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The &#8220;Call Her Daddy&#8221; podcast empire is built on intellectual deceit, teaching that promiscuity is freedom and that a woman’s prime years should be spent mastering how to manipulate men sexually instead of discerning dating and marriage. It’s no wonder that the company’s internal dynamics reflect the toxicity of the propaganda that’s been peddled since the beginning.
Several young women who once idolized Alex Cooper and her vision for a feminist media company are now disillusioned after working for her directly. In an incriminating report published by <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/story/alex-coopers-mean-girl-problem?srsltid=AfmBOorY6lCSPQ3a8w4vrU2eSaMbdjgpciSDP2v1nIx24u9E--4wTpgk">Vanity Fair</a>, sources that include over 20 former and current employees of the Unwell Network, the parent organization of popular podcast &#8220;Call Her Daddy,&#8221; revealed that the sisterhood was not at all what it was marketed to be. While maintaining a public boss-babe image, Cooper allegedly deferred to her domineering husband on business matters and managing personnel. Instead of encouragement, verbal abuse and boundary-crossing were what the female staff said they experienced. 
But why would they expect to get professional nurturing from Cooper? Right from <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WeScBow0GCkh4eCN0Uw9f">episode one</a>, titled “Sext Me So I Know It’s Real,” Cooper sets up a relationship with her listeners that is sabotage masquerading as mentorship. To be fair, the show&#8217;s description says of its cohosts: “In their 20s, the two exploit the f*ck out of their lives, making you feel a hell of a lot better about yours.” It was a bit like reality TV but with some self-awareness, in which the actors know they are making fools of themselves for your entertainment value. No doubt they drummed up the provocative outbursts — such as “you’re just a hole” — to generate more buzz. 
But at what point does it go from being titillatingly weird content that’s hard to tune out of — like Alex Jones for sex and dating — to ideas you start to take seriously and internalize? Cooper often spoke in a paternalistic way, literally, to her loyal fans with her signature opening catchphrase, “What is up daddy gang, it is your founding father!”
After co-host Sofia Franklyn’s unceremonious exit from the podcast following the pair’s separation from Barstool Sports, Cooper tried to adapt the show into something more sophisticated, in theory. She appeared to be aiming for a millennial version of &#8220;The Ellen DeGeneres Show,&#8221; giving hot celebrities the safe space to spill their secrets. In reality, the only thing that changed was the aesthetics — boucle chairs and a proper microphone instead of a fratty corner office set-up. The same problematic topics persisted, whether it was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSThWkhtYqw">threesomes</a>, blackmail in the context of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJ6Li8_fXg">orgies and escorts</a>, or the joys of single parenthood from a wealthy guest for whom the cost of childcare is immaterial. It mainly only matured in the sense that the horrible advice was in glossier packaging. But even if Cooper thought she had achieved the rebrand of the century, that doesn’t excuse the degenerate level she stooped to to get the show to take off. 
When the show declared in an early episode, “If you’re a 5 or 6, die for that d*ck,” the implication was that women of average attractiveness by contemporary standards should overcompensate with their bedroom skills to keep a partner&#8217;s interest. Cooper and Franklyn provided a lesson on how to go through a significant other’s phone in search of evidence of impropriety. In another episode, they warned their audience that if they’re not performing oral sex on their man, “someone else is.” For practical application, they described in the seminal “Gluck Gluck 9009” episode a technique that is “every man&#8217;s kryptonite.” 
Does this sound like a cute trust circle or like a cult leader stoking fear in women that their sexual prowess is their only hope of keeping a man’s attention, which is likely divided among other women anyway? 
Some of their advice is just laughably contradictory, but no less insidious. In episode 24, they talked about “how to cheat or catch a cheater.” How can you advance both positions simultaneously? You wouldn’t need to learn how to catch a cheater, which they imply is nefarious enough that it’s worth doing detective work to uncover, if cheating were in short supply in our culture. But here they were, giving step-by-step instructions on how to commit infidelity. This hamster wheel logic, like most of the show’s themes, was the opposite of empowering.
In episode 28, the hosts addressed faking pregnancies. The show had a baseline premise that most men are only seeking out sexual satisfaction, so the smartest strategy women can adopt is to weaponize their sexual nature to maximize their own pleasure and make mischief along the way. In the creators’ worldview, living among men is not about friendship or courtship but a game where there are only winners and losers. And winning, in the spirit of Samantha Jones in &#8220;Sex and the City,&#8221; meant achieving the best sex and then discarding the man before he could discard you. 
