all right i'm with khan carol everybody welcome to walk-ins welcome thank you for coming happy to be here let's talk about marriage my favorite subject what what inspired you to write your book sex and the citizen Sure. It's actually kind of a boring story. I was working for Senator Mike Lee, senator from Utah, and he was chair of something called the Joint Economic Committee.
which normally deals with even boring economic mass use of gross domestic product, unemployment rates, et cetera. But he wanted to take it in a new direction. and address social capital, a kind of idea that was around for a number of years, was popularized by Robert Putnam in his book, Bullying Alone. They wanted to really kind of quantify as much as we could what was social capital, was it growing, falling, what communities had more of it, what communities had less of it.
And so during the portion of that, my job was to take all the research. the staff members were creating and turned it into tweets, videos, op-eds, speeches, etc. So as a conservative, I had always kind of known that there was this large body of research that showed that marriage is beneficial, but I'd never really engaged with it or read it before.
And there was just so much more of it. And coming from otherwise liberal sources that I had recognized, I became interested in the subject. And I wanted to read a history of marriage, like where did this institution come from? How did it evolve? So I went on Amazon and basically everything I found was either from a very liberal perspective and was not good. Or the conservative ones I found were laser-like focused on gay marriage, which is not an unimportant issue.
But, you know, really wasn't relevant until, you know, 10, 20 years ago. And there was just eons of history of marriage before gay marriage that I thought was interesting and was a larger part of the story that just hasn't been told. So that was kind of the genesis of the book and that research became the book project. It is interesting because I think we just take the institution of marriage, maybe not so much anymore, but for a long time, I just took it for granted.
It was one of those topics that I found hard to find a book about in context from where did it start? Why did we... Why did this even begin? What was the beginning and why did it manage to persist? It would always be more, like you said, laser focused on like marriage in Rome or something, you know, where.
It wasn't necessarily spanning until now. So I do appreciate that you attempted to put this all together. What was the most surprising thing that you found in your research and through writing this book? I think with just how old it is that, you know, basically that marriage not only is as old as humanity, but it's really kind of what makes us human.
You know, I think from a lot of people who have evolutionary perspectives as I do, less so people come from a religious background, but I don't. I was kind of raised in a more secular household.
You know, you look at humanity you know a species special for a number of reasons but ultimately evolved like everything else and what what really separates us from our primate ancestors our closest primate as there's the chimpanzees is this monogamous pair bond, is what I call this development of long-term projects of cooperative care. And so when you look at chimpanzees, not only do they not help each other, not only do moms not get help from other moms in raising their young.
They don't get help from dads because without monogamy, you don't know who the dad is. But even worse than that, you have, unfortunately, high-ranking females who are actually thwart and actually... steal babies and kill young babies of, of lower ranking females. So it's the exact opposite. You have like this, this war among the fittest who can survive. And so it's only really with monogamy where you have.
males coming in that can then form long-term pair bonds with moms. So therefore the fathers can then provide care, but not just the fathers. There's also the brothers and sisters who, once they have one father to focus on, can form relationships with them. He can help them learn. They then learn from him. but then also because chimpanzees, because it is the females that migrate with sexual maturity to avoid insects.
Right. You don't have mom's mom there to help mom raise the child. But who is there is dad's mom. But dad's mom's not going to help if she doesn't know who her grandchildren are. It's only once you have monogamy that grandma can say, oh, those are my grandchildren. I will help them out. Not until you had monogamous pair bonds did you have three generations, you know, the children, the brothers and sisters.
mom and dad, and then the grandparents all coming in, helping mom with this long-term project of cooperative prayer so that we could build the big brains we have necessary to have the social learning that then gives us the tool set to conquer the known world. What is the oldest known example of marriage?
Oh, well, I don't know off the top of my head, but I'll put it this way. It is well established in the literature that there's been no contact of any hunter-gatherer tribe that did not have marriage practice. Okay. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So if you go back in history, now you're all of a sudden, you're starting to talk about, you know, the written word and evidence along those lines. And so...
Another point in my book, I think another thing that surprises many people to learn is that pretty much from the dawn of agriculture up until 100, 200 years ago. The vast majority of the earth, the entirety of human history, humans were political. So for most of our existence as humans, we existed in nomadic hunter-gathering tribes. And in that case, we were pretty much all monogamous just because there wasn't enough of a difference in wealth for some men to collect more wives than others.
um so sure sometimes you would have um a husband would die early and most generally it would then be the the brother would then take on the the wife of of take on a second one But that was very rare. It wasn't until you had sedentary agriculture that you had explosions in inequality and wealth. And that's when you also get writing as well. So pretty much as soon as you have writing, you also have these.
um large polygamous empires which which then you know kind of became the the predominant um cultural system up until really just you know 100 200 years ago yeah Like it's that old marriage. I mean, it was interesting when I worked at Playboy, we talked about this. You know, there's that one book that everybody references and I'm blanking on the name, the Don.
And it's all about how humans were polygamous. This was like- Oh, yes. Sex at Dawn. Sex at Dawn. Thank you. So this was kind of required reading for everybody in my world. Oh, that's very interesting. I did not know that. Yeah. And just learning about how common it was and how it really didn't benefit many people actually in the long run. And I do wonder about that just. in our kind of primitive psyches that still exist.
now that we've added these dating apps back in, which allows, it has a very kind of polygamous vibe to it. And when you're swiping, even just swiping is very strange. I don't know. There have been so many forces that, like you say in your book, it's really crazy the numbers when you think about how. With marriage, it was, what were you saying in the 60s, four out of five, and now it's less than half or something crazy like that?
I mean, a whole number of thought there. One, Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan, I mentioned a number of times in the book. And I mean, the shortest story there is pretty much everything he says is false. Yeah, exactly. I go over it specifically in every case. Basically over and over again, he portrays these, you know, often, you know. sedentary tribes somewhat nomadic tribes as being a lot more um
you know, women empowering than they actually were. And that the extramarital, non-monogamous sex was a lot less consensual and a lot less beneficial to women than Ryan makes its seat. Yes. That was always the way I felt about that book. Yes. And then later on, I read that a lot of it was just, you know, very... the way a lot of this information was interpreted. But I always got the sense that it wasn't like...
