meaning in life as they age.
Getting Married is a treasure trove of data about the importance of marriage to individuals and to our nation. The reality is that flourishing families — bound together by healthy mutual dependencies – are essential for America. The image that that the elite culture praises to try to persuade people to choose work, career, and a self-centered lifestyle without family encumbrances is a mirage. It brings less happiness, less wealth, and less meaning in life.
It also is a recipe for a decaying civilization. The trend of fewer and fewer people getting married is toxic to America, and Getting Married tells the story accurately and powerfully. It is a must-read for young people and for public policy professionals.
Robert H. Bradley is Chairman of Bradley, Foster & Sargent Inc., a $7. 5 billion wealth management firm with offices in Hartford, Connecticut; Wellesley, Massachusetts; and four other locations. Read other articles by him here.
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