It’s hard to quantify the aggregate harm such a message has on the trust between young women and men in society today. If I were a young man, knowing that so many young women are disciples of a show that explicitly tells them men can’t be trusted so they have to be played, I would stay far, far away. 
Then there’s the matter of the message just not comporting with scientific reality, that women chemically bond to men during sex, making casual affairs almost impossible. Cooper and Franklyn seemed to acknowledge this truth, while insisting to women that they had to figure out how to fight it, in <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SW2sFSepDwCXOKRJHWksm">episode 30</a> where they “discuss the tricky art of how to not catch feelings…” What if you’re supposed to catch feelings for the person you’re intimate with, according to biology? The most prudent advice is to secure commitment as the price of that intimacy, so that the woman is not left with the bag, emotionally.
Some of the disgruntled Unwell staff reported that their interactions with Cooper’s husband were suggestive and uncomfortable. Again, how is this unusual, given the show’s history? In episode 23 titled, “Cuckolding, Everyone’s Doing It,” Cooper and Franklyn shared “a technology hack to help you get away with murder or better yet, cheating!” If anything, Kaplan was just being consistent, taking cues from the show’s legitimization of <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@callherdaddy/video/7508828899451620654">open relationships</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujo2BHqx0PY">polyamory</a>. Their entire business model was trafficking in engagement on raunchy stories that do the opposite of dignifying women or men. The show didn’t inspire better behavior on the part of either gender; it brought both down to new lows.
A common conservative argument since Cooper got married and pregnant has been that she pursued the most tried-and-true paths to sustained human happiness while offering her audience garbage dressed up as candy, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/alex-cooper-told-women-to-delay-settling-down-now-shes-having-the-fairytale-ending">epitome</a> of a luxury belief. Cooper defends: What’s wrong with “having fun” in your 20s and then settling down in your 30s? But &#8220;Call Her Daddy&#8221; was not merely about having fun; it perpetuated a degrading hookup culture that leaves scars more than it builds character. Gender relations and happiness levels were <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-sexual-history-affect-marital-happiness">better</a> when sex was still something reserved for a one-and-only, something sacred. Based on the Vanity Fair story, it seems the couple behind Unwell is surrounded by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/alex-coopers-reported-marriage-woes-spotlight-trend-stars-sleeping-apart-from-bette-midler-kaley-cuoco">moral and marital trouble</a>. I imagine it’s hard to be a part of an operation like that without it finding you. 
They made their bed; now they have to lie in it. 
***
Caroline Downey is a columnist and video personality at National Review. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and a 2025-2026 Novak fellow with the Fund for American Studies.

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There is good news about fatherhood in America today: dads are more engaged in their kids’ lives than ever, a fact heralded by scholars, advocates, and journalists. The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson <a href="https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-do-richer-dads-spend-more-time">saluted</a> dads who “became the parents their fathers never were.” Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/what-gender-war">points</a> to how men “have massively increased the amount of childcare” they are doing. Noting the time that married fathers are devoting to their families has tripled since the 1960s, the Institute for Family Studies’ Lyman Stone <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/american-dads-rock-fathers-are-doing-more-at-home-than-ever">put it</a> this way: “American Dads Rock.”
But there is also sobering news to report on the fatherhood front. Fewer young men are becoming fathers at all — we are seeing the rise of what might be called the “Vanishing Father.” In fact, a big reason that today’s dads look so good is that fatherhood has become much more selective, increasingly concentrated among men with the <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x4j79_v2">financial resources</a>, social capital, or cultural commitments that make family formation a possibility and a priority. The ranks of the childless, meanwhile, are surging among younger, less-educated, liberal, and secular men.
In fact, the share of men in their prime family-building years (25-45) who are fathers has fallen from two-thirds in 1980 to 53% in 2024. This means that almost 1 in 2 men in this group are not dads. It also means that the number of men ages 25-45 who are childless has risen from 10 million in 1980 to 23 million in 2024, a record high.
