Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Melissa Kearney is an economist at the University of Maryland and she has a new book called The Two Parent Privilege, How Americans stopped getting married and started falling behind. I've read a number of interviews with Kearnie because the topic is obviously in my wheelhouse, and I plan to read the book, but I haven't yet. But last weekend Barry Weiss interviewed Kearnie at Free Press and one thing she
said really stuck out to me. Kearney said, and this is a quote that in survey evidence, you don't see widespread rejection of marriage as an institution. You don't see in the US that there's been a widespread move away from the desire to get married. Rather, it feels like achieving a stable married home is a bit of a luxury good. It's something that's harder for people without higher
levels of education and income to achieve. So for that reason, we should not be okay with that advantageous institution being something that's increasingly out of reach for those who aren't in the highest education income classes in our society.
End quote.
Kearney's solutions to this are largely government orientated, spending more money on the promotion of strengthening families. Now, obviously I'm all for strengthening families, but I don't think a government role works.
The George W.
Bush administration spent three hundred million dollars a year on the Healthy Marriage Initiative that did very little beyond line the pockets of organizations that hold quote relationship education classes. The Obama administration kept that program going with a small
shift and focus into fatherhood. One study found that it did very little to help sustain the marriages of the people in the program, and it did not translate into significant impacts on marital stability, nor into substantial impacts on co parenting, parenting.
Or outcomes for children.
None of it worked, and as Kearney says, people still respect the institution of marriage, they just don't participate in it. They don't think it's for them, and that's very odd. I think it has a lot to do with marriage
being portrayed as uncool in our world. In her book The Power of Glamour, Virginia Pastrell notes that in the films of the nineteen thirties, divorce was depicted as glamorous marriage was at times a loveless prison, while divorce was a kin to wearing evening gowns and making cocktails and silver shakers as a habit of the fictional rich. But now divorce is commonplace and the reality isn't so much cocktails and gowns as lonely apartments and having the kids
every other weekend. And while marriage may not be glamorous either, government seminars on the importance of tying the knot definitely won't change that singlehood is now portrayed as glamorous. But I think most young adults know that's not true. Hence they continue to have a high opinion of marriage. Like a lot of things, I think what works here is telling the truth that marriage is good and fine and makes you feel secure and loved and all that other
good stuff. I hear the naysayers saying, oh, not every marriage, okay, and not every singlehood. Life is one of Martini's in fast cars, and telling the truth is actually not as easy as it sounds.
Kearney told Weis.
That she was dissuaded from writing this book by her peers, who nevertheless agreed with her perspective. Kearney said. The University of Chicago Press published her book, and it wasn't an easy process. She got four reviews, one of which said, you should not be publishing a book in twenty twenty three that calls for a return to marriage. So maybe
that's the place to start. The people who are pushing an anti marriage agenda and harming so many poor people, I can guarantee you that most of those people are themselves married. People have been lied to, and we have to start telling the truth, even if it's uncomfortable or sounds hokey. Coming up next and interview with Kira Davis. Join us after the break. Hi, and welcome back the
Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Kira Davis, host of Just Listen to Yourself and author of Drawing Lines.
Hi, Kira, so nice to have you.
Hi, Carol. It's good to be here.
And I think of your show. I think of it in that tone like just listen to yourself?
Is that back in the tone that it is meant to be said in? And you know, one day I was just like, I'm going to do a podcast or just tell people, like listen what you just said, a podcast about thinking through the things that you actually say.
Right, Like do you even hear yourself right? So you're in California.
I've interviewed a few people who have left California, Dave Rubin, Bridgard, Fetesie, and they've left for Texas.
You're still there.
Do you think about leaving? Do you consider it.
The single day I think about leaving? For us, though, for my family, that's just not a thing that's going to happen. We live in California. That's that My husband's job is here. It's a job that supports our family, and it won't be forever we but we are making plans to leave when the time comes. I also have a daughter who's almost finished with high school, so we certainly don't want to pull her out. I mean, I
always say this because I get this. I get asked this question a lot by conservatives, like why are you still there? When are you going to leave? And look, I'll leave when God says it's time to get up and go. I definitely believe that, you know, everything happens for a reason, and for now, for whatever reason, we're in California. And I've always said I think it is more dangerous to be some more comfortable outside of God's will than to be some are uncomfortable inside of God's will.