There was a lot of female empowerment being considered back in these times. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of them is just to give a brief example, but I mean, there's four or five tribes he talks about, but you know, one of them in particular. um is an amazonian tribe where uh women will have sex with with uh more than one man when they're pregnant the thinking being among the people that that you know takes more than one dad to to to make a baby and that's that is true
But the optimal number of extramarital partners she has is actually just one more. She's not having a whole bunch because- They've since done other studies that showed that the more extramarital partner she has, the less likely any of the extra ones would step up if the primary husband died.
and that's kind of the reason the whole did it is that there's no social safety net for these tribes in the amazon right and the a lot of the calories that mom gets and her children get are from from meat sharing from hunting so if dad if husband dies she's not going to get the meat that she needs to survive And so she needs another man to step up and be her meat provider. And so by having an extra partner before pregnancy or during pregnancy, it's basically like an insurance policy.
She's saying this is going to be my extra guy if my primary guy goes down. And once you go beyond that extra guy, the number of more partners she has actually decrease in the chance that her children will survive if her husband dies, because the rest of them will be like, well, you slept with three other guys, not just me. I'm not going to help you out. But that's just one example. How long was it basically a man's primary drive in life to be the meat provider?
Meet specifically. I mean, that varies very much on every tribe's different. you know sustenance breakdown i mean you have a lot of uh uh instances where uh women were actually getting a lot of the uh the majority of the calories a day um from from gathering um and then it would it would depend on very specific situations as as far as what percentage of the calories from meat men were bringing in. For pretty much all of nomadic tribes, you did have pretty stark...
sex differences when it comes to jobs as far as who would go off and do the hunting, do the fighting, et cetera. And of course, who would stay behind and take care of the kids and do more of the other activities. That definitely has been a reality of. human nature up up through to today although we have mitigated a lot of it i mean when it still comes down to the fact that women are the ones who give birth and they have a
natural advantage when it comes to feeding young in ways that their body can do it that men can't. There's ways we can mitigate that. But at the end of the day, we are still two different sections. Yeah, I was I just I think a lot about this when I. I just am kind of obsessed with how much of our lizard primary, you know, that brain still exists with all of this technology and all of these advantages that we have in conveniences. And there's so much talk about the...
the epidemic of male purposelessness. And I do wonder, obviously, you know, there's a lot of talk, obviously, about feminism, which I think. It's always very interesting. It's interesting from a culture war perspective because people kind of line up on one side or another. Most families I know have a very hybrid kind of existence, and that was true even for my parents.
where mom worked, but maybe at a job at a school so she could still be home and make dinner and have summers off. And dad was a primary provider. So I know my point being, I know many men who have a lot of purpose and also help a lot with the family in ways that generations before may not have. There does seem to be like the division of labor is a lot more fluid than It was for my grandparents, for example. I do see this purposelessness that men experience.
You know, I get lost kind of down the like... I guess, manosphere rabbit holes a lot about the longhouse and all this stuff where it's like, oh, it's, I just, where they'll be blaming feminism. It's always kind of funny to me when I hear men doing that, blaming feminism. It sounds whiny coming from a man to me. But there is this sense that they don't. have this drive or purpose in the way that they did up until maybe 50 years ago? Like 40 years ago?
It's kind of crazy. I mean, I think that's always fair. I mean, to speak to your point, my parents both worked, you know, full time. But, you know, there's a U-shape to that. in the sense that when you have more low-income families that are married, you generally have a husband who works full-time and a wife. mother who will work not at all if she can, but generally part-time when they have kids.
And that's the way it is for kind of lower income. And then you have kind of the middle class dual income, which is more me and my parents. They both work full time. But then when you get back up into the higher incomes. And these are wealthy, educated, empowered. women who generally consider themselves feminists, they also don't work full time. They may have a job and the rest of it. And so you still see that very strong you know, biological reality coming back through.
Yeah. And it is there even among the the most, you know, ardent democratic feminists who, you know, if if available and have a high powered man will, you know. have a part-time job or not work at all. And more power to them if you can. I wish I made enough money so that my wife didn't have to work full-time. Are you dealing with an HMO like I am?
If you want any testing done, you have to go make an appointment. And then if you need a specialist, you've got to go to a specialist. And it's a whole rigmarole. Not anymore, folks. Quest simplifies this process. I can purchase my own lab tests online and test for a multitude of health issues I might be concerned about and then take those results to my doctor.
Better armed with the information I need. Not just a doctor, by the way. Like, I'm going to take mine to my acupuncturist. At questhealth.com, you can get hundreds of tests across several different categories. You can do a full blood work panel. There's male panels, female panels.
There's perimenopause panels. There's panels, STD screenings, allergies, heart health, hormones, sexual health, et cetera, as I was mentioning. These are lab quality tests. They're the same ones you'd be given at your doctor's office. Use the affiliate link below for a 25% discount and order your test and then visit a nearby Quest Diagnostics location for sample collection. Again, use the affiliate link below for a 25% discount and prioritize your health today.
With lab work on your terms. But to your point about, you know, men feeling lost without that role. That makes sense to me. I mean, the gender roles being, you know, as I put it, the provider protector has been the role for men throughout history, throughout humanity, throughout culture, across cultures. There's a great book called Warriors and Warriors written by a feminist, or not a feminist, I'm sorry, a female. Warriors and what? Warriors and Warriors. Warriors and Warriors.
And she does great work looking at the different cultures across the world and how similar the ideal masculinity is. You know, you don't have to be a jerk. You don't have to go around, beat people up, but you do have to show a mastery of your surroundings. You do have to be able to provide for your family, be able to provide for the women in your life, and you have to protect them.
Those are two big ones. And in today's world, there's all kinds of ways men could be protectors and providers. That doesn't even have to be me having a full time job, although it can. But without that, you know, without. you know, having a role and seeing yourself coming into that provider and protect role for one woman, then yeah, I can see how a lot of men have lost their way and have become, you know, depressed and everything else.
Yeah, it was surprising to me. I was swiping with my friend and her friend. And they were talking about It was interesting to me to see how many men, even in their 30s, don't want kids. I was kind of shocked by that. It's not just women. There's this kind of whole idea that, oh, it's the women who don't want kids. It's the women who are.
who are dry because you can you know mark these things on your dating app and there's a lot of men who who blatantly say they don't want children and they're definitely young enough to be having kids it's not like they're they're 50 or whatever, where they're, where they feel like maybe they're just too old to start a family, which I don't think you are as a man, but I can understand that, that thinking. But can I just ask, I mean, you said, you said there's an app where the.