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<div id="attachment_1119095" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119095" class="size-full wp-image-1119095" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
This Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report spotlights the growing share of men who are not crossing the threshold into fatherhood, the ways age, class, and culture shape entry into fatherhood today, and the likely consequences of declining family formation among men for them and the nation. We draw on the General Social Survey (GSS), a decades-long survey of American adults run by NORC at the University of Chicago. For this analysis, we focus on American men ages 25 to 45. Data from the Human Fertility Collection suggests that over 80% of births are fathered by men between these ages. While the average age at childbirth is rising, and many men are delaying fatherhood, fertility data suggests younger cohorts will see higher rates of childlessness. We include younger men in our sample to see which groups are most likely to be affected by these projected declines in fatherhood.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Age</h3>
Declines are most prominent among younger men. Whereas the majority of men ages 25–35 were fathers in the 1980s, just 38% are today. Part of this story is delayed parenthood. The average age of new fathers has been rising for decades, alongside that of women.
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<div id="attachment_1119097" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119097" class="size-full wp-image-1119097" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
But delayed fatherhood isn’t the whole story. An analysis of the latest birth rate trends by IFS senior fellow Lyman Stone suggests that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/1-in-4-projecting-childlessness-among-todays-young-women">1 in 4 young women today</a> will never have children, up from the 15% historic baseline. This dramatic rise in childlessness will be paralleled among today’s young men.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Education</h3>
Historically, men in their prime family building years without a college degree were much more likely to be fathers than their college-educated peers. In the 1980s, 70% of men between 25 and 45 who did not have a bachelor’s degree were fathers, compared to just 53% of those with a higher degree. Today, 57% of men between ages 25-45 without a college degree are fathers, a 13-percentage-point decrease from the 1980s. Although less-educated men are still more likely to be fathers, they have seen larger declines than the college-educated. The share of college-educated men who are dads has only fallen by 8 percentage points.
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<div id="attachment_1119099" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119099" class="size-full wp-image-1119099" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
Over the past few decades, the connection between marriage and fatherhood has also changed among working-class men. In the 1980s, the vast majority of working-class dads were married: 58% of less-educated men between ages 25 and 45 were married fathers — just 12% were unmarried with children. But unmarried fatherhood has risen since then, while married fatherhood has declined for this group of men. Today, 34% of working-class men between ages 25 and 45 are married fathers, and 23% are unmarried fathers.
By contrast, unmarried fatherhood remains just as rare among well-educated men today, at just 6%, as it was in the 1980s, at 5%. This means that declines in fatherhood among college-educated men are almost entirely declines in married fatherhood.
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<div id="attachment_1119103" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119103" class="size-full wp-image-1119103" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Ideology</h3>
Class disparities in family formation get plenty of coverage. But today, cultural factors — ideology especially — are stronger predictors of entry into fatherhood than class. Using the latest GSS data, we find that just 37% of liberal men ages 25–45 are fathers, compared to 62% of their conservative peers. That 25-percentage-point gap dwarfs the 12-point gap between college-educated and less-educated men.
The divergence has widened sharply over time. Liberal men have seen fatherhood rates fall 21 percentage points since the 1980s — down from 58% — while fatherhood among conservative men has declined only 7 percentage points. When it comes to predicting which men are becoming fathers today, culture looks more determinative than class.
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<div id="attachment_1119107" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119107" class="size-full wp-image-1119107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
There is little difference between married and unmarried fatherhood across ideological lines. We find that, today, 68% of liberal fathers between ages 25 and 45 are married, compared to 72% of conservative fathers. These differences are statistically insignificant. It should be noted that conservative men have seen a substantial increase in unmarried fatherhood since the 1980s, rising from 1 in 10 to around 1 in 4 fathers ages 25 to 45.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Religiosity</h3>
Religiosity, measured by religious attendance, is another strong predictor of who is a father in America today. The latest data shows that 64% of men between the ages of 25 and 45 who frequently attend religious services are fathers. Just half of secular men in that age range have children. Both groups, notably, have seen similar declines in fatherhood in recent years.
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1119113" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
<h3 class="p4">Men Without a Mission</h3>
After surveying dozens of cultures, the anthropologist Margaret Mead concluded that masculinity is not a natural state but a social accomplishment. Cultures had to work hard to channel men’s talents, energies, ambitions, and interests in prosocial directions. In <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lWWHQgAACAAJ&amp;dq=mead,+male+and+female&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjqifXL0pPWAhViYpoKHfPjAEEQ6AEIMzAC">Male and Female</a>, published in 1949, she further argued that fostering prosocial masculinity was inseparable from family life — because “every known human society rests firmly on the learned nurturing behavior of men.” So long as it is tied into the fabric of family life, fatherhood, in her view, gives men something few other institutions can: a clear mission in life.