This is where we are. So now that being said, it's not like I'm loving it.
No, I get that.
I feel like when we were considering leaving, and I was getting all of these like just move, just move?
Why do you keep complaining about New York?
Just move?
I think people don't get that.
It's not an easy decision, especially if you have kids, and it's not like I could just pick up and go. So where would you go? Like, what's the what's the thinking if you were someday to maybe leave California?
What's what's on your radar?
Not sure I can do winter again? That is it?
I hear you. It's seventy degrees. I'm in a sweater. It's like, what is this time?
Yeah, it's seventy here California. And the older I get to, the more I'm like, oh, slip and fall on ice. Not sure if I want to, yeah, go back to that. But you know, we don't know, We don't We don't really know. A lot's going to depend on where our kids land. Ultimately, we have a son in college and we'll want to be close to them, and it just
depends on where things take us. I just at the moment, at this point in my life, I can't imagine ending my life in California to be somewhere, but somewhere in the South. I don't want to go to Texas, Carol.
Why why I know Texas?
I mean, I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan, so I feel like that's my natural second choice.
Some of my best friends are in Texas, and as you well know, just about everybody in California is left. Yeah, Texas, but it's just never been my cup of tea as far as oh, I think this is a place I want to live. I don't have anything against Texas, you know, It's not like I'm like ew Texas. I just I don't think it's a place I want to land.
I feel like you'd look great in like a cowboy hat, cal girl hat.
I can rock a cowboy hat for yuh and uh. I love I love the I love how everyone everything's just so American in Texas.
And I love the giant flags. Like my kids every time we're there, they're like, that's an even bigger flag than the last flag.
It's like, you know, a square block. Yeah, it's amazing.
I you know, there's a lot, a lot obviously going for it. But again, it's tough to pick up your family and move. It's tough to imagine yourself in a new place. It's there's a lot of considerations. And I fully understand you. That's why, you know, I'm not pressuring you. I'm just wondering, just thinking, thinking out loud, where Kira ends.
I mean, you know, I took the.
Journey with you, Carol, all through no when you were you know, I was with you on that journey and knowing, I mean, I feel like I knew exactly what you were feeling because I think my kids are a little older than yours, but same type of situation, high cost of living, crazy COVID restrictions. Suddenly you're looking at what's gonna how I gonna develop you? And yeah, I mean I I felt it when you decided to move, like people didn't understand what a big deal that waits for you.
That was not an easy decision.
No, it wasn't. It was you know, again, life changes. What are you going to do?
So you recently posted that you've been sober for one hundred days. I think it's like one hundred and few days now. But you also noted that you're not an alcoholic and you just needed a break. So how's it been.
It's been good. So I got to a point recently where I felt like, oh, I'm drinking a lot, Like there's not a day really that goes by where I don't have a drink at least at the end of the day. And I I've been going through some life changes. I lost my father last spring, and obviously that triggers some things. And I just thought, you know what, I'm not feeling things. I think I'm drinking and not feeling.
So I decided to challenge myself. Took a sober month and just white knuckled it for a month, kind of like I did that by just not going anywhere or doing anything. And yeah, but I realized, this is no way to live. And if I'm only doing this to look forward to the next drink, perhaps that's a problem. And so I challenged myself to do it through the holidays, because I thought, if he can do it through the holidays, right, all right, And Carol, I got to three months, which
is recent, and my whole brain has changed. My whole way of thinking. The change they say after three months of sobriety or brain changes again at six and again at twelve. Bridget Betasy will tell you two years was a big thing for her, and ironically it was her that really made me take this step. Years ago, I was on her podcast when she was still in LA We met up personally for the first time. I joined a podcast. We're talking about stress and she in recovery.
She's recovering alcoholic and addict. And she said, I said, how do you deal with stress? Because when I have stress, I go have a drink. I have a glass of wine. And she said, well, sobriety is really about learning to sit in your discomfort and feel those things. And it always sat with me, you know, I never forgot it.
