Is Marriage Actually Worth It? - Brad Wilcox

What do you think about people on the internet who say that marriage is a terrible deal for men and women?

Yeah, Chris, you know, I've been sort of playing the marriage, uh, horn for a long time, and it's primarily been kind of, uh, critiquing folks on the left. In the mainstream media, as you know, I've, I've kind of gone after folks at Bloomberg, New York Times, and elsewhere. But what's kind of new is we're getting all these voices from the online right, from the red pill right. You know, like Andrew Tate and Pearl Davis, who are, you know, saying things like in, in Pearl's words, that, that marriage is a death sentence for men or, you know, in Andrew Tate's words that, um, basically, um, there's no return, you know, on, uh, marriage. Uh, there's zero advantages, his, his terminology, you know, for, uh, for men when it comes to getting married. So we're kind of getting it now from the left and the right here. Um, and, um, I think it's in some ways emblematic of the difficulties that of, of course comes primarily from the women on the left and, and primarily the men on the right. And it's partly kind of a reflection of the difficulties that a lot of younger adults are facing in finding, you know, uh, a spouse, finding a partner who would be worthy of marriage. And so that's probably kind of an expression of frustration, but I think it also kind of conveys what I call kind of the Midas mindset. And that's this idea that what really matters in life is work. It's money, it's kind of building your own brand. And I think in, in different ways, these folks too are kind of, um, you know, propagating this Midas mindset because, you know, they think that the real action is where, um, you know, your work is at, you know, where your, your brand is at, uh, where your bank account's at.

You definitely see this from the left, uh, women on the left in a perhaps surprising way that you wouldn't have done 50 years ago, whereby it is all about financial security and being a boss bitch and being independent. And I don't need no man. And, you, you know, if he comes to me, fine, but I'm not gonna go looking for him. So that seems to be the equivalent, that odd, uh, horseshoe theory where, uh, some elements of the right and some elements of the left end up kind of saying very similar talking points, even though they don't agree on everything else.

Yeah, no, what's striking is sort of how similar their message is. I mean, they're kind of encouraging women and men separately to kind of stay free of family encumbrances, stay free of marriage, and to, you know, to pursue individualism, to pursue money, pursue career in different ways. And that that's sort of the pathway towards fulfillment, when in fact the data lead us obviously in a very different direction.