Half a century later, Nobel laureate George Akerlof made a similar case from economics. In his 1998 paper “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/108/447/287/5128553">Men Without Children</a>,” he concluded that without the responsibility and commitment that marriage and fatherhood demand, men often tend to drift — toward atomization, idleness, and higher rates of crime and substance abuse. Recently, USC psychologist Darby Saxbe <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/opinion/dad-brain-health-fatherhood.html">put</a> the positive case well in the New York Times: engaged fatherhood cultivates in men “strength coupled with a willingness to look out for the young and vulnerable, to teach but also listen, to lead by example, to tackle daunting challenges and to persevere with grit.”
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<div id="attachment_1119117" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119117" class="size-full wp-image-1119117" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
There is no question that some men do not seem to require the disciplines of family and fatherhood to thrive — work, or sport, or faith is enough to orient these male lives in meaningful and fulfilling ways. But contemporary research confirms the wisdom of Akerlof, Mead, and Saxbe: for most men, life is better when it is grounded in family and fatherhood. Men without children are typically living lives that are <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ageing-and-society/article/childlessness-and-social-and-emotional-loneliness-in-middle-and-later-life/E412E2A2FAAA5AC4F0A0EDE5EA35CC0F">lonelier</a>, less <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250387523/dadbrain/">purposeful</a>, and less happy than their peers who are engaged fathers — most typically in the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-wang-fatherstimebrief-oct2023-1.pdf">context</a> of marriage. Indeed, there is no question that married fathers are the happiest men in America today — they are more than twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives, compared to their peers who are childless and unmarried.
The evidence, in short, suggests that separating men from marriage and family is bad for men — and, likely, bad for the country. That’s because such men are significantly more likely to succumb to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-024-09699-2">idleness</a>, <a href="https://sampson.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum1841/files/sampson/files/2006_criminology_laubwimer_1.pdf">crime</a>, and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231241275429">deaths</a> of <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/married-people-are-living-their-best-lives">despair</a>. And if current trends hold, it is younger, less-educated, liberal, and secular men who will pay the steepest price for the rise of the Vanishing American Father.
***
This is republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-vanishing-american-father-more-men-are-opting-out-of-fatherhood">here</a>.
Grant Bailey is a Research Fellow and IFS Insights Editor at the Institute for Family Studies.
Brad Wilcox is Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Professor of Sociology and Director of the <a href="https://nationalmarriageproject.org/">National Marriage Project</a> at the University of Virginia, Future of Freedom Fellow and Director of the Get Married Initiative at the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/">Institute for Family Studies</a>, and a nonresident senior fellow at the <a href="https://www.aei.org/">American Enterprise Institute</a>.

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***
If your only perspective on conservative women and family life comes from buzzy books such as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-book-that-treats-traditional-wives-like-the-enemy">the bestselling novel “Yesteryear,”</a> which paints a portrait of traditional families as hypocritical and deeply dysfunctional, you’d think conservative women must be miserable in their marriages.
Your view would be further cemented if you read mainstream outlets such as the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/critics-at-large/the-trap-of-the-trad-wife">New Yorker </a>(“The Trap of the Trad Wife”) or <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/young-women-leaving-maga-new-right.html">New York magazine</a> (“The Young Women Leaving the New Right”). This perspective would only be confirmed if you read Helen Lewis’ new cover <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/06/conservative-masculinism-misogyny/686939/">story</a> in The Atlantic, “The Men Who Want Women To Be Quiet,” featuring Lewis’ notes from her conversations with a handful of (largely) right-wing male social media influencers. Some of the men came across as boorish and intellectually silly, from suggesting women should lose the right to vote to openly mocking them.
While annoying, none of this is particularly shocking. Each person Lewis interviewed could be fairly described as an influencer — the shock jocks of the internet age. In other words, these were not exactly shadowy power brokers about to repeal the 19th amendment whose views required “unearthing.” As far as we can tell, these men are literally talking all the time to just about anyone who will listen.
To be fair, we know some are listening. One of us authors (Brad), a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, has watched a growing share of his male Gen Z students take a sharp right turn on gender — and yes, some of them are following the kind of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-real-reason-young-men-are-flocking-to-the-manosphere">manosphere</a> men that worry Lewis. Some tradwife influencers — Lauren Southern among them — have had terrible experiences with the most extreme, internet-driven versions of this lifestyle.
