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Episode Description
We talk with Brad Wilcox of the National Marriage Project about a new poll from the NBC Newsdesk on Gen Z’s take on marriage and happiness and what this means socially and politically for our country. His book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, reveals how married couples accumulate more wealth and report more meaningful lives, and delves into why this fundamental institution matters for our civilization more than ever.
We also talk with Emily Zanotti about her viral Substack on cooking, and why the kitchen is the heart of the domestic church. Emily shares how when we prepare a hot meal with loving hands, we not only feed our families, but we also nourish their souls.
Msgr. Roger Landry shares insights as we celebrate the 70th birthday of Pope Leo XIV! The Pope’s birthday reminds us that every season of life can be the start of something new God is doing in us, and that God’s invitations don’t come with an age limit.
Bios
Brad Wilcox is a professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and a prolific author on marriage and family and its impact on the health of individuals and society. He is a Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor, a Future Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has authored or co-authored six books including Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization, and his research has been featured in CBS News, National Public Radio, National Review, NBC News, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other media outlets. He earned his bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Virginia and holds a master’s degree and doctorate in sociology from Princeton University.
Emily Zanotti is a veteran political communications specialist, writer, blogger and columnist, and the digital editor for The American Spectator. As a conservative political columnist, her work has appeared in The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She is an associate fellow with the R Street Institute, a contributing editor to Acton Institute, and a writer and producer for Madison McQueen Axiom Strategies. She writes a popular humorist Substack blog featuring politics, family, and Catholic themes. Emily resides in Nashville with her husband and three children, where she enjoys tending chickens and sharing recipes. She earned her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Madonna University and holds a JD in intellectual property law and technology from Ave Maria School of Law.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. In 2024, he was appointed the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and served as executive editor for the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. He is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and he leads pilgrimages to Rome, the Holy Land, and other sacred destinations. He was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s coverage of the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Father Landry traversed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, an event which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 334 Transcript
| Mary | Welcome back to conversations with consequences here on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Mary Fiorito. |
| Ashley/Betsy | And I'm Ashley McGuire. |
| Mary | And we are thrilled to have joining us for the first time, the one and only. Emily tonight written several stories and so many cultural and family topics that affect us all. And most recently, her Substack Substack that went viral on, of all things, cooking and how it's an integral part of the domestic church. So welcome to the show, Emily. We are so pleased to have you. |
| Emily Zanotti | Thanks so much for having me. |
| Mary | Yeah, people throw around that word influencer, but you really are an influencer. You have such a gift. And of not only just kind of picking up on cultural moments, but I'm doing it with such good humor. And, you know, I feel like I know and love your children already. And I think, you know, as the youngsters would say, you make yourself vulnerable by sharing those moments that, you know, we sort of all faced as wives and mothers and, you know, just human beings. But, I, I'd love to start with the story about cooking because, surprised people got as crazy about it as they did. And, me too. I'm like in my Twitter bio, I have cookbooks because I have more cookbooks than any human being could possibly, justify having, and my children make fun of me for it. But I just love them. I find them so comforting. And, And I'm a person who really loves to cook. But you were left without a kitchen, which is. Oh, my goodness, what a horrific thing. And as, because you had, like, a sledding incident. |
| Emily Zanotti | Yes. So our refrigerator, we moved into a new house about a year and a half ago. And the people who had lived here previously did a lot of upgrading work, but they did it DIY. And unfortunately, I think a lot of our plumbing was done over you, just like they learned from YouTube. So we had to go through and fix a lot. And in one instance, they actually hooked up a hot water line to the back of our fridge to the ice maker, and the hot water melted all the park. |
| Mary | Oh no. |
| Emily Zanotti | Had a lake in our kitchen, a lake in our, basement. So we had we had a seven month. It just finished. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Like. |
| Emily Zanotti | I, we put in the last tile last week. So it was about a seven month ordeal and we had to move out of the house. Our kids were living in an Airbnb for a while. It was. It was something I never want to endure again. |
| Mary | So please tell me that the insurance covered almost everything and allowed you to get a fabulous new kitchen. |
| Emily Zanotti | Yeah, thankfully. Thankfully. And it was allowed us to upgrade a little bit and some things. For instance, I do also have a cookbook collection, and I got to have cookbook bookshelves put into my kitchen island, so. |
| Mary | We we would be dangerous if we lived near each other. Emily. That's fantastic. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So, Emily, tell us about, you in your article for the National Catholic Register, you talk about how you, your experience without a kitchen, you realized, deprived your family not just of the functionality of a kitchen, but sort of the you describe it, I think, as the domestic church of your home. Or tell us what that article is about and what you what you meant by that in terms of the deeper loss. Of not having a kitchen. |