The men that were not wanting kids, were they, I mean, how should I put it? Were they more of the desirable types or less desirable? They were, oh, that's a good question. I would say... I think it was probably... You know, I don't know that they were less desirable, but I don't know that they're whatever top.
20% or whatever. Interestingly, the guys that I would say are more desirable, and I don't know what that really entails, but if we're talking just about purely physical look... they're on round two you know they're they have kids they don't want kids because they already have kids okay and so they're on round two uh you know like i say it's like round two of the draft like they're they're
They're getting out of a divorce and now they're like back into the dating world. But that seems to kind of track. little bit and that like oh he's good-looking and then it's you know two kids don't want more kids reading between the lines. You're divorced. Right, right. I mean, you were talking about before the, you know, kind of similarities between, you know, what kind of older mating styles of now and that, you know, with the sex revolution.
uh in many ways arguing but we are kind of returning to a somewhat you know polygamous age and are an example of that I mean, you look at OkCupid or Tinder or any of them, and it's the top 20, the top 10% of men that get 80, 90% of the swipe rights, the attention, and the bottom 50% get next to nothing. It definitely creates a, you know, kind of a polygamous incentive structure that would enable men in those top, you know, to say, hey, you know, I don't have to.
offer to be provider or protector. I can just hang out my shingle on Tinder and get all the, as I might say, physical intimacy I need. We would say pussy. Okay. I'll let you say that. I was going to go with physical intimacy. That's more respectable. Yes, that that does seem to be that does seem to be the. I mean, I know there's a lot, they can do a lot of, we have a lot of data on this now with these apps, more probably data than ever before. Oh, by far. And it is.
I see this a lot in cities living in Los Angeles. There just was a general feeling that men didn't want to settle down because why would they? There's like an endless supply of young starlets and young women coming through the town. If you're a good-looking, desirable male with a job and a... tesla or whatever you can you can just kind of do that forever until you're
No, and a culture goes up around that. And once that becomes acceptable, then that disfeeds on itself for those population subgroups. And you dig into a rut where if men can get away with that, they will. So here's what's interesting, though. I would say as a woman who's swiping, it's a much bigger red flag to see a 50-year-old man who's never been married than a 50-year-old who's on round two.
Like as someone who is, I'm 46. So as somebody, if I was to be date swiping through and dating, I would be. considering the man who's already been through a marriage and has children at 50. to be more desirable than someone who hasn't and that actually would be kind of a red flag to me that he hasn't already born children and been in a relationship
No, that definitely makes sense to me. If you're 50 years old and you have not been able to form some type of long-term relationship with a woman, why would you be able to start now? Yeah, definitely, definitely not. Yeah, it's really – I'm so obsessed with all of this stuff and being someone who never – really wanted to get married. And now I'm on my second marriage. My first marriage, I got married very young. And
We were both. What's very young? Well, I was 23. He was 21. Oh, wow. Yeah, we were young. I meant that you were older. Oh, we were older? Oh, that I was older. Well, you'll find out why in a minute probably. It's not just because he loved older women. He was from Belarus. And so part of it was that we were young and we were in love, but we also had this, oh, he could be booted out of the country hanging over our head all the time. Had he been American, I don't know that I would have.
married him as quickly uh but we did we were married for five years you know we were we and we it just i think we It fell apart for reasons that were not just because we were young. We were also both quite wild. i wild kids i guess and um i have read a bit of that history yep so so I think what I learned from that marriage though is how much I underestimated.
the institution of marriage because my parents are divorced and so i was like ah whatever you can just get divorced if it doesn't work out and even our very simple not having children, not having property, not having anything that you have to deal with when you get divorced, which makes it even more traumatic. Even our simple divorce was very... upsetting and it meant more than I thought it would. Were you in California at the time? I was in Rhode Island.
And then when we separated, I was in California and we were trying to make it work and then it just wasn't working. So it was... you know, I kind of decided I would never get married again. And then I met my current husband. And much like him, he was like, I just want to call you my wife. I just wanted him to be my husband. Now I see... And you talk about this in your book. That's not as common. There's many people. I know so many people who are just cohabitating. They don't need to have that.
that kind of feeling of like, this is my wife, my husband, and maybe this is when I started. moving to the right or something i don't know i don't know what that feeling was what what is can you help me can you explain what that what that is to call someone to you know what that institution of marriage outside of just having the having the state involved in this and having your family witness this.
Right. So, I mean, the state is involved in marriage, as long as there has been a state, it's hard not to. But, you know, what I kind of call the magic of marriage has to do with more than just the state. It has to do with our community and our culture. in the sense that when we do get married, there is a certain set of behaviors that is expected of the husband and the wife. And then the community expects them to live up to that.
Not so much today, but definitely before. But still today, people expect husbands and wives to be faithful to each other. They expect them to live together. They expect them to be kind to each other and support each other. And so when you look at someone and you want to. Have them feel to them as your wife. It's not just that you want that promise from them. It's that they're making that promise publicly and then everyone else around you then expects them to follow through on that ideal of what.
a husband of what a married partner should be interesting do you think that It's funny, too. I was thinking a lot about this just lately because of Elon, really, and him being this kind of figurehead for the conservative. I guess we won't call it conservatives. We'll say the right. This is a very strange break in my lifetime to have the right divorce from conservatism.
I mean, yes and no. I mean, you know, I mean, I think it'd be very fair to say that Elon is more of a libertarian, right? And so, you know, conservatism has had a... mostly on, sometimes off again, relationship with libertarianism for a long time. Libertarians, are there side chicks? Kind of, yeah. I mean, we're talking about political coalitions, which are very different than marriage.
You know, political conditions, you know, change with over time, over needs and circumstances, and that's expected. But, you know, I mean, when it comes to something like, you know, immigration, you know, Elon has different views than a lot of conservatives. and when it comes to something like IVF.