But the misogynists are in the minority on the Right. Nevertheless, Lewis&#8217;s message in The Atlantic was clear: These right-wing troglodytes are ascendant, men whining online about disenfranchising women belong to the same movement as those rolling back DEI overreach, and women everywhere should regard these men as a mortal threat.
But when you get offline, into the real world, and look at what we might call Normie Land, where men and women are choosing to live, work, and build actual families together, things usually look a lot better on the Right — and, actually, the Left too. For those of us who have worked our way through serious or minor differences, or found a way to live with them, things look much better than the online Gender War between the Right and Left would suggest.
We who live here are, apparently, the silent majority: neither convinced of one sex’s moral superiority or the other’s inherent inferiority, yet fully convinced that we are all, equally, lovely and annoying. Far from fearing, avoiding, or hating the opposite sex, we deliberately live with them: We are the Normie Marrieds, and we’re doing pretty well. Better than most, actually.
For example, last year, we at the Institute for Family Studies, in partnership with the Wheatley Institute, found that the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/press-release/married-moms-twice-as-likely-to-be-very-happy-than-single-or-childless-women" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/press-release/married-moms-twice-as-likely-to-be-very-happy-than-single-or-childless-women&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ocql4F7Y-QuxfiftJ_fKF">happiest women in America are married mothers</a>. All married women, with or without children, were more likely to report being “very happy” than their unmarried peers.
Other research has found an even stronger link between marriage and happiness for men: Husbands are <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-marriage-is-good-for-men" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-marriage-is-good-for-men&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2oHlPUukFUcmIHgRbpXwLh">almost twice as likely to say</a> they are “very happy” with their lives as unmarried men. Married fathers <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3MQZb95a3bZXm84eUFd8o2">seem to have</a> an additional happiness advantage.
<div id="attachment_1103543" style="width: 392px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1103543" class=" wp-image-1103543" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-300x202.png" alt="" width="382" height="257" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-300x202.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-856x576.png 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-768x517.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-1536x1034.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/img-e90cfc8d-090e-4fe8-b577-95bbc4772106-2048x1378.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 382px) 100vw, 382px" />Institute for Family Studies</div>
It gets even more shocking: Marital happiness is high across the ideological divide. New <a href="https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=4271" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/insights?id%3D4271&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1GId8nu116sEBL1-3_d2wp">research</a> from the Institute for Family Studies shows that among married American women, the happiest are those who identify either as clearly “conservative” or “liberal” — in other words, strong worldview convictions on both sides of the aisle are correlated to happier marriages. That means conservative couples — yes, those whom Helen Lewis might lump into the same category as her anti-woman influencers — are some of the happiest, just as liberal American couples are happy.
We hypothesize this finding suggests that marriages in which spouses have high, clear expectations of intention and involvement in family life from each other — often for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/opinion/sunday/happy-marriages.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/opinion/sunday/happy-marriages.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0zAqM91NfWup2PSO8BBooT">feminist</a> reasons on the Left and <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/get-married-brad-wilcox?variant=43991601676322" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.harpercollins.com/products/get-married-brad-wilcox?variant%3D43991601676322&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0wSLZC2GMDClmo9NzsraNQ">religious</a> reasons on the Right — tend to build successful relationships.
It brings to mind an incisive bit of marriage counseling from the late evangelical pastor Tim Keller. He <a href="https://x.com/timkellernyc/status/1428721989620015110" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/timkellernyc/status/1428721989620015110&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779891208954000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0CPWGxrawK_l1VNMcjXIRT">wrote,</a> “If each spouse says to the other, ‘I will treat my selfishness as the main problem in the marriage,’ you have the prospect for great things.” The advice carries: Humility is the antidote not just to marital strife, but the perfect opposite of the fear-based, blame-obsessed gender war that is being stirred up by actors on the Right and Left.
Despite the noise from women-phobic men on the Right, and the overwrought &#8220;investigations&#8221; of them on the Left, we American men and women who manage to build relationships — sometimes across real ideological and political differences — remain the happiest and healthiest. That’s why we ought to continue to encourage younger generations to get off their devices, drop extremist gender takes (“men are toxic,” “women should lose the vote”), mix and mingle with a wide range of peers, date people who don’t align with them 100% on every issue, and then find their way to the altar with someone who would be a good friend and a great spouse.