| Emily Zanotti | So for me, I quite realized that the kitchen was the heart of the domestic church. We took it for granted. I think anybody who lives in a house and you go every day and you have a kitchen that maybe you don't really like, but you use a lot, you don't really realize how much is tied to that room. It's where you cook your meals. It's where you eat your meals. It's where you go, group together as a family. It's where we say our prayers. And every night and in the at the breakfast table on the dinner table, we go over our prayer list every day. And we didn't realize when we lost that how much we were losing in terms of what held our family together, eating dinners and breakfasts on the sofa, watching the TV. We all sort of zoned out. We no longer felt like we were getting together every night as a family. There was that cohesion that was missing. And I started to talk about it, about my mom and my grandmother, who? Both of them didn't necessarily pass down the cooking skills, but the memories that I have of their kitchens are the love and the warmth and being fed and understood and heard at that kitchen table. And I wanted to pass that down to my kids, and it didn't really occurred to me that until I didn't have a kitchen, that that was going to really have an impact on that. |
| Mary | You know, Emily, were you surprised by, I guess sort of the intensity of the reactions to what you wrote about that? Most people, you know, they don't really hate cooking, they just don't really know how to cook. And some of them like you, I think my mother just assumed that by osmosis, I would be able to, you know, figure out everything the way she made every meal, etc., etc.. And I think then later in life realized I had hadn't, so I had to. But it's a skill that you can learn, right. And then. Yeah. So hence my 10,000 cookbooks. But I but I have now become very intentional. I read some kind of like going off to college survival guide for my eldest daughter and it said your your child should be able to cook at least three meals. Something for breakfast, something for like a real meal start to finish and should know how to do that. By the time they're they're 21, they should be able to cook one meal for each of the three main meals of the day. That's an actual substantive meal. So I've, you know, I've really made a very intentional point of showing my girls how to do that. And now they I mean, for the most part, they really do love to cook. But what, like, what do you attribute, some of the crazier responses that you got to this, to where people do you think they were personally insulted or thought you were making fun of them, or what what. |
| Emily Zanotti | What what started off on Twitter, I guess, ex I responded to somebody saying, cooking is so expensive, I can order DoorDash every day and it would still be cheaper than cooking in my kitchen. And I was just shocked at that. I was like, there's, there's absolutely no way. I have a family of five and we're we probably average about 150 to $200 a week for food. And when I. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Was. |
| Emily Zanotti | In during this remodel, we eat out a lot, and I can tell you that it was significantly more than cooking from scratch. And it gets. |
| Mary | Very old, very fast, doesn't it? The eating out thing. Yeah. |
| Emily Zanotti | It was just I wanted chicken piccata. I told my husband like a million times. I was like, this is a dish I cook all the time. You guys are so sick of it. But that's all I wanted because it just didn't taste like it was from a restaurant. And all of a sudden, all these people start responding and saying, well, I don't know how to cook. What do you mean? What do you mean, it's cheaper? Well, has anyone ever taught you how to stock a pantry? Has anyone ever told you what pans you need? What? You should go to Williams-Sonoma or, target and purchase for your kitchen? What are these tools that are required? And everyone was just like, nobody taught me that. And it became a combination of maybe in the last generation, moms were working more outside of the house. So either dinner was something that they threw together really quickly or kids grew up eating out, eating at the table one at a time. Over time, and nobody really sat down to a meal. I think that is part of it. I think also, we removed home EC from schools in the last 30 years. And this has become kind of a crusade for me. Unknowingly and unwittingly. I decided that this was, you know, like, just lead into this sort of thing, but, we took Home EC out. And so the basics of knowing how to measure flour and knowing that you need a measuring cup and knowing that you need a chef's knife, those things just disappeared. And so people are going online and they're going to influencers and getting recipes. And they're laying five of those out a week. And they all have different ingredients. And they just were making cooking really difficult and expensive on themselves. So I think people just resonated with, yeah, I actually have never learned those things. I have never had that contact with food and with cooking and it's interesting. |
| Ashley/Betsy | I grew up in a big family. I was the oldest of five, and by the time I was a teenager, it was my job to make one family meal a night. I'm sorry, a week. There was a, night of the week that was mine. And it's an essential life skill because now I'm a mom and now I have five kids. And you absolutely need to know how to cook efficiently. Thrift or thrift? How to use leftovers to your advantage. And it's something that I'm teaching my oldest daughter now to. And frankly, it helps, you know, when you have a lot of kids to be able to say, okay, you're doing the sauteed potatoes tonight. But when reading your articles, I was, reminded of an article that came out in the Atlantic, I don't know, maybe ten years ago about how kitchens are more expensive than ever. Everybody's got all these gadgets, all this, you know, the wolf range and the this and that. But the amount of time people spend in the kitchen is at an all time low. What do you think about that? Why is that? Why? You know, apart from the skill gap, why are people so into their fancy kitchens? But then don't use them. |
| Emily Zanotti | I think for the same reasons that they're into the fancy entertainment systems and don't use them. It's a it's they're keeping up with the Joneses. Right. Like it all has to look different. It all has to look better. It all has to look beautiful. The houses have to look beautiful. We're obsessed with, esthetics. And and the funny thing is that you mentioned it. I have always wanted a wolf range. And I saved up for years and sold clothes on Poshmark and then finally got the chance to get one. And I hugged it when it was taken off the truck in the middle of the street. I was so excited. And it shocks me that actually there are, you know, other people that I know who have these same ranges in their kitchens, and they absolutely never use them. And it's just, I think it's just a inherited from that last generation that just came away from cooking. We I am really intentional with getting my kids to cook. There are pictures in the article of me having like, a baby, baby wearing while I'm making Thanksgiving dinner. My kids have been in the kitchen since they were teeny tiny. They all know how to cook. They could possibly feed themselves for an entire weekend. I wouldn't even have to, like, I would even have to talk to them. But hopefully that reverses that where they don't think of the kitchen as just another accessory for your house. They think of it as a real heart of a home. |