That's very interesting.
Yeah, And so what I figured out at three months is that I'm sitting in my discomfort and that's absolutely necessary to like feel all these things that are very uncomfortable, Like I'm not feeling comfortable even right now, like today, I'm like, oh, I've got all kinds of things going through my brain. But these are issues that I have just sort of pushed to the side for ten twenty years.
Maybe my whole life right and now for the first time, I'm like facing them so interesting abiety has done for me so far.
Well.
So I had Bridgard on the show and she talked about how, you know, I mean, she went through like the one day at a time where you know, she couldn't imagine one day of being sober, and then she couldn't imagine a week of being sober and so on, and now it's been you know, I think over a decade for her. So do you feel like you have, you know, a date that you want to hit now now that it's been over one hundred days or is it just one day at a time and we'll see where this goes.
I don't think I'm at one day at a time anymore. I think for the first little while I was, and now that I'm at three months, I had already committed through the new year. But I heard people say how your brain changes, but actually experiencing it, it's been interesting. So I want to see what happens at a year. So I'm going to push for a year. And like I said, I'm not an alcoholic, and that is one thing also that concerned me, maybe that I was becoming one,
or that I could become one. Yeah, and now that I'm sober, I understand now that I wasn't. But that doesn't mean that variety, you know, isn't something that's good and healthy and to strive right and can help you. So I'm looking forward to a year. Two hundred and sixty five is more days to go. Maybe I'll pop in and let you know if my brains anymore.
I love that.
So you're very well known, you had a hip book, you have a show. I mean, you're on TV a lot, you have a great family.
Do you feel like you've made it?
No, has anyone ever answered that question?
Yes?
Yeah, some people have.
I as, yeah, well, I ask everybody, and he answered that, yes, a lot of.
People have answered yes.
And it's like Mary Catherine Ham answered yes, some other people Yeah, people definitely answer yes. You know, it really just depends. Like one of the first interviews I did was with Klay Travis and he, you know, had famously sold his company for you know, X millions of dollars, and I asked him if he had made it, if he felt like he made it, and he was like, no, absolutely not. So it's a different definition for everybody. Is the point there.
So you don't think you've made it?
No, I don't even I'm not sure what it is. I mean, this is even my first career. This isn't even my second career. This is like my fourth career.
Well, okay, you're rocking it though.
So I heard of the jack of all trades, and this is a career I took because I'm a trained actress. That's actually what I do. What I did before I got married and before I had kids, And then when I had kids, I decided I wanted to stay home and raise those kids and acting as a hustle, right, And so I gave I hate to say I gave that up and makes it sound like a sacrifice.
I changed.
Yeah, And but I needed a little bit more than only being home, So I took up writing. And I'm very opinionated. So that more for you.
Really, I know.
Here I am. So have I made it? No, Im, I don't think I'll ever feel like I've made it. I don't know that I'm that person.
Do you Can you see yourself ever going back to acting?
Yeah? And I do a little now, you know, I've sort of started dipping my toes back in as you know, Carol, I work with the Babylon b a lot. I also have some of my own projects. I'm a producer here at California in my own right. And I a few years ago I did my first short film was a reimagining of Harriet Tubman as an action hero. It's called Tucase.
Minty was her what she was really called. Her real name is Ara Minta, and so her friends and family called her Minty, and that Harriet was her mother's name that she took on later on in life. So I did that and that's still on YouTube. You conbined it, okay, Minty? Yes? So? Uh yeah. And my daughter and I are currently working on a on a short independent horror film that we're filming on our iPhones right now.
What is it about?
Uh, it's just a little comedy film about what happens when that scary serial killer, our monster is behind you, but you are too busy in your phone to it.
I don't know where you got that idea. Is it just like looking around and seeing a bunch of zombies on their phones?
Well, I can't wait to see that.
Where are you thinking about releasing it? Or how are you? How are you gonna, you know, handle kind.
Of We're going contribution to our favorite film festival, the Telly Ride Horror Show, which is say October and Tell You Ride Colorado. We go every year as a family. My daughter and I are big horror fans especially, and then we drag the guys with us. So we're going to submit it.