Elon Musk has different views and a lot of conservatives, but apparently not different views than Trump when it comes to marriage. You know, Elon has different views than Trump. You know, I think Trump comes from an earlier generation. Some people say, oh, he's been divorced three times. He clearly clears nothing about marriage. But on the other hand, I always tell people to think about what Trump would look like in a polygamous world.
um an unconstrained to trump that could have as as many wives as he wants you know i mean he would look like elon well yeah i mean i mean the elon's you know interesting because you know because elon um i mean He's, what, been divorced two or three times? I'm not sure. But I think the key point is that he hasn't had... marital relationships with all of the women he has decided to procreate with. Right. So, so, so some of these are, some of these are.
contractual, I think some of them were in non-sexual, you know, agreements to have children together, which I mean, is very Silicon Valley is, is, is, is, is all I'd say. But it's also very. I mean, isn't it very kind of back to our roots of just spreading your seed? I was talking to somebody and I wish I could remember who it was where. The now theory for why women's periods sync up is because men would have to try and impregnate as many women as they could in the event that they then went off.
And sometimes they would just leave if they got into battle or a war and they would join a similar tribe or something like that and never come back.
But so they had to try and impregnate as many women as they could to, you know, keep the, I don't know if this is true. Well, I mean, I, I would, I would say that, um, A lot of people believe that polygamous cultures are actually more fertile than monogamous cultures, but actually it's not true because of the reason you just named, which is that when you have polygamous households. the wives end up syncing up and the husbands don't.
uh creating as many children as you have different women living in different households with men so actually monogamous cultures are actually more more fertile than than than polygamous cultures but i mean you're right in the sense that i mean you go back to you know any um uh pre-christian culture uh you know vikings romans etc um you had men that definitely wanted to i mean throughout history a lot of
the power of a man and the power of the the his clan his patriarchy came from how many wives and children he had so so absolutely elon's elon is definitely a call back to that I think, you know, and he's not alone. You know, you have we have your favorite influencer, Andrew Tate, you know, is going around tweeting that if you've only I forget how exactly phrased it, but you've only impregnated one woman. You've never really conquered anything.
You have Bronze Age pervert and all these other people on the – Manosphere. On the manosphere that are adjacent to conservatism. I think it's hard to deny it. But I do think that there's just some fundamental – differences between um you know musk who even musk and tate aren't aren't carbon copies they have they have very different ideas in the world i believe musk is i'm not musk i'm sorry
Tate is a practicing Muslim now, which of course doesn't get in the way of him having more than one life and children with more than one woman. But yeah, I mean, it's something where... I do think there is a temporary nature to which the conservative movement in the Republican Party is attaching itself, allowing itself to, in some ways, be led by Musk. And we'll see how long it lasts and see how far it goes.
But it's not as though the Trump administration is going around and trying to make it easier for the musks of the world to have as many of these side families as possible. Yeah, but I do wonder if there's all this talk about politics being downstream from culture, if this is the cultural ethos on the left and to a certain extent now libertarians and, you know, even.
even Manosphere, right wing adjacent, Andrew Tate, Bronze Age pervert. Now we have this basically across the whole political spectrum and men are getting this message. Why wouldn't they why wouldn't they internalize that? You also have figures in the party that are more old school and more family values. I mean, you have J.D. Vance there, but the... anti-abortion rally, the Roe versus Wade anniversary rally, which.
um they don't want you to do anymore because robert's ways in god but you know he basically said you know i want to have his you know want to have a society where as many babies as possible And of course, he's doing it through a regular monogamous Catholic framework that I think is a great model for young men. Yeah, I just I don't know how many young men. maybe jd but i think more young men idolize musk and tate just
from a numbers standpoint than they would some of these more traditional guys. And I do wonder if this... If this assault on marriage is destroying democracy, which you are arguing. Very much so. It seems like it's coming from everywhere. The assault on marriage. It doesn't seem like it's just, it seems like the culture in general from kind of.
vaguely gesturing all around is not not and let's not even we haven't even gotten into what women are being told about marriage and why they shouldn't be married etc It does seem like the culture at large is really not that supportive of merit. I agree, but that's all the more reason to push back and to push back through policy. And I think we can. I mean, bringing up this manosphere, brosphere, whatever.
I mean, when you look at like, you know, barstool conservatives, which are very more, you know, pro-pornography, pro-bending app, et cetera. I think those are absolutely terrible cultural initiatives, which make marriage harder. I talk about in the book about how online gambling has just devastated young men, maybe a lot harder for them to get married because of the staggered pattern of states that have legalized.
online betting. You can go back and look and see how it affects different populations. And bankruptcies go up and credit card rate goes up. And guess who has hit the hardest? It is, it is young men of, of maritable age. And when you look at the decline of marriage, it is almost entirely among that demographic. Young, wealthy men are doing fine.
College educated men are getting married and having kids like it was the 1950s. Men who cannot command the wages, not command the income to support a wife and children that are having a lot more problems. And so when you look at something like online betting, that makes it even harder for those men to become that provider, to become that protector. to a woman and you know the the bros fear the barstool sparks they don't care the libertarians don't care like oh they need bad choices
But no, that's not what the job of government is. That was never what the founders thought. the role of government was, is that they always envisioned government setting guardrails and making it easier to helping communities, helping families create character. you know, what is the good that we are getting out of this online betting?
I don't know how much sports you watch, but it wasn't five, six, seven years ago you could watch the NFL playoffs, watch a college football game, and not see a single advertisement. for these betting apps. Now it's like every ad just being shoved down your throat, bet, bet, bet, bet.
Yeah, that's going to have an impact on the culture. Yeah, that's going to have a negative impact on men being able to command an income. And it's going to have a negative impact on marriage. And that's terrible for culture. We always say no to those ads. We always say no to those ads when we get offered them because I can't stand it. I won't.
Oh, you're a better person than I am. I'd probably take the money. I said no to a lot of betting money, but I've seen what gambling, I mean, gambling addiction is so gnarly. It is. those behavioral addictions are very difficult because It's not a substance. I've quit a lot of things, but I've been able to just, you can still quit a thing. It's not like a habit. And I think the behavioral. Addictions are actually much trickier too. It's why eating disorders, for example, take...
seven years on average from beginning to end to even try and get over because you can't give up eating. You can't give up going online if you're a human in this world. So you have to figure out how to build guardrails around. I mean, it would be so easy to slip up. And like you said, it is everywhere. It's completely infused in our culture now. And I've seen what gambling addiction has done. And it is as gnarly as drug and alcohol addiction. And in some instances, I would argue that it's worse.