| Mary | You know, one of the things I was thinking of, when you talk about the the kitchen sort of thing for women, at least in the domestic church, kind of your inner sanctum, you know, that's your, your sanctum sanctorum. And I was thinking of, I mean, invariably Thanksgiving particular on Thanksgiving, everyone decides to come and stand in the kitchen and my husband will stand in front of the one door I need to get into at any given moment, and it's just become like a ongoing family joke, like, why are you all in here? Get out! |
| Emily Zanotti | Are you even here? |
| Mary | And and I love them all, you know, but I, I like that feeling of being in there and and being in the moment, particularly for a holiday, because you want everything, you know, you have a little extra desire to make it a really special meal. And you should be grateful that everyone wants to come in and be in your, you know, in your, in your orbit. But it also at the same time, I mean, for me at least, has led to some times where, you know, I've acted with an incredible lack of charity towards my family because I'm so mad that they're in my, my inner space. What what do you think would be a good way to help sort of explain that concept to the family in a way that doesn't alienate them from the kitchen, but helps them to understand what it means to you as a mom and a wife and, a chef, to have that kind of time there on your own. |
| Emily Zanotti | I think this is a school lunch problem for our house. We don't homeschool. We have an amazing Catholic school that's just around the corner, so it's amazing. But we actually do still have to make the lunches, which is, my husband every morning, like, slowly walking around the island in front of every single thing I need. And I've learned that I will just evict them. But my kids don't have a boundary when it comes to the kitchen. That is actually the one drawback of having them in my kitchen all the time is that they just invite themselves in and they're like, oh, you're breading chicken. I want to have monster fingers to, sometimes I have to enlist the help of my husband to just be like, we need a little space. We haven't run into the injury thing yet, but part of it is just a safety thing. Especially with the gas range. They like to reach over and store and taste and and we just have to have a boundary there, and constantly telling them mom just needs 20 minutes to close. Right. Bluey. And that is in every aspect of life, right? Like, sometimes mom just needs 20 minutes. And the kitchen is no exception. |
| Ashley/Betsy | What would you say to moms, I think, who, especially moms who are working outside the home. I think you're absolutely right that, like, the influencer culture makes people overthink dinner. And I remember once somebody asking me, you know, how how can I possibly cook six nights a week? And I'm like, well, it's a lot of tacos and spaghetti, you know, like, yeah, I'm not I'm not making beef bourguignon every night. But what would be a, you know, a piece of advice you would have for busy moms, whether they're juggling a lot of young kids or busy carpool schedules or work, who who want to cook more? |
| Emily Zanotti | I think there's two things you can do. One is meal planning, sitting down on a Sunday, even for just a few minutes. I sit down and I write out what I'm going to make, and then I make my Kroger delivery list. From that, that doesn't always go as planned. We once had a shipment of 40 bananas, and, it's not as much fun as going to the grocery store on your own, but it does keep you on the straight and narrow a little bit. And lets you sit down and look at recipes and then maybe swap things in and out for convenience or time. And it does look a lot like tacos and spaghetti. We have a rotating probably 12 to 15 meals that we do. We share it, but it doesn't matter what you're serving. I think that's where we all sort of get caught up in this Top Chef Food Network culture. We want to make these beautiful plates and have gas streaks and foams and, you know, things like that. On Sundays for Sunday dinner, I will try things like that. I will do the beef bourguignon, I will do the roast chicken. But truthfully, Hamburger Helper, sloppy joes. Some nights it's turkey burgers, tonight is turkey burgers because we have baseball and dance. It's more the act of making that food and sharing it with your family than it is anything else. We live in a really health conscious society. I know people want to avoid processed foods, and I get that, but it's actually okay to serve your kid a hot dog or you have hot dogs once in a while for dinner. But it's just more important to make that connection than it is to worry about what's on the plate. |
| Mary | Are you a fan of the Big Batch cooking? And then, with all the question who are like your go to people when you're thinking, yeah, I really I need a quick family recipe for tonight. You know, that isn't a hot dog. And who do you kind of look up? Instinctively. |
| Emily Zanotti | Instinctively, I look up Ina Garten I love her recipes. They're. |
| Mary | She's really transformed cooking like, from looking to assembling. Just get. |
| Emily Zanotti | Stuff and season. |
| Mary | And assemble it. It's genius. |
| Emily Zanotti | All of her recipes go together so you can make a roast chicken on a Sunday. You can have chicken soup the next night. You can have, you know, the leftovers the night after. They all seem to go together and they run together. I stick with her. I do like Smitten Kitchen. That's a good one. She has a really great underlying, she's very talented in that she has the technique. And that's what you kind of have to watch for a lot with cooking influencers is that they maybe don't have that same technique. And so if they don't have that background, you might not be able to get a good recipe out of them. I also have a lot of cookbooks from the early days of Food Network, early Jana De Laurentiis, early Mario Batali. I use Julia Child a lot. People who these cookbooks have stood the test of time, right? |
| Mary | They're classics for a reason. Know for sure? |
| Emily Zanotti | Yeah, for a reason. And you can try it on a Sunday when you want to do a big meal, and then you can keep doing it and get better at it. It gets much faster. But those are those are basically my go tos. Yeah. |
| Mary | An early Martha Stewart I found as a new mom and a new bride were very helpful because it describes some of the things that you mentioned from Home EC. What kind of pots and pans you should have, what kind of, you know, knives that you need for a basic kitchen setup, that kind of thing. And, you know, I, I just think it's it's one of those things where people think they I don't know why there's so much shame attached in the culture and not knowing how to cook, but there seems to which I just find very intriguing. |
