Catholic social scientist Brad Wilcox discusses research on the benefits of marriage and family

Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology and the director of National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, got a lot of attention last year for his book "Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization." The discussion around the benefits and difficulties of marriage and family life in the United States has only heated up since. OSV News' Charlie Camosy recently spoke with Wilcox about his latest research and insights.

-- Charlie Camosy: As a faithful Catholic who speaks out on some of the more controversial issues around, you've managed to earn some of the highest honors in the academy, full professor and endowed chair, at one of the best schools in the country, the University of Virginia, in one of the fields most hostile to traditional beliefs, sociology. Can you say something about how you managed to achieve this?

--Brad Wilcox: Actually, my academic journey at the University of Virginia was initially quite dispiriting. After getting a PhD in sociology from Princeton, I joined the Department of Sociology at UVA, published a number of articles in prominent journals and a book, "Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands," with the top sociology press, the University of Chicago Press. Given my record, I thought I would get tenure without any trouble.

But I was wrong. In the fall of 2007, I took a call from my department chair, who told me the department voted me down by a slim majority, due to concerns that I was too ideological in the classroom and that I was letting my priors determine my empirical research findings. Both allegations were not only unfair but also ironic.

After all, the department had recently tenured a Marxist feminist who was much more outspoken about her views than I had ever been, and because the empirical research they expressed concern about was conducted with a secular, progressive colleague who does not share my worldview, Professor Nicholas Wolfinger. After this vote, the dean turned me down, as did the dean's Promotion & Tenure Committee. I thought my career in academia was over.

Fortunately, however, I was allowed to file an appeal with the provost's office. I did that, and the provost granted me tenure in May 2008. This experience left me thinking I might be kept as an associate professor for the rest of my career. But I continued to publish and was promoted.

Then, this past spring, I received a very attractive offer to become a chaired professor and to establish a family research center at another university. I came close to saying yes to that offer, but UVA countered nicely with an endowed chair, the Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, and major support for the National Marriage Project.

So, after consulting with my family and a priest friend, I decided to stay at UVA, which has become more accepting of intellectual diversity in recent years.

--Camosy: Let's get into the research you've done. In particular, I'd like to focus on your recent book, "Get Married." What is the central thesis of this book, and what motivated your writing it?

--Wilcox: "Get Married" was an opportunity to present the big research my colleagues and I have been able to do at the Institute for Family Studies. Essentially I wanted to put into a one-stop-shop all of the evidence that supports the central thesis of the book: Get married.

Many young people put marriage on pause. For those who are well educated with big career ambitions, marriage is seen as a reward at the end, a capstone, after laying the groundwork of career and earning -- this for both men and women. It's seen as a hindrance to advancement, whereas the opposite is true.

For those on lower incomes, marriage seems increasingly unattainable -- it's harder for women to find a decent man who can act as provider and ally in life and raising kids. As marriage rates decline among our less well-off fellow citizens, it becomes harder to find role models of stable married families to emulate. For everyone, the messages generated by our elite culture shapers is either not to bother with marriage because it will leave you poor, miserable or unfulfilled, or the baffling message of celebrating the "diversity" of everything but stable, married family life.

Decades now of research has shown me that this messaging is toxic. The opposite is true: Stable, married family life is fantastic for both adults and children. The most financially secure, happiest, healthiest, most fulfilled people in America today -- those most plugged into their communities -- are married parents. (Also those that go to church are then the happiest of this group.)

The overwhelming evidence is that children raised by stable, married parents do better across the board -- both during childhood and long into adulthood, affecting mental health, physical health, employability, educational outcome -- you name it. The biggest advantage you can give your kids is raising them in a stable marriage. These powerful truths are simply in the data, and so the book was really compelled by the need to counter the oppressive nonfiction published by elite media types who -- by the way -- are by and large in happy, stable marriages themselves.


--Camosy: What new evidence is there that's come out since the publication of the book? In particular, I'm wondering about the relationship of marriage to the flourishing of children.

--Wilcox: You know, you wait for a good book about marriage and then suddenly three come along at once. Melissa Kearney published her book "The Two-Parent Privilege," which demonstrated the data and their clear correlation between married parents and positive life outcomes for children.

Rob Henderson then painted a haunting, powerful portrait of life lived without stable, married parents -- his memoir of life in foster care, "Troubled." Rob made the starkest point, so obvious it can often be overlooked, that regardless of whether you get better grades, a higher salary, or get to attend university because you had married parents, the most valuable thing for a child is to have been loved in the first place, raised by loving parents -- and is actually critical of people like me for harping on too much about the economic positives of marriage.

It's an important point, and one I take. My main motivation in writing and researching marriage is that I don't want any child in America to grow up without a loving mom and dad, and for this to be the norm.

Yes, life happens. It gets complicated sometimes, but we should really as a society be celebrating the sorts of norms that we want replicated, rather than sinking all of our policy, philanthropy and cultural outputs into an investment in structures that celebrate the exception rather than the rule -- and messaging that undermines the aspirations of well over 75% of high school students who want to enjoy married life when they're older.

Since "Get Married" was published, the data continue to affirm the positive role that a stable married family structure has on the life outcomes of children. This has a multiplier effect when entire neighborhoods are made up of stable married parents -- as the cascading effects of greater civic involvement -- through schools, sports, volunteering, neighborliness -- as well as positive role-modeling of relationships all provide for a safer, happier, more prosperous environment.

These neighborhoods are hotbeds for upward social mobility essential for a thriving society and economy. And, to Rob's point, they are hopefully ZIP codes full of children who know they're loved.

We published research that shows the link between marital stability and a child's mental health: Children who lived with both their married birth parents were least likely to need or receive counseling, while disorders that require mental health treatment are more common among young people from disrupted families.

We released a report that showed how young men from non-intact families are more likely to land in prison or jail than they are to graduate from college, whereas young men raised by their married fathers are significantly more likely to graduate from college than spend any time in jail or prison.

A review of data from cities in Ohio showed that where single parenting is the norm, child poverty and violent crime are high.

Whichever way you cut, slice or dice it, the findings are the same: Stable, married families remain the best context for the raising of children, and that remains incontrovertible.