{"id":2220525,"date":"2024-04-14T05:41:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-marriage-bonus\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T05:47:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:47:44","slug":"the-marriage-bonus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-marriage-bonus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Benefits of Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-marriage-bonus%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2220525&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The excerpt discusses the impact of &#8220;Eat, Pray, Love&#8221; \u2064on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/anti-police-crusader-natalie-portmans-apple-tv-show-targeted-by-criminals-in-democrat-run-baltimore\/\" title=\"Anti-Police Crusader Natalie Portman\u2019s Apple TV Show Targeted By Criminals In Democrat-Run Baltimore\">societal perceptions<\/a> \u2064of marriage and self-discovery, contrasting \u200bviews on relationships, \u200cand societal myths surrounding marriage. It highlights the\u2062 importance of strong\u2064 families amidst changing cultural narratives and presents insights from the book &#8220;Get \u2063Married&#8221; by \u200bBrad Wilcox on the benefits and challenges of\u2063 modern \u2063marriages. The passage delves into the influence of &#8220;Eat, Pray, Love&#8221; on how\u200d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/beyonce-misses-the-point-with-forgettable-jolene-cover\/\" title=\"Beyonc\u00e9's 'Jolene' Cover Falls Short of Expectations\">society views marriage<\/a> and personal\u200b exploration, addressing \u2064different \u200coutlooks on relationships and common \u2064misconceptions about marriage. It emphasizes the significance of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/democrat-mayor-giving-500-a-month-to-families-of-color-to-shrink-racial-wealth-gap\/\" title=\"Democrat Mayor Giving 0 A Month To Families Of Color To Shrink \u2018Racial Wealth Gap\u2019\">resilient families<\/a> in the face \u2064of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/its-impossible-to-talk-about-immigration-honestly-when-the-left-insists-its-racist-to-love-your-country\/\" title=\"It\u2019s Impossible To Talk About Immigration Honestly When The Left Insists It\u2019s Racist To Love Your Country\">evolving cultural norms<\/a> and \u200dreferences Brad Wilcox&#8217;s book &#8220;Get Married&#8221; to explore the complexities and advantages of contemporary marital relationships.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>When I was 16, on the recommendation of Oprah Winfrey, I read <i>Eat, Pray, Love<\/i> (2006). The bestselling memoir tells of &#8220;one woman\u2019s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia,&#8221; as the subtitle puts it, documenting author Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s abandonment of her marriage in pursuit of pasta, yoga, and romance.<\/p>\n<p>The book was a transformative cultural moment, sparking the 21st century wellness tourism that became a hallmark of Millennial social media in the 2010s. And it was transformative for me, too. But as I raved about it to a favorite aunt, she wrinkled her nose. &#8220;I found the book pretty stupid,&#8221; she said, deflating my newfound wanderlust. &#8220;I mean, you\u2019d have to be pretty selfish to leave your husband like that,&#8221; she continued, complaining that contemporary media seemed obsessed with deconstructing the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/history-white-picket-fence-180971635\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">white picket fence<\/a>&#8221; ideal of marriage and family life.<\/p>\n<p>A married, Gen-X mother of five living in the Chicago suburbs, my aunt was disgusted by the flippancy with which Gilbert could abandon her marriage in favor of indulgence and self-discovery, a reaction that hadn\u2019t even crossed my teenage mind. In retrospect, however, her contempt for Gilbert\u2019s plot has been a hedge against a culture intent on vilifying marriage, helping me remain skeptical as the forces of &#8220;individualism, hedonism, and workism&#8221; converge.<\/p>\n<p>Such forces are main characters in an important new book. In <i>Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization<\/i>, sociologist Brad Wilcox offers a salvo against what he describes as the &#8220;closing of the American heart&#8221; to the age-old institutions of marriage and family, at the hands of contemporary, progressive values.<\/p>\n<p>Divorce has actually declined, Wilcox points out, since its most notorious heyday, the &#8220;Me&#8221; Decade of the 1970s, into which he was born. But that doesn\u2019t mean all is well. While divorce has dropped, so too has the marriage rate, close to its lowest level in American history.<\/p>\n<p>For this, Wilcox blames a confluence of cultural, economic, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/five-winners-and-five-losers-from-super-bowl-lv\/\" title=\"Five Winners And Five Losers From Super Bowl LV\">political narratives<\/a>, which, he says, are preached by elites in Hollywood, politics, and the media, but not practiced by them, in a feat of contortionist inverse hypocrisy. &#8220;Listen not to what our elites say about marriage, family, and gender,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;Instead of \u2018Do as they say, not as they do,\u2019 it\u2019s \u2018Do what they\u2019re doing, but ignore what they say.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>These narratives include the &#8220;flying-solo&#8221; myth, personified by Andrew Tate, who preaches that men are better off pursuing wealth and sexual pleasure without the liabilities of marriage. Female versions are epitomized in the career-woman divorce accounts that litter the <i>Atlantic<\/i> and <i>New York Magazine<\/i>. A viral 2021 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/family\/archive\/2021\/12\/divorce-parenting\/621054\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">essay<\/a> from Honor Jones, in which she leaves her husband to spend time &#8220;thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy,&#8221; comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also the corrosive &#8220;family diversity&#8221; myth, which sees the intact nuclear family as superfluous to a child\u2019s success and stability, arguing that socioeconomic status matters more than what economist Melissa Kearney calls the <a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/T\/bo205550079.