| Emily Zanotti | It's so strange because it's such a there's no barrier to entry on it. Right? |
| Ashley/Betsy | If you know. True. I, I, I know somebody who just told me once, I don't cook and I'm kind of like, it's not that hard. Yeah. You just turn the water on. I mean, what do you mean I don't cook? Right. |
| Emily Zanotti | Yeah, I if you want, if you want to raise it up a notch, there's lots of great books. Salt, fat, acid heat is one that's mentioned in both of those articles. And that's a culinary degree in one book, and it's super easy to get to. It's super, accessible. And it'll teach you without me having to tell you. |
| Mary | Well, anyway, we could we could just sit and trade recipes and talk to you. Oh, you'll have to come back. I hope that you will. But we can't let you go. We've been asked by some of your fans, that we must ask you about Kevin the Chicken. That no conversation with you is complete with the infamous chicken named Kevin. |
| Emily Zanotti | The infamous chicken. Well, sadly, Kevin passed away. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Kevin, passed away of an unknown condition. Oh, but I have extremely good news in that Kevin's sister, had children, and we have five of those babies. Oh, wonderful. Kevin, has has sadly passed on. However, we now have Dave, Carl, Jerry and Bob, and all four of them are Kevin's nieces. And, they are all. They all have inherited Kevin's gift of chaos. |
| Mary | Yeah, well, I wonder was Kevin. Could Kevin have been ultimately responsible for the kitchen mishap? It's possible. Yeah, that sounds like Kevin's little, What are they, little paws or whatever they are on a chicken. What's on a chicken? What's the foot on? A chicken and chicken feet are all over it. I don't know what one calls that. Well, well, to learn more about Emily Zanotti, her family of chickens and her children and her cooking, you can check out all of her writings at NC register.com, and you can also go to her Substack, Emily zanotti.substack.com. And to learn more about the Catholic Association and follow everything that we do in radio, TV and print. You can find a little bit more at the Catholic association.org, and you can also check online and in your local communities for our writing and our podcasts. Thanks so much for joining us today, Emily. |
| Emily Zanotti | Thank you so much for having me. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences, where we are joined with our wonderful resident chaplain, chaplain Monsignor Roger Landry. Thanks for joining us once again. |
| Msgr Landry | Monsignor, great to be with you, Betty. |
| Ashley/Betsy | We have a really beautiful feast on Sunday. Would you tell us about it? |
| Msgr Landry | It's the feast of the triumph for the exaltation of the cross. This is a feast that's well known to daily mass goers, because we pretty much have it every year. But for those who aren't able to get to mass during the week, we only are able to celebrate it on Sunday on average once every six years or so. This is one of those years. And so it's a very important part. It's a very important opportunity for us to focus on the cross in our authentic Catholic spirituality. And a lot of ways, we're living in a culture, Betsy, in which we run away from suffering. We don't want to focus on death and looking at Jesus on the cross can be a little revolting. We see what, for example, our sins have done and leading to a suffering, but especially in some of the crucifixes, the real crucifix is that show what his suffering was like. We can turn away from that, because it's just such torture and death to the one that we ought to love the most. And so that's one of the reasons why the first Christians often didn't use any images of the cross, because it was just too much for them to handle in addition to the persecutions of the time and everything else. But for us, we need to learn from Saint Paul. Saint Paul tried to teach the early Christians a proper understanding of the cross. He said that the cross was his sole boast. He would boast in nothing other than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me and I to the world, that when we look at the cross, we see not just a subject of public execution and pain, but of the love of Jesus that made that much pain and that type of death bearable. And we're called to live that, understanding of the cross. Saint Paul likewise said in his letter to the first Christians in Galatia that he had been crucified with Christ through all his sufferings and all his own problem. He had been crucified with Christ in the life he now lived in the flesh. He lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave his life up for him. And so all of us are meant, especially this upcoming Sunday, to ponder the reality of the cross in our life. We make the sign of the cross over ourselves, not just at the beginning and the end of mass, but often every time we pray, we make the sign of the cross. Whenever we enter into the church and dip our finger in the holy water font, we make it. When we pray our grace, we're always making that sign of the cross. When we bring babies to be baptized, the first thing that the church does is the priesthood. The deacon or the bishop marks the baby's forehead with the sign of the cross, and then the parents and the godparents do the same. And when I prepare young families for baptism, I say, why would we make the sign of the cross? And they'll say, well, it's blessing the baby, but why would we bless a baby in a cruciform way? Would we ever stamp them with a noose or a deity, or a electric chair? Of course not, because we want the best for them. So why are we marking them with the sign of the cross? Because we recognize that the Christian life is a school of the cross. It's a school of a love like Jesus. Jesus called us as his greatest, a new commandment to love one. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Another. |
| Msgr Landry | As he has loved us first, and he loved us by and through the cross. And so that's its centrality in the Christian life. And we have a chance not just to mark that reality, but to celebrate its triumph. Because when we look at Jesus in the cross, we see the happiest person who ever lived at the moment of his supreme triumph, not shame. And we have signed up voluntarily to follow that crucified man in that school of love. And so this is a time in which we are reconstituted in who we really are. There's something else important happening on Sunday, though. Okay, great. We're celebrating Pope Leo's 70th birthday. And so these milestone birthdays for any family member, we always celebrate with a little greater love. This Sunday, we're going to be celebrating Pope Leo's 70th birthday, and we should do it with ever greater love in our prayer. If we're suffering in any way, it would be a great way to offer up our own pains in communion with Jesus for his Vicar on Earth, Pope Leo. And then there's a special initiative that was started by our Sunday visitor, and they asked lots of co-sponsors for it, including the Pontifical Mission Societies, which I lead that after