Yeah. And I would just say, people talk about how hopeless it is to change culture, but this is a policy choice governments made at the state and federal level to embrace this and embrace this revenue. We can undo this damage. We can re-ban online gambling. It's possible to do imminently. It just wasn't that long ago that this didn't exist. And we can go back to that world.
But these are the hard choices we have to make that, you know, and for the Republican Party, it's going to be tough because, you know, you're going to be alienating the brosphere, the barstool sports Republicans when you go along this route. But I think you have to ask yourself, what are we really even trying to accomplish here? You know, and for me, and I think for a lot of conservatives, you know, for Vance.
Definitely. You know, the point is we are trying to create a society where young men and women can get and stay married and form healthy families. And if we're not, what the hell are we doing? Yeah, that's one of the things that, again, is I've been... caught in the crossfire of the culture wards and I'm really obsessed with all of these dynamics and I'm fascinated with the right right now because it seems like a
Like you said, political coalitions are not always perfectly in alignment. You need to get things done and agree, and you need to form these. But if Andrew Breitbart was right, and I do think he was, and politics are downstream of culture, I'm not sure there will be much left to conserve. if conservatives in particular get in bed with people who are going to undermine fundamentally the ideas that they're trying to conserve.
I just I don't know how that works. I'm not sure conservatives do either, because there are these like political things you want to achieve.
But once you let that genie out of the bottle, how do you put it back in? Like you said, you can re-ban it. Are we going to make marijuana illegal again? Probably not. We're probably never going back. I would say that society started deteriorating they're gonna look back and be like that was a strange overlap of things that happened at the same time um and putting it's like putting ai back in the bot you know how how do we
My bigger question to somebody like you is what do you see as the path forward with all of these obstacles now? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be tough, but I think you do have a kind of... younger cohort of conservatives that are focused on these issues and understand the story than you did before. I mean, I think you would acknowledge we are definitely living in a time of flux.
political coalition-wise. And so you have Muslim libertarians trying different things. You have Barstool Republicans trying different things. You have people on the left. seeking out different things. I mean, just look at the Trump... administrations or the larger conservative administrations kind of outreach and flirting with organized labor, right? You have Holly introducing a bill along those lines. You have the labor secretary, which...
may or may not be confirmed coming up. But there's definitely a realignment there. Is there some way that we can move ourselves away from hardcore religious free markets? always is right, orthodoxy, to something that kind of cares more about stability, kind of realizes that there are harms.
from certain trade deals, especially with China, kind of realizes that there are harms from low wages, from illegal immigration. And can we do some things that aren't necessarily... free market focused to address those things so that we can buttress the families that we can put those guardrails back up. And so, I mean, I think you have seen a pendulum swing on you brought up marijuana. I mean, it used to be all of these states.
Ballot measures would all pass easily with flying colors. Florida just rejected one this past year, which is the first time one was rejected in a while. Can we build up momentum to push it the other way and roll back some of these things? Maybe not completely, but I think the more marijuana has been legalized and the more use it has had, the more harm has been shown for it and from it. mental illness that has caused, but as well as other health and respiratory concerns.
So I think as we learn more about some of these things, as we learn more about the harms from online gambling, maybe we can do more about it. I was joking on, sorry, go on. I was just joking on dumpster fire this week about how all the drugs that I would get arrested for in my youth are now being prescribed as therapy.
i'm like how did that happen right right uh which you know i probably not great for all of them maybe some of them but you know probably not great for all of them um and um i mean you see this with with uh we haven't touched on this issue yet but it's adjacent to all these issues pornography uh you know you have um you know because christoph wrote that article about porn hub and then all the credit cards backed off of porn hub you have a whole bunch of states
pretty much all Republican states now, passing age verification laws, which is again called Pornhub to just pull out of all those states, which I think is great. Ironic use of words. I'm sorry. Didn't even think of that. Okay. Phrasing. Are we not doing phrasing anymore? My bad. My bad. But, you know, the federal government could do more. I mean, the Department of Justice used to go after pornography. up until the, you know.
up until 9-11 basically. Clinton pulled it back first. Bush, Ashcroft, put Ashcroft in. He was gearing up to do it, but 9-11 completely moved it. But I mean, under the first Bush administration, there were tons of pornography prosecutions. And I think there's a lot we could do to make pornography less acceptable. I mean, speaking of Elon Musk on our favorite social media platform.
I think most people don't realize how much is there just from a search away. But that is just one more way in which… I think as the harms from pornography become more evident. I think you could see a political coalition going along to force the Twitters of the world, to force pornography, to at least be less acceptable as a behavior. And going back to online betting, maybe we won't be able to ban it, but maybe, like cigarettes, we can at least get the ads off TV.
At least we could get the ads off online. We could at least get the ads off the stadiums. And I think on a whole host of these issues, you know, Republicans have to look at what is the possible that we can achieve within the existing coalitions or possibly new political coalitions that would make the society a better environment. for families so that young men and women can get together. get married young and have a prosperous life together.
I mean, I think what is probably going to happen too is a lot of men are going to come stumble in a lot of ways that women like myself and younger, older. Millennials, younger women than me are stumbling kind of out of the sexual revolution going, you know, like you need to go back. It's a trap. men are gonna stumble out and be recovering from porn addiction and gambling addiction. And these are the men who are going to. lead the way out of into hopefully inspiring other young men.
and warning other young men about the dangers of these things, you're kind of going to need people who have been through it to understand it. Because it's very hard when it comes from... It's why recovery works. It's one alcoholic talking to another. If there is a large population of men who are... addicted to online betting, someone who's never had a gambling addiction, it's going to be very hard to hear from them when it comes to, oh, here's what we need to do about this.