I love it. It's really amazing.
I love that you do something super creative while also, you know, kind of fighting the good fight.
We're going to take a.
Quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you say is our largest societal or cultural problem in America?
And do you think it's solvable?
The breakdown of the nuclear family without a doubt, And if you were asking me this as a black woman, as a Black American, I would say more even more specifically, the absence of fathers in Western society, but American society in particular. I've always said it's one of the reasons why I got into politics, because I have a heart for my community in the black community, one of my communities, I guess I have many, and I have always believed,
you know, we're the canary and the coal mine. And what happens in our community will eventually spread to the larger American society. And we've seen that with the breakdown of the family. How the government really has interrupted the family structure and process, and it's like chaos and crime and declining education numbers. And I think even empirically, if you just look around, you're going to see the the consequences, right looking at kids from broken homes, which I'm one,
or looking at kids from nuclear homes. And we know the statistics, because this is our job, is what we do. I know what the statistics say. And if you're married and you have married parents, you know you're almost guaranteed to not live in poverty. You have those two things. So I really feel strongly about the nuclear family and the importance of is it solvable. Well, that's a larger issue. Yeah, it's it's solvable if more people get married, I guess, yeah,
it's solvable. How do we make marriage great again?
Well, that's the age question, right.
So my monologue for this episode was actually about Melissa Kearney's new book, The Two Parent Privilege, how Americans stopped getting married and started falling behind.
And one of the.
Things that she says, which is really interesting to me is that marriage still people still aspire to marriage, Like marriage still gets high marks in studies and surveys like do you want to get married? Yes, everybody says yes, but then nobody does or not nobody, but you know, a low number.
So how to turn that around?
And you know, some of her solutions that I mentioned this my monologue are government related, you know, put more money into marriage, you know, classes or whatever. And I don't think any of that works. And I think part of it is because, you know, government's not cool, Like there's nothing cool like sexy about government programs about like how to get married or how to be in love.
I think it's going to be.
A wider cultural solution.
I just don't know where to begin with that.
Well, let me push back a little. Yeah, I hear this point a lot, particularly from conservatives, because I'm like you, government is not cool, and the less of it in my life the better. That being said, I do understand the power of incentives. I think this is why it can't be a littletarian. I do understand the power of incentive.
Sure, and it's not the solution.
There are whole solutions. I believe you're I agree with you that it is cultural and we've got it, you know, addressed it on a cultural level also. But government can incentivize things that are good for government, and marriage is good for government absolutely, so tax breaks. You know, in Canada you even get I'm Canadian, as your listeners may or may not know, I'm an American. Now, everybody calm down.
But in Canada you still to this day you get a check for every kid you have every month, yes, until they're eighteen, And that is to encourage you to have children, because having children help support the huge tax space that they need to support their socialism. Makes some kind of sense. Yes, I do believe that. That's why I was against, even though I have no problem with with gay couples forming relationships and calling it whatever they want. And uh, that is why I really was against the
redefining of marriage as well. Keeping marriage as a man and a woman has an incentive for government. It makes our government better and stronger, and so it it it bodes well for any government to incentivize moral behavior.
I'm on board with incentivizing for sure.
I just I see that in socialist countries in Europe they have been unable to incentivize despite you know, all the benefits. I wouldn't mind if we started with that. Hey, you know, the government wants to send me a check per kid.
I've got three.
Let's let's get that those checks rolling. I have done my part, but I just I worry that it's a like I get a larger problem of cool where I feel like there's a lot of you know, Instagram TikTok, where singlehood is portrayed is really like fun and fresh and cool, whereas married life is boring and a drag, and it's hard to get around that. It's hard to convince young people like they're lying to you. This is a lie, you're being sold to total fiction.
Well it's hard to convince young people as well, because we don't make them engage in delayed gratification anymore.
Right, Yeah, So.
Everybody feels like everybody's raised with this idea that you're supposed to be happy all the time and instantly, and so marriages work. A marriage is hard work. It requires a level of commitment that we don't ask of anybody. We're not even asking kids to commit to their own gender.