Sunday mass. Why don't we have some pizza in honor of Pope Leo, who absolutely loves his Chicago style pizza? Oh, I think that that's a great initiative, especially if we do what Pope Leo did a few weeks ago. And maybe give a slice of pizza to poor people who don't have much to eat around us, or to invite them to join us, or invite lonely parishioners who have no place else to go after mass. But this Sunday, let's do a worldwide Happy Birthday to Pope Leo by coming to mass first, by praying for him with greater devotion, by lifting up the cross together with him, and by having a good agape, a good pizza party. After mass we have about one minute left. And last week you talked with Ashley about the upcoming beatification. Just give us a snapshot of the joy and and the zeal that you felt after all that happened. Well, so everybody was able to see that Saint Peter's was packed, that the area across from Saint Peter's Square was likewise packed. And so we were very joyful that so many young people came to thank God for the gift of the lives of Saint Now, Pierre George of Santa and Saint Carlo and Judas. Both of them really lived what we're going to be celebrating this Sunday. Pierre Giorgio died of polio when he was 24. Carlo died of leukemia. But both of them, as they were suffering, were offering up their sufferings in union with Christ or Giorgio for the poor that he served, and for his dying grandmother and Carlo, a kudos for all the needs of Pope Benedict the 16th. And so they teach us what this great feast is, and they're going to be praying from Jesus's right side as they look on Jesus's gloriously transfigured wombs. For Betsy Fentress, Monsignor Roger Landry, and the 1.4 billion Catholics across the globe. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Monsignor, thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to talking you next week. |
| Msgr Landry | I bless you, Betsy. |
| Mary | Welcome back to conversations with consequences. I'm your host, Mary Fiorito. |
| Ashley/Betsy | And I'm Ashley McGuire. |
| Mary | And we are so pleased today to have a good friend of the show back with us. Brad Wilcox of the National Marriage Project is a leading voice when it comes to family and marriage. His book, Get Married is a must read, and we're so happy that he could make the time for us. Brad, thank you for joining us. |
| Brad Wilcox | Good to be with you, Mary and Ashley as well. |
| Mary | Well, one of the reasons we were so eager to have you on this week was this new poll released by NBC News Desk, which looked at Gen Z, that particular demographic and specifically their views on marriage and happiness. So this poll has really gone viral, as the kids say, all over social media and in the news, what was your first reaction, Brad, as someone who studies this issue in depth. |
| Brad Wilcox | Yeah. You know, Mary, we've been seeing kind of an ideological polarization kind of playing out where young women are moving to the left culturally and politically, and young men are moving to the right culturally, politically. But I think we haven't necessarily understood how much of it's connected to divergent views about the good life and how important marriage and family figure versus work, and, and independence. And what this new poll does is sort of underline that for female voting. Harris I mean, women voting for Harris in the voting for Harris, the most important thing the poll found was kind of having a job or a career that they found fulfilling, and then having enough money to do the things that they wanted to do, kind of, you know, fun things and travel, etc.. And the least important things for, many younger men voting for Harris were getting married, and then having kids. And by contrast, for the young men voting for Trump, the number one thing that they were talking about was actually having kids. And then number four was, was being married. So a lot more importance for the Trump voting young men on marriage and family. So kind of just underlines this sort of divergent orientation, that maps out onto some larger ideological divides, playing out in American life. But again, this was, I think, so kind of eye opening because it was showing how work versus marriage and family, are kind of playing out both along kind of Partizan and gender lines in young adult culture today. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Mary Brett, one of the things that stuck out to me was, the money factor. And, it seemed like certainly there's a bit of, like a selfish component here. Like, you know, people want to have their fun and they want money because they want to go on trips and girls weekends. But I do wonder if, there is a real fear about money being an impediment to having a family. And, you know, as a mom of five kids, you know, you how do we address the real cost of having kids? There are costs, childcare, health care, education. But how do we kind of help young people to overcome that as a fear and an impediment to forming families? |
| Brad Wilcox | So, yeah, I think it's important that we kind of acknowledge, too, that I think for a good number of young women, they have the perception and it's it's grounded in reality that there are not enough kind of guys out there who have their act together, who are doing reasonably well when it comes to their performance in the workplace, their potential as breadwinners for a family. And so if you're kind of looking around and seeing a lot of guys struggling, I think you're more likely to put a premium on making money and being financially independent, either for yourself or for any family you might for them down the road. So I think it's part of why we have seen a lot of younger women, kind of qui and more on career and financial success, because a lot of young men in their, in their worlds are not doing so well. So that's part of, I think, the challenge facing them. But then I think too, there's just kind of for everyone, there's there's a challenge in terms of just affordability, family affordability, actually, particularly in more metro areas like the DC metro area, I think where you're from in other places, where the cost of housing especially is extremely high and people are worried about kind of making enough money to be able to support their families, raise kids, you know, put a roof over their heads. So, that's a big problem. And I think in terms of the on the policy side, to say two things quickly, one is we need to be thinking about measures, especially at the local level, to make housing, cheaper and more abundant, especially, single family housing, for working class and middle class families. That's I think a huge, need out there priority that should can be occupying the attention of policymakers. And then on the, on the federal level, just doing a better job with expanding the child tax credit. I'd say especially for families with younger children, just to kind of give them more financial latitude to invest in their families and their kids and to not be as concerned about, you know, making ends meet. And unfortunately, in the most recent, legislative process, the Senate actually Republican Senate downgraded the CDC from $2500 to $2200, compared to what the house was initially suggesting. That's what, you know, what Congress went with and say the Republicans in the Senate, actually, to be honest, haven't been sufficiently, attentive to the financial challenges facing ordinary families. |