I think, unfortunately, it's kind of like the detransitioners, too, with with the kind of trans stuff where you need these survivors to turn around and go, hey. but that's another issue where i i think we're making progress like i think i think the pendulum swinging on that one too um so i mean i think we we can look at how ubiquitous porn is and how much damage it does how ubiquitous online betting is how much damage it does
and the trans stuff. But, you know, I guess I'm trying to be hopeful. I do feel like we're near a pendulum on a number of these issues. where people across the political spectrum are realizing the harm from these things. And then we can develop the political will to do something about it. Yeah. Why is it that it undermines democracy so much? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, there's a number of pathways that it does to, but I mean, when you look at pretty much any issue today.
marriage, the decline of marriage is part of the reason why. So just look at income inequality when you look at a married household versus a cohabiting household, right? Look at it from a strictly business sense. What business do you think is going to be more profitable five years down the road?
a business that has a joint banking account, an agreement of who's going to do what and a vision of what they want to accomplish together, or two people that got together kind of randomly have two separate bank accounts and really don't know what they're doing. I mean, it's very clearly one household is going to be wealthier than the other down the road. And so when you have couples that are stumbling into cohabitation as they are now versus being pushed by culture into marriage, you get.
different levels of income inequality down the road. And so that's, as marriage has declined, you have those houses that those cultures, those neighborhoods that don't have as much marriage, they're just not as wealthy as others. then you have generational wealth right um when you have a single mom or you know
single dad who hasn't been able to afford a house, that's going to matter when they want to pass that wealth on to their kids. Whereas you have a married couple that's been building equity together in a house for many years, they're able to pass that wealth down. Yeah. You look at social mobility. Studies show that. When societies are less socially mobile, when one generation doesn't believe that they can go on and out-earn, out-succeed their parents, the belief in democracy decreases.
Well, social mobility has been decreasing in the United States over the past or last generation. And that's largely because of marriage. When you look at those neighborhoods that have the highest social mobility, it is those marriages with the most number of married fathers in the home. Wow. Those neighborhoods where you have the least number of married fathers, where you have no social mobility.
crime. Those countries that have higher crime rates have lower social trust, lower democratic participation, less faith in democracy. Guess what causes a lot of crime? Marriage. When you look at communities that have more married fathers in the home, there's just a lot less crime. The Surgeon General has talked about an epidemic of isolation and loneliness. Guess what's a big driver of isolation and loneliness?
the decrease in marriage. Those people who are older, who never married, are a lot more lonely, a lot more isolated than those that have. Even polarization. When you look at this last election, about 60% of married men voted for Trump. About 51% of married women voted for Trump. about 51% of unmarried men voted for Trump. And then you have 70% of unmarried women voted for Kamala. I know. So you just have pretty much everyone in the center right.
That is kind of normies, you know, conservative. And then you have the the unmarried women population, mostly younger, that is just off the charts liberal. And you don't see it across the world. You just have the young, unmarried women going far, far to the left of everyone else. And this political polarization makes it harder to govern.
And then the last one is kind of adjacent to this, but it's my, well, this is also musk related, but it's my natalist friends. And in the sense that when you have... society like korea where the population is absolutely collapsing it makes it harder for the economy to grow it makes it harder for just every aspect of society including democracy Well, guess what's driving the decline of fertility in the United States?
Again, it's the decline of marriage because married women obviously have more children than unmarried women. And the earlier woman gets married, the more children she have. So to the extent that the marriage age gets pushed off and fewer women get married, you have a decline. So all you would have to do to fix the fertility rate in the United States, you don't have to go back to 1950. All you have to go back to is the marriage rates and the eight and the.
The average age of marriage of 1995. Wow. And the United States fertility problem would be solved. What was the average age then? Oh, you're going to make me look it up. I was probably like 26, 24. Okay. Yeah. Men are always like two years older than women. There was something around there. Whereas now it's probably like 30, 28 or 32, 30. Yeah. My mom had me at 25.
This is average age of marriage, not average age of first birth. Right. I mean, I was a honeymoon baby, I think. So she was maybe 24 when she got pregnant with me, got married. And had me at 25 and, or I guess she was probably 25 when she got pregnant with me. And then had four more kids. that bears out earlier um i mean i mean but the point is i you know i'm trying to make is um i don't think 1995 was that oppressive
Right. I remember it. You said you were 46, so you remember 1995. Oh, yeah. Those are the golden years. Good times. Good times. Yeah. All I'm asking is go back to 1995. They didn't even have online betting then. Yeah, that was an interesting... i think about so there's a pretty big split and it's very coastal actually so i graduated from high school in minnesota although i also My family is from the East Coast, and then I lived in Los Angeles for many years, starting in my mid-20s.
friends from the Midwest. got married right after college and have, you know, they followed that kind of traditional path, like go to school and then get done. And then they all married, many of them, high school, college, sweetheart. And started having kids in their mid-20s. They have older kids now or teens or late teens or they're done. And then I have this other...
group of friends who are city women like myself, and they've started much later. You know, it's like every woman I know in comedy right now is having a baby, but we're all geriatric. and live on the coast, you know, like New York, LA. And this is something that was a crazy statistic when I got. When I got pregnant, my doctor was telling me the average age of a woman, first time pregnancy for West Los Angeles and like parts of, you know, Upper East New York, whatnot.
was 38 years old or something like that. That means there's a lot of women in their 40s. That's the average age. That means there's a lot of, and even I would go in and joke about how I was a geriatric and I was 42 when I was pregnant. 43 when I had her. And he's like, Bridget, when you look at my list of people that I'm seeing today, you are in the middle of the pack. There's women who are 40, 47. I'm like, that's crazy. I didn't.
Yeah, I mean, people are really, you know, pushing the envelope these days. But, you know, you look at. study isn't a lot of women don't realize just how hard it is to have a child when you wait longer. Very hard. And it also something that I will say, going back to your having three generations to kind of help with this child, people, my art, my. My in-laws can't really, they can kind of, on one side they can, but.
They're in their 80s. Early 80s. No, it makes a big difference. But they're not able to keep up with a toddler. No, yeah. People will be like, oh, your in-laws are moving there. Yay. We're like... It's not like they're in their 60s, you know, when you should be a grandparent. Having that intergenerational help is huge. It's very key. One point of contention I have with David Brooks, he wrote a book on the, not a book, this is an Atlantic article on the nuclear family was a mistake.
And he makes the case that for most of American history that people lived in intergenerational households. And he actually read the data from that study wrong. So the study that he cites did say that 80% of seniors, you know, live with or lived with their their their children when they were older but that doesn't mean 80 of the households had seniors in them because families were so much larger they didn't have any places to go and of course the uh
People didn't live as long, so there just weren't that many grandparents to begin with. Right. So the percentage of houses, homes that actually had. grandparents in them was actually very small at the founding of the country. And then it did rise to about 20%. in the kind of 1800s, 1900s, but then it has since gone back down to about 10%. So there never was this golden age of three generations living in a household, but there was, you know.
grandparents in the neighborhood, which we had when we first had our kid, we were relatively young. um that was also had a kid around our age um but their grandparents lived nearby and they were going out for uh date nights on friday and we were always so jealous like oh he's so nice to just have grandma down the street i know just drop off drop off the baby who we love who we love but yeah
um you know people don't realize what how how amazing just a three-hour break can be oh it's it is This was one of the hard things when I moved here with a one-year-old was I was, you know, we're so much more atomized now and all over the place and just we're not living in the same town. I thought seriously about moving back to my hometown where my family is so that she would be around cousins.