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">two-parent privilege<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s the myth to which Wilcox connects Gilbert, the &#8220;soulmate&#8221; myth, which understands love not as a selfless life-giving commitment, but a means for personal actualization. Once the butterflies evaporate, it\u2019s no longer worth sustaining. As Wilcox puts it, &#8220;this is a model that assumes that, if your marital connection frays, loses its romantic spark, or becomes difficult to maintain, it\u2019s okay to move on in search of a better soulmate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There are, however, a few groups bucking the trends: namely, strivers, the faithful, Asian Americans, and political conservatives. These four groups, whom Wilcox calls &#8220;masters of marriage,&#8221; are getting married and staying married, despite disparate socioeconomic conditions, ideologies, and regional factors.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re reaping fruit from their marriages, too\u2014benefits which might surprise even Wilcox\u2019s most policy-versed readers. I was prepared, for example, to read arguments from Wilcox that marriage and children are worth pursuing for career-minded women, even if they mean forgoing the financial benefits of girl bossing. But that\u2019s simply not the case. Married women in their 50s, even those who stay home to care for children, enjoy a marriage premium that can spike above $300,000 compared with divorced and never-married women.<\/p>\n<p>And while happiness, if not wealth, was once thought to take a hit for married Americans with children, that\u2019s not the case anymore either. Wilcox cites findings showing that 82 percent of prime-age parents are &#8220;very happy&#8221; or &#8220;pretty happy,&#8221; compared with 68 percent of childless peers. &#8220;In other words, today\u2019s men and women in their prime who have children report the <i>greatest<\/i> happiness and the <i>most<\/i> meaning in their lives,&#8221; Wilcox writes.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line: If you\u2019re a technocrat who wants to bio-hack your way into happiness and affluence, ignore the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman on this topic. The data support picking <i>one<\/i> partner and having kids.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily Gen Z is primed, in some ways, to accept Wilcox\u2019s thesis. Just as there was a countermovement of Gen Xers who came of age in the \u201970s and went out of their way to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/19\/fashion\/how-divorce-lost-its-cachet.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reject the divorce fad<\/a> of their parents, there\u2019s a countermovement among Zoomers to reject the pessimism that otherwise pervades their peers surrounding marriage.<\/p>\n<p>The controversial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/12\/27\/us\/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trad wife trend<\/a> is one such example. But less extreme movements exist too. &#8220;Polarity&#8221; coaches on TikTok, for example, preach about masculine and feminine &#8220;polarity&#8221; within relationships, garnering thousands of views on videos offering retrograde wisdom about communicating and bonding with the opposite sex to form &#8220;secure attachments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s advice that might seem obvious to older generations. (&#8220;If you can really see him, admire him for his true qualities, and validate the things that he does well, to make him feel like he\u2019s competent \u2026 that is your feminine power,&#8221; Margarita Nazarenko <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@margarita.nazarenko\/video\/7238796735936498951?_r=1&#038;_t=8lChlugctNC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">advises<\/a> her 870,000 followers, alongside tips to activate his &#8220;hero instinct&#8221; and stop nagging.) But it\u2019s also advice that would have been accused of reinforcing the patriarchy and &#8220;toxic masculinity&#8221; even 10 years ago when <i>Lean In<\/i>-style messaging \u00e0 la Sheryl Sandberg advised women to be aggressive and direct.<\/p>\n<p>Wilcox, for his part, also understands there is a science to contentment between the sexes. He offers his own formula for marital success, based on survey data, emphasizing that men and women value different marital benefits, and that that\u2019s okay. Women want to be provided for and cherished, for example, and men want sex and respect. &#8220;Vive la diff\u00e9rence,&#8221; Wilcox writes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our civilization is in the midst of an epochal shift,&#8221; Wilcox says, &#8220;a shift away from marriage and all the fruits that follow from this most fundamental social institution: children, kin, financial stability, and innumerable opportunities to love and be loved by another.&#8221; But maybe there are reasons for hope. Aaron Renn, a Christian intellectual quoted in the book, is &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aaronrenn.com\/p\/why-im-bullish-on-generation-z\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bullish on Generation Z<\/a>.&#8221; And Emily Gould, one of the most notorious Brooklynite &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/reactionaryfeminist.substack.com\/p\/literary-confessions-of-an-accidental\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">libtard<\/a>&#8221; writers, recently bucked her peers\u2019 &#8220;divorce confessional&#8221; genre to write, instead, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecut.com\/article\/marriage-divorce-should-i-leave-my-husband-emily-gould.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">viral essay<\/a> about <i>salvaging<\/i> her marriage. Even David Brooks, in some ways an emblem of the expressive individualism that motivates divorce, endorsed Wilcox\u2019s book, calling it &#8220;vitally important.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s right. As Americans hopefully come around on marriage, Wilcox\u2019s insights will prove prescient.\t<\/p>\n<p><em>Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization<\/em><br \/>  by Brad Wilcox<br \/> Broadside Books, 320 pp., $32<\/p>\n<p><em>Nora Kenney is director of media relations at the Manhattan Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 16, inspired by Oprah Winfrey, I delved into the bestselling book &#8220;Eat, Pray, Love&#8221; (2006), a memoir chronicling Elizabeth Gilbert&#8217;s quest for fulfillment in Italy, India, and Indonesia. The story follows Gilbert&#8217;s journey of self-discovery, leaving her marriage to explore passion, spirituality, and love. This book captivated readers globally, resonating with those seeking purpose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1528,"featured_media":2220526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/GettyImages-1202482280.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/GettyImages-1202482280.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1528"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2220526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}