| Mary | You know, bread one of the things that surprised me, about the poll and I guess this is because in the Catholic Church, at least, we're coming off the canonization of two young saints, two young men, 115 and one, I think 22, and tens of thousands of young people filling Saint Peter's Square. But the the one kind of unifying thread among all the people who were polled was that their faith ranked last or near last for almost every group. And so I guess I'm juxtaposing that, particular fact, snapshot of fact, I guess, against the, you know, the tens of thousands of young people there for a canonization of saints and wondering, is this more of an American phenomenon? Do you think that because my sense is, at least among the Trump voting men, faith was a big component. I mean, Bishop Barron has a huge following. Other people, you know, who, Michael Knowles, for example, all these sort of faith based podcasters have huge followings among young men. Was that a surprise to you? |
| Brad Wilcox | So we have been kind of seen in general, Mary, as you well know, you know, the sort of drift in the last really, 55 years has been towards, you know, America taking a turn away from faith, away from religion. A lot of discussion, you know, among scholars about the rise of the nuns. And we're not we're not talking about nuns. We're talking about and nobody is. Right. And in the broader American public with a lot of, adults kind of abandoning any kind of faith at the same time that we have seen, it looks like this sort of like decline in religion has bottomed out, according to, you know, polls from Pew for instance. And there's other evidence from, a survey at the American Enterprise Institute, for instance, that suggests that Gen Z could be a bit more religious than the millennial generation, especially younger, Gen Z men. And certainly anecdotally, what I see at the University of Virginia, Mary, is that our Catholic, whose group is is the Catholic string group of Virginia, is larger and stronger than ever and has a lot of young men. So I think anecdotally, I've heard a similar story for other professors at other universities. So I think there is a bit of an upsurge, that we're seeing kind of play out, among young adults. But it has to be understood in terms of, you know, playing out against a context where there's been a big shift in the last, again, 55 years, towards secularization. And so it's going to be, I think, a while before we see any kind of market upturn, potentially, that's being manifested in national polls. For our younger adults. |
| Ashley/Betsy | So it was interesting right around the time that this poll or data was released, there was new data that came out that showed that despite birth rates being at an all time low, ideal family size is still over two children. And, you're really kind of a research machine. Tell us about some of the, research that you've done or that you find of note, especially in the last year or two, that shows you know, I think if you have data about conservative women being the happiest in their marriages, that women prefer male breadwinners, that might kind of misalign a little bit with, some of what this poll showed. |
| Brad Wilcox | Yeah. So what we do see in the data is that, basically younger, women who kind of lean, right, tend to be happier of the number of men who we loved. They're also more likely to be married as well. And, you know, I think part of the story there is that and this is based upon, work done by Jonathan Haidt, for instance, in June 20th, who are social psychologists is they're kind of finding that young women who lean left tend to be more likely to kind of worried about the state of America, the state of society, and that's part of it. But as I look at kind of like, you know, gaps in happiness, for instance, between, more conservative and more progressive adults, more generally, including younger women. What I find is that about a third of that gap can be attributed to the fact that conservative Americans are more likely to be married in the first place, and then more likely to be happily married, in the second place. So I think part of the sort of happiness gap we see between conservatives and liberals more generally, can be kind of traced to the way in which conservatives, today especially more likely to put a premium on getting married and to, be more likely to, end up being happily married as well. And that has a big impact on their sort of global emotional well-being, to in ways that extend beyond just sort of their ideology. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Why do you think that is? |
| Brad Wilcox | Well, I think, when you sort of look at the sort of the civic landscape and the cultural landscape, what you see is that conservatives are more likely to be religious and religious institutions continue to be more likely to stress marriage and family, for instance. They're also more likely to be kind of listening to, and paying attention to and watching, you know, both religious and conservative media platforms like the one that we're on right now. Ideally, what would be another good example of, you know, a conservative platform that's really kind of coming for and these platforms are much more likely to be kind of marriage and family friendly, compared to more progressive on platforms, which tend to kind of discount the importance or just sort of pass over, you know, the importance of marriage and part like, you know, MSNBC for instance. So I think that's also part of the story that's, playing out both civically and in terms of, media coverage as well. |
| Mary | Well, Brad, another point of unity, among a lot of the people who were polled, particularly young women, one third of young women said that they feel anxious almost all the time. An additional third reported being anxious most of the time. And in contrast, just under 2 in 10 Gen Z men report feeling anxious, at the at those levels, what do you attribute that particular polling point to? |