Then we run into the same problem where my husband's family's on the West Coast, my family's on the East Coast. Now we're, instead of being six hours away from them, we're now six hours away from his family. And so we split the difference here, but it meant that I was completely isolated when I moved here and had a one-year-old. And I really struggled. It was very... It was very hard.
I would not recommend that. I underestimated just we had family in Los Angeles. We had in-laws. I had an aunt and uncle who are like my parents. They would make us food when we hadn't slept. They came by and gave us, like you said, just that three hours so that we could sleep. And we had none of that. And it was... It's been challenging. I will not lie. Those extended family networks of support really help. Yeah. I think that it's...
I don't know. I really have A lot of fondness now for just that simple structure. Growing up with my grandparents in my life and cousins and having aunts and uncles watching us and stuff like that. There is something. That network and support is so necessary. And it is, I think, a large reason why you're just not seeing that many people having kids because it's so hard and not to mention hard, but expensive.
I mean, you can't afford to have, if you're middle class and you don't have grandparents and aunts and uncles around, you can't afford to have full time or even part. A lot of people, and babysitters, by the way, are so expensive now. No, absolutely. I mean, we're on Care.com all the time. My youngest is now 12, so it's a little easier.
But yeah, I mean, we would, you know, we knew exactly the mark of how long you keep around a babysitter for before you had to start paying social security taxes. And then we would just cycle through them. That's really funny. Yeah, exactly. Before you have to give them a 1099. Exactly. We knew exactly where that line was. What do you hope people take from your book? That we have a chance that, you know, when you look at why marriage is declining, it's because.
that there just simply aren't enough marriageable men out there, and that currently the means-tested welfare state. forces women to choose. We didn't touch on this so much, but the decline of marriage really starts taking off in the 1970s after this case called Kings v. Smith, which basically got rid of man-in-the-house rules.
which had their own racist origins to begin with, which is bad. But once those decisions were made, it created an incentive structure where women were forced to choose between either the means-tested welfare programs or a husband who may or may not have it. And so while welfare is just one program. Pretty much any means-tested program has these same incentives, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Affordable Care Act, whether it's food stamps, whether it's Section 8 housing.
And some people say, oh, well, you know, the working poor, they don't know what the cutoffs are for all of those things. It's like, yes, that's exactly the point, but they know they exist. And there actually is polling, which I go over in the book that shows that. Working-class Americans do know that if they get a job or if they marry a husband,
who they're currently cohabitating with or they're currently seasoned, that there's a risk that they could lose those benefits that they definitely are relying on at the time. They absolutely know this. I absolutely know this. I know people who are making decisions not to get married because it will... affect their health insurance for them and their child. Right.
right it absolutely happens yeah this is not like some secret people are definitely you know not getting married for these reasons even if they've been living together for common law eight you know years right right But again, like the online embedding, this is a policy choice we had made in the past, not even on purpose in this case. We can undo it. Can you explain that policy choice? logic was behind that policy choice.
So the politics choice was not to punish marriage. That was not what they were trying. you're trying to establish a means-tested program, right? So instead of like social security, which everyone gets.
you know we're talking about or medicare which which everyone over 65 days medicaid only people below a certain income get right right and income is generally measured by by household so if if you're a single mother and you have a job and you're making like twenty thousand dollars a year and then if you were to marry a husband who is also making three thousand years that may bump you up above the
$30,000 thing. So that was before you were getting free healthcare. If you get married, boom, now you don't have free health. Right. And then that can compound with earned income tax credit, child tax credit, food stamps, all kinds of other things.
Whereas, so if you're looking at the incentive structures, do I just want to shack up with this guy, cohabitate versus marrying? You're going to be pushed towards the cohabitation, right? So we're pushing, you know, all kinds of working poor into a marriage-less world. And how would you change that? You could very easily say. You could very easily say. Raise the bar. you could a raise the bar or you could just say if you if you would qualify this as a single person
you know, you still qualify as married. So you just have, you know, two eligibility. So instead of having that, you know, the household, the income bar, like if, if you qualify for, you know, Medicaid or food stamps as a single, as a. single house as a single single woman um you know you just say becoming a household or getting married would no longer would no longer disqualify you from that program okay It wouldn't be that hard. It wouldn't be expensive fix, relatively.
But I would argue that the more money you spend would pay itself off over time. Just because marriage is so beneficial, just because people are, the children from those married households are going to have higher graduation rates, are going to be employed more, are going to have less trouble with crime, I think it would pay for itself. so it's a simple a fix in in the legal sense but it would be a more complicated fix in the how to pay for it sense um
And that's just one issue. Then you can look at pretty much any issue that deflates, particularly male wages, is a detriment to marriage because the fewer men you have that can command, that can produce. a wage that can provide for a wife and child, the less marriage you're gonna have. So we're talking about, you know, trade with China. We're talking about illegal immigration. We're talking about regulations that make it harder to build. You know, so you look at zoning laws, just a big.
issue on the left these days. Anything that makes it harder to build more houses is a detriment to marriage. Permitting reform, which is big on conservatives, but the easier it is to build pipelines, the easier it is to build highways, the easier it is to build apartment buildings, the more construction jobs you have. Construction is an overwhelmingly male industry.
So the more marriages you can have. So there's all kinds of different policy lowers we can pull to try to produce a society where it's easier for young men and women to get and stay married. And so, you know, the point I make in the book is that, you know, instead of politicians having one staffer or one issue area that is just marriage and family. that should be the guidepost for everything. So when you look at taxes, when you look at trade, when you look at environment.
The guidepost for every single one of those issues should be, is this making it easier for young men and women to get and stay married? And if the answer is yes, let's do it. If not, don't do it. But that needs to become the guidepost for everything, not just a narrow. slate of issues by itself. Are the marriage rates in South Korea, is that what caused this kind of birth rate collapse? Was it just people stopped, the women stopped?
