Why You're Still Single & How To Get Married | Brad Wilcox
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you agree with Charlie Kirk when he said that everyone needed to be married by 30 at the latest, or do you think he was a little too harsh?
He said that if women waited until 30 to have kids, they had only a 50% chance of having a child. And I thought, Charlie Kirk doesn't know what he's talking about. Charlie Kirk was right on the money. What we're seeing today in America is that no group of Americans are reporting their lives are more meaningful and happier than married fathers and married mothers.
What is the divorce rate currently in America? Is it as scary as we've been told?
The divorce rate in America, Alex, has gone down since 1981 pretty consistently. It went about one in two marriages ending in divorce. But we're now down to probably around 40% of first marriages ending in divorce. And that's not great. Believe me, it's not great. But it's important just to understand and appreciate that most marriages will go the distance.
Why are so many incredible women still single? Birth rates are crashing, loneliness is exploding, millions of young adults are delaying commitment, opting out of dating entirely, or losing hope that love, marriage, and family are even attainable anymore. And what's fascinating is that this isn't just happening among secular culture. Christians are really struggling too. You have beautiful, successful, emotionally intelligent women saying that there are no good men left, men saying that dating feels impossible, entire generations paralyzed by perfectionism, fear, unrealistic standards, political division, financial anxiety, social media comparison, and a culture that tells people to endlessly optimize themselves before they dare to commit to another human being.
So what do we do if we want to get married? Today's guest studies exactly that. Brad Wilcox is a distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, director of the National Marriage Project, senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and author of Get Married. His work focuses on marriage, fatherhood, family stability, and why strong families matter. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Before we start, don't forget to leave a five-star review for the show. Just write a sentence or two about why this show is important and why you recommend it to people. It really makes a difference for us. It takes a couple seconds for you to do it on Apple or Spotify.
Please welcome author of Get Married, Brad Wilcox, to Culture Apothecary. Why are so many pretty, quality, successful Christian women single?
So I think there are a couple of reasons why even kind of good Christian young women are struggling to find the right man today. I think one factor that is, you know, is a big issue is just kind of the supply of good men. We've got a supply issue. We can talk about that more later. I think another sort of challenge, though, is they're sort of starting too late. You know, I've certainly talked to women. I wrote a piece called Get Married Young, kind of profiling a woman named Elizabeth, who is a Christian young woman now in her mid-30s. And, for instance, she went to a great college. She went to law school. She worked for big law in New York City in her later 20s and then came back to Dallas to sort of keep going on her career.
And by the time she got back to Dallas... She felt like her kind of pool of eligible men was small. It was hard for her to kind of meet the right person. So if she had kind of looked earlier in college, she told me she thought she could have had access to a much bigger supply of guys who'd be kind of on her wavelength. She's attractive, but also kind of more nerdy, more kind of book-oriented and she felt like kind of in college there would have been a bigger supply. So she thought she should have gotten started earlier. I think that's another factor too for young. And then also just the profound ways in which the digital revolution has had a dramatic impact on young adults' opportunities to socialize, to be together in the kinds of contexts that would facilitate friendship, dating, and then marriage.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:15
2
Why are so many incredible women still single?
6:15–14:09
3
What factors contribute to the struggles of Christian singles in dating?
14:09–19:07
4
How has the digital revolution impacted dating and marriage?
19:07–25:24
5
Have we over-spiritualized dating in Christian communities?
25:24–32:06
6
What are the challenges young men face in today's dating culture?
32:06–1:17:11
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
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