| Brad Wilcox | Well, I think one thing it's important to note is that there's just there are, you know, they're kind of these sort of average differences that we see playing out in the research more generally between women and men were in general, women are more likely to be anxious and depressed, compared to men. So I think that's part of the dynamic, that, you know, could be socialization, could be, you know, some kind of biological differences. But there's just something about kind of the broader trend here that's that's worth noting. But, it's also the case, too, as John Hite has pointed out in, in June 20th has pointed out, that it's especially the case that liberal, women are especially interested in the press. I think that's in part because their social media is more likely to be painting a negative portrait of kind of society, relationships, family. And, you know, other things that might kind of shape the emotional sort of cast of their lives as well. So, you know, a lot of what people do nowadays is stare at screens. And if you're kind of social media algorithm, it's sort of steering you towards more what's called catastrophic, you know, messaging. I think that's probably going to have an impact to on your on your well-being. And I think one more kind of important point too, is there's a kind of like comparison thing happening as well, where if you're spending a lot of time in social media, you're going to be kind of picking up on ways where you're less likely to be, you know, having but attending that party or enjoying that outfit or that trip to Paris or Miami or whatever it might be. So social media allows, I think, women who spend more time online oftentimes to have the sense that they don't kind of measure up to some imagined peers on the internet as well. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Speaking of social media, I've noticed a trend on social media, and I I'm probably more attuned to it because it directly impacted somebody who kind of fell prey to this sort of pro divorce, woman power thing going on on like Instagram and TikTok, like, they call themselves divorce doulas and they're basically just social media influencers who are trying to, I don't know, destigmatize divorce, which I found interesting because I feel like the data I'm seeing is that divorce is on the decline. And when I saw, you know, you mentioned women's anxiety about being unable to find a partner. I wonder, too, if some of this is women being afraid of potentially finding themselves divorced and in a bad financial situation. So what do you what do you see as, what's actually going on right now with divorce trends? |
| Brad Wilcox | So obviously, I think everyone knows people have gotten divorced or are getting divorced in their circles these days. And there are obviously people who are kind of going through divorces online and, you know, on public platforms, and that might come distort people's thinking. But we are seeing is that kind of in the real world, actually, divorce is down from a peak in around 1981. It's come down more than 40% since the early 1980s. And what that means today is that, whereas 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce back around 1980. And that was kind of like the expectation that people had at that point in time. And they still think that's true today. We're seeing probably less than 40% for the 4 in 10 of first marriages are going to end in divorce. It looks like that's coming down. So in part because marriage is more selective for people who are more educated, more affluent and more religious. We are seeing then for most couples, both that they're going the distance and that their odds of divorce are coming down and that's something we have to kind of bear in mind when you sort of see these more public marriages, you know, having difficulty and then landing in divorce court. |
| Mary | Well, Brad, before we let you go, and I know this could quite possibly just be a doctoral dissertation question, but if you had to say rank on a scale of 1 to 10, the importance of political affiliation. When people are looking for marriage partners, where would you rank that for women and where would you rank it for men? |
| Brad Wilcox | You know, what we call home monogamy is really important in, femme family and marital success. Let me just sort of be on the same page with your spouse. And if we then if you ask me this question about, you know, 30 years ago, I would say maybe number six, seven, eight, I don't know, somewhere down, you know, important but not that important. Whereas today I would put it more like, you know, maybe 4 or 3, you know, and it's just because politics, for better or for worse, has emerged as a key social divide in America. And so we need to, be attentive to whether or not we're kind of on the same page, on the political front as well. |
| Mary | Well, Brad, thank you so much for giving us your time today. And it's always so good to hear your insights and opinions and listeners to learn more about Brad Wilcox, you can visit the National Marriage project.org and check out harpercollins.org for Brad's excellent book. Brad, thank you again for joining us. |
| Brad Wilcox | Thanks, Mary. Thanks, Ashley. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Thanks, Brad. |
| Mary | You know what? Why don't we we talk about, a little bit, about what I mentioned at the beginning, which is the, you know, I guess, the University of Texas at Austin calls it the the economics of sex, where they have that excellent video that they did, and they look at sex, mating and marriage from an economic perspective. And they talk about, I guess what you would say in business would be like the entry point for someone into, for men, it's the interest in having a regular sexual partner. For women, it's companionship. There's also the physical intimacy, which is important to women, but for women, it's more wanting to start a family and having, you know, security and physical and emotional intimacy with someone. And, the the University of Texas at Austin, their, marriage institute looked at the changes, the way in which this has changed over the decades and basically found that now, because men do have access to, you know, things like OnlyFans and porn and, you know, hookup apps are everywhere that, you know, their interest in really having a long term, physically intimate partner is not the same that it would have been 50 years ago. So the whole shift of what women, what women's buying power is, has been so dramatic that whereas it used to be at a minimum, you'd have to be engaged with to someone before you would sleep with them. Now, apparently there is an expectation among 20 and 30 somethings that, no, we minimally you got to live with me for a couple of years and then I'll see if I like how this is working out. And then maybe I'll ask you to marry me. We're we're from slightly different generations, actually. How are you seeing this among kind of your peers or maybe people a little bit younger? |