These days, you know anything.
Right, So the idea of commitment and what it means, let's go back to the Pence rule. Right.
Yeah, oh yes, that was.
Such a big deal, and everyone's like, oh my god, he's a rapists, get control his rape phantasy, so we can't be around a woman. These are this is a twister version of perfection culture. These are people who expect you to already have it together as soon as you step outside your house. So you shouldn't need willpower, right, you shouldn't need protection, You shouldn't need boundaries. If you need boundaries, you're weak when boundaries are the key to discipline.
Discipline is the key to success and whatever you're doing. So there's no successful person that goes out there says I don't have any boundaries, right, and I'm not going to protect myself from temptation or rumor or whatever because I'm already perfect. It's just we're setting kids up for failure, right. I wonder they don't want to try for these forever things.
Yeah, absolutely, it's funny. The Mike Pennce rule.
I wrote about my own marriage rules for the now defunct teach Street website, but I also I got so much.
Hate mail after that.
But basically, my husband and I don't ever come home and say like, oh, I met this great, you know, guy girl at work and we're going to go have dinner together tonight.
Like what's the problem with that?
I mean a lot of couples wouldn't allow that, or they just don't verbalize it to each other. But whereas we have sort of a verbal understanding of like what's appropriate or inappropriate in our marriage and things that we would accept and things we would not accept. So it's not like we you know, a lot of people misunderstood the Mike Pence rule as you're not allowed to have.
Friends of the opposite sex.
Of course we are, but it's not going to be like you know, snuggling on the couch friends.
They wanted to misunderstand they do. I mean, they want to see him as some misogynistic right, so Donald Trump junior rapist, But in reality, adults understand that, you know, any good experience has boundaries too, and your marriage is something to be protected, and it's not like having right fantasies when you go out with someone of the opposite sex.
It's right, but they're just you're putting guardrails up no matter what, You're protecting yourself from rumor and the innuendos, yes, or from leading someone else on or again, or just falling into your own temptation. I trust my husband implicitly. We've never had issues with infidelity in our yesterday was twenty five years for us. No congratulations, thank you with infidelity. But that doesn't mean I throw them out there to the wolves, you know.
Right right.
And I think it's also a misconception that it's only men, like I think that the guardrails exist for women too.
It's it's everybody, everybody.
Like seventy three percent of divorces are initiated by women. And I don't think that's seventy three percent of women cheating, that's seventy But women are emotional, and you know that's seventy three percent. I think of women who maybe got emotionally caught up or weren't being served emotionally, and so yeah, women will go out and find that connection elsewhere as well.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So end here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
This is a good one. So recently, I would say this is another part of my sober journey and what I'm learning as I'm releasing my brain from that I would say, it's really important to listen to your body and understand your body's responses, and I'll give you an example. So for me, one thing I've learned, and I do work with a therapist also, and I have off and on through a lot of my adult life when I feel like I need it. But one thing I've been learning is that I isolate when I'm stressed. So I
will leave the home. I actually have a little space in this house that I go to and I just sort of maybe I'll get on my computer and play solitaire or just not talk to anybody, be alone. And I would have said a year ago that that response was because I just don't like people, which I know is very odd for people who listen to me and see me on TV game I'm very friendly person of all, But that underneath is the care that's like go away and everybody. And now I realize that that's actually a
freeze response. So that's when a problem comes up, that's that's my body freezing in one place, not being able to address the problem. And so instead of me framing that as oh, I just don't like people, which I think I'm not alone in that right now, I understand that, No, that's actually my body telling me something's wrong. There's a problem, and it actually needs to be addressed. Your response might be different. Maybe you're you call yourself an emotional eater.
Maybe you get headaches. Maybe you say I haven't saw yet, I don't sleep well. I believe those are all your body's responses, right. Your body's more in tune with your feelings and what you need than you think. So listen to your body.
I love that, and I want you to come back when you're at a year and let me know how you're feeling and thinking, because that was really, really interesting.
Thank you so much for coming on, Kira. You are awesome.
Hope to see you again soon.
My pleasure.
Carol, thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Markowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.