I was reading somewhere that women just don't want to get married at all. South Korea has its own issues of both workaholism i guess i would call it um and uh uh you know kind of the corporate focused and they they are they do have more uh regressive gender uh roles than we do i mean you you talked about earlier just how you know within your lifetime um uh fathers are much more likely to do more work around the house
That is less true in Korea. So when you combine those, there is a much stronger sense among women that marriage is a bad deal for them than there is in the United States. And it's because of those issues. Got it. So it is a little different for South Korea. What is the pushback that you're receiving for this book, if any? Oh, not a lot. Let me think. I mean, so far, not a lot of criticism from the left yet.
Generally, when I engage people on Twitter, they say, oh, there's nothing the government can do to help people get married. Or the government shouldn't be choosing your husband and wife for you. The government should be trying to help. And my point to them is like, look, there's a lot of stuff the government already does that pushes you away from marriage. Right. All I'm saying is we need to get rid of that. I think from more of my conservative friends, it's more of.
Not acknowledging the role that religion plays in promoting marriage. In the sense that, I mean, I think it's somewhat. You know, the fourth chapter in the book is all about how the Catholic Church changed the world history. by bringing monogamy back through its marriage and family program. So I think when you have the Catholic Church as basically the star of the story.
It's hard to say that you're ignoring religion, but they do have a point in the sense that there is a lot of research out there showing that those people that are religious, those people that do go to church, do have stronger marriages. are less likely to get divorced um etc so it does appear that and you were talking earlier about um you know you were so atomized when you when you when you came to
And of course, church acts as a bulwark against that. If you were of a certain faith, you could come into a community and just have a whole network of people that would be dying to help you with your young kid. The book doesn't touch on those instances where religion helps as a way to both kind of guide people, guide young people into marriage as something you should do and then also support. young people once they are.
And so I have my own reasons for why that I didn't address that in the book. But I think that is fair criticism that I didn't touch on a religion's role today in both pushing young people towards marriage and supporting. their decision to do so interesting well I really love this topic. I hope that the book does well. I think it's fascinating. And I hope that, I don't know, I get so much.
You know, I do think that women have been sold a bit of a bill of goods that that like you're empowered. You don't need a man. You don't need a man. And you don't need to. And, you know. I lived independently for a long time and I don't need a man per se, but now I outsource like 80% of my brain to him.
I feel like there are all these memes on Instagram where it's like me just walking through the airport while my husband is like looking around and making sure that everything's good. And you're like, I'm just outsourcing all of my but there is and he does that to and certain things in our house with me and
I think that's the beautiful thing about marriage. Well, I'm a fan. You don't write a book about how marriage saved all of civilization and brought in modernity if you don't love your wife and enjoy marriage. Yeah. But, you know, I mean. There's a lot of kind of biological elements in the book. And at the end of the day, we are creatures that have... strong needs for physical and emotional intimacy. They aren't as immediate as our need to drink water, our need to have food, but they're there.
And when those are not met, we are miserable people. And the best way to meet those physical and emotional intimacy needs. is through a monogamous relationship. And marriage is the best institution that delivers that. And so once that starts breaking down, people's basic needs aren't being met and the entire society suffers. i think that's where we are right now unfortunately Well, what is your biggest defect of character?
My biggest defect of character? Yes. Now we're going to make it about you. Oh, wonderful. I wish I had prepared for this. Now I like to surprise people. Oh, great. My biggest defect of character. What would your wife say? Well, probably leaving the toilet seat. That's not that bad. No, you know, I think, you know, I. you can definitely say i'm i'm you know can be lazy sometimes um so funny to me writers always say this and i'm like you wrote an
A book, like a whole book. And writers often say laziness. Well, it's probably because all authors know how long they spent in front of the screen. It's the procrastination. Yes. Yes. What's your biggest asset? i would say my open-mindedness i i i you know i think i i um my parents were both uh kind of you know left the center democrats uh but i ended up on the right um and uh you know
They very much always instilled in me to keep my mind open and be open to other ideas. And I think they may regret it since I'm now a conservative. Ultimately, I think I'm thankful for it. How did you end up on the right coming from the left? Oh, you know, I don't know if I was ever, I mean, I was definitely, you know, raised in a staunchly Democratic household. Like my parents definitely hated Reagan and the Republicans. Absolutely.
You know, growing up in the early 90s, Bay Area, you know, it wasn't as woke and crazy as it is now, but, you know, it was woke and crazy at the time. You had Ebonics going on, and that's just a terrible way to learn to read. You had the Rodney King riots and then the O.J. Simpson verdict. And, you know, just had a number of, you know,
law and order elements where it's just like, no, we need to, you know, not have people writing. And, you know, for as imperfect as the cops are, we need them to, you know, keep us safe. And then, you know, you just have a larger kind of intellectual journey from there. I would say I was kind of more libertarian at some point than than I am now. But. you know, mostly from that kind of...
reaction to Bay Area liberalism of the 90s. I think you can push a number of people to the right, just as the wokeness of all kinds of institutions you know on university is pushing young men to the right now yes i think i think that's kind of how i came to it interesting Well, this has been a pleasure. It flew by. We've been talking for almost an hour and... and a half going on. So I don't want to take up too much of your time. Where can we find you and your book?
Absolutely. Amazon, it's Sex and the Citizen, the Assault on Marriages, Join Democracy. And then I'm on Twitter way too much, at ConCarol. Aren't we all on that site way too much, Con? Unfortunately, unfortunately, yes. But I think there's worse habits to have. So as far as procrastinating habits. I think Twitter stores, it could be worse. I could be on FanDuel all the time. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I have such a love-hate relationship with that.
platform because i've i've struggled with being addicted to it for now over a decade i think Yeah. I mean, I followed you on there for, yeah, probably over a decade. I mean, you've been posting on there since the Playboy days, right? Yep. Mm-hmm. If I don't follow you, I need to. And I apologize if I don't. And okay, well.
I hope that you worked as well. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking to me about it. I love this. Anytime. And you're welcome back anytime. And if you're ever in Austin, please let me know. The check-in with Bridget and Cousin Maggie can now be found at Phetasy.com. It's been titled Another Round with Bridget Phetasy, and it's now in video. This has been Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy. I'm Bridget Phetasy. That's the dumbest line.