| Ashley/Betsy | Well, it's interesting because some of Brad's. I think it's. Brad's research found that, women who had had whose only sexual partner was the person they married, reported the highest levels of marital happiness and were the least likely to divorce. So I have no doubt, you know, the the landscape has has changed. But what hasn't changed is that marriage makes women happy. It it's sort of a, an insurance policy. A happiness insurance policy. And that has not changed with the generations. And it's, it's just really tragic. And I would use the word heartbreaking, the response or my response to the that poll that we were just discussing with Brad because, to see young men and young women, with the exception, obviously, of male Trump voters, rank the thing that is most likely to give meaning to their life and happiness at the very bottom. You know, that we have our work cut out for us, in terms of shaping hearts and minds and helping people to, to just achieve happiness. And, you know, your point about, the expectation of cohabitation. Now, you know, I do wonder if if marriage has lost its appeal because, women, as you say, the sort of, dynamics in relationships have totally flipped. And now, you know, living together is sort of like a, a cheap, imitation of marriage. But it's, it's coarsened for women. So if, if they're thinking this is what marriage is going to be like, then of course they're not going to want to get married. But that's not what marriage like, because you start out with a lifelong commitment before, before anything else. |
| Mary | Right? And then you work back from that. But I wonder how many of those women, particularly the Harris voters, might have given that answer because they they believe that that's what's expected of them, that they shouldn't put down, that they want to get married, that that's somehow, you know, being dismissive of all the years that they spent obtaining their educations or their expertise in something. Right. I, you know, you do kind of see sort of a herd mentality. I think with some of these, types of social changes when they happen. And then, you know, when they go back and look at their lives later, you know, some of the things you talk to people in their 50s who either divorced or, you know, were seriously involved with someone but never, quote unquote, pulled the trigger and got got married. And it's one of their biggest regrets. Right. But, you know, what's that old saying? Use is wasted on the young, but, you know, I have, two daughters who were in their early 20s and, you know, they've expressed to me just how, difficult it seems to be for men to do sort of the normal socialization things like one of my daughters was, attending the, the TLM, the traditional Latin Mass, in a large urban city. And she said there was a very nice looking young man. And every Sunday the pew in which he sat got closer to hers. But for six months he never even said hello to her, never asked her her name, never. You know. And, then she wound up moving to another, city and, you know, two weeks into her going to mass at her new parish, a young man came over and said, hi, my my name is, so-and-so. Would you like to grab a cup of coffee with me? And I said, well, he's got to be, you know, this has got to be a kid from a small town or something like that. She goes, yeah, he's from some small town in Wisconsin. And I thought, well, that's, you know, unlike big cities, I think, where people just don't interact in a super friendly, neighborly way. I think it's it's, it's a skill, that you can learn, thankfully. You know, this is not something that's innate. I'm neither outgoing or I'm not. I mean, you know, we have our natural temperaments, but still, I don't think we're spending any time teaching young people how to court what courtship is like. Yeah. And, you know, again, it's a skill. What's what's that class actually, you know, I, I think we've talked about this at, is that at Boston College where it's an entire semester class on dating. Oh, I haven't heard about that. Oh, and it's you. It it fills up within three seconds of it being posted every single semester. And part of, your homework or your final exam is that you have to ask somebody out or accept a date from someone by the time the class is over, and then write about it. You have to write a paper about it, and it doesn't have to be somebody in the class. They're not trying to do matchmaking in the class. But, some of the men who have taken the class and again, they're taking it to learn how to, you know, just stuff like either they didn't grow up with a dad or it just was never part of their formation. As young men, as gentlemen, to learn how to ask a young woman out and, you know, I think we get a little bit more of that kind of training, even informally, from our mothers or girlfriends or what have you. But, yeah, there was a story in, like, the Boston Globe or The New York Times about it even, because everyone was so surprised that this class has become so, like, instantly popular. |
| Ashley/Betsy | Well, I believe it because, you know, the percent of dating that happens online now and is, you know, staggering. And now when I meet young couples and ask them how they met, it's almost always, yes, online. And I know that's not what people want. And I have nothing against online dating. It's it's a solution to a problem, but it's a Band-Aid that doesn't solve, you know, even once you get to the point of being on a date, you know, there's there's more social skills that are required. So. |
| Mary | Yeah, there was a huge stigma about online dating when it first started. And you would like, almost be made fun of if you met your, you know, the person you were dating online and people, in fact, so much so people would just be very discreet, you know, I have a friend who met, his wife on Catholic match, and. But when people asked him, where did you meet your wife? He would always say, met her at the airport because that was the first place he met her. Because she flew in to see him. Because he didn't want to admit any. But they've been married like 25 years now. But he still didn't want to admit to anybody. He met her online. |
| Ashley/Betsy | And now when I mean, I'm talking about college kids, they're at college, but they're they're meeting each other online. Yeah. And college is probably one of the last settings where you're going to, you know, in an easy dating environment. Exactly. Well, Mary, we have to wrap. But what an interesting conversation with Brad. And, we've we've got work to do in terms of shaping hearts and minds, to, to see marriage as something desirable and part of a successful life. |
| Mary | Right. And a very blessed life. You know, it's a beautiful vocation and most people are called to it. And, you know, I had written a thing, an article about this for First things, during the conclave where I talked about how as a Catholic church, I think we could do better in this area. You know, the Orthodox Jews are very good about fixing up young men with compatible young women from compatible families, and they really make that a priority in terms of helping their children out. And I think that we could take a page or two from that book. |
| Ashley/Betsy | I totally agree. |
| Mary | All right. Well, we will see you then. At our at our next taping. Great to have a conversation with you today, Ashley. |
| Ashley/Betsy | You too. Mary, we like to take a moment to thank all of our loyal listeners who tune in each week to conversations with consequences. As you all know, the Catholic Association is everywhere. We were on TV to cover the conclave and the election of the new Pope. We're in print, we're online, and we're on social media. We've just. |
| Mary | Launched a new Substack to expand. |
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