Real life isn’t the gender-based fear and hatred we often see manifested in the online Gender War; it’s the steady contentedness men and women find talking across the kitchen counter. This is the place where many Normies — yes, including happily married conservative women! — are making marriages and families. It’s cozy in here.
***
Maria Baer is a contributing editor at the Institute for Family Studies. Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, is senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Happy groom piggybacking bride in vineyard during sunset

The ‘Trad Wife’ Panic Is Running Into One Big Problem

Gender

The manosphere is <a href="https://rationalmale.substack.com/p/what-is-the-sexual-marketplace?r=30rvnp&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;triedRedirect=true">full of distortions and caricatures about the science</a> of evolutionary psychology: alpha males who dominate sexual activity, enabled by online dating apps; women whose sole interest in men is their capacity to provide financially; men whose only interest is in large numbers of very young sexual partners; women who marry men as providers (betas) but then have affairs with alpha males, and so on.
Alas, sometimes, evolutionary psychologists themselves seem to actively enable these caricatures. A recent paper by Mads Larsen and colleagues, published in <a href="https://www.scilit.com/publications/60117189b430a3a76783c5a605c1c7d8">Politics and the Life Sciences</a>, illustrates this tendency. While the authors make some valid points about sex differences, their psychological understanding needs to be supplemented with knowledge of the current empirical realities of marriage and the family in rich developed countries.
Individualistic Reproduction
Larsen and colleagues argue that extremely low fertility rates in developed societies — despite women’s continued desire for children — are due to the interaction of women’s economic empowerment, the availability of effective contraception, and evolved sex differences in mate preferences. These factors in combination have increased the tendency of women to reject the least desirable men as long-term mates, leaving many women (and men) unable to find a long-term partner.
The authors further suggest that dating apps exacerbate this dynamic: a small number of attractive men receive disproportionate attention, while many women are inundated with offers from men they find undesirable. At the same time, dating apps enable the most attractive men to “play the field” and not commit to the women they date. Reliable contraception facilitates both men and women following short-term mating strategies, which leaves many without a committed long-term partnership. Because women can now support themselves and their children independently — through either their own earnings or welfare provisions — the need for male parental investment has declined, further incentivizing women to follow a short-term mating strategy where they seek the most attractive male partners with “good genes” rather than male partners who would be reliable long-term providers.
Their rather startling conclusion is that the best way to increase fertility rates in modern societies is to facilitate childbearing outside of long-term partnerships. They write:
<blockquote>
If post-pair bonding nations like Norway are to significantly raise their fertility rate, we believe politicians must be far bolder and more innovative, and consider preparing for the future by funding limited experiments to boost — and learn what is required to motivate — single parenthood.
</blockquote>
They propose policies such as expanded support for single parents, round-the-clock child care for women, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World">Brave New World</a>-type solutions such as “state sponsored surrogacy for single men who want to become fathers” and “artificial wombs” to allow childless men to have children without female help.
What the Authors Get Right
At the core of Larsen and colleagues’ argument is that there are sex differences in mate preferences, a point that has merit. The finding that women are choosier about partners than men, on average, is <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103408">well documented in the evolutionary psychology literature</a>. The reason for this is that female fixed biological costs in pregnancy, childbearing, and child raising are much greater than male fixed biological costs. Because of this sex difference, over evolutionary time, women who were careful about choosing mates who were both willing and able to parent their children were more likely to have surviving offspring, leading to the selection of traits for greater choosiness and a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/sex-differences-in-human-mate-preferences-evolutionary-hypotheses-tested-in-37-cultures/0E112ACEB2E7BC877805E3AC11ABC889">preference for reliable providers</a>. Additionally, their argument that the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/making-good-men-harder-to-find-how-changing-wealth-inequality-affects-marriage-patterns">economic empowerment of women in developed countries is making it more difficult for low-status men to find long-term mates</a> also has some validity.
What the Authors Get Wrong
Beyond these points, however, the authors’ argument falters — largely because it overlooks contemporary sociological realities.
First, in all developed societies today, it is the highest-status men with the most financial resources who are most likely to marry and have children, and the least likely to divorce. This research on data from the U.S. shows that men in the highest income category are about 57 percentage points more likely to ever marry than men in the lowest income category, and about 37 percentage points less likely to divorce. Moreover, contrary to the manosphere claim that such men are merely income-providing “betas” whom women settle for while pursuing affairs with “high genetic quality alphas,” <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/on-internet-dating-sites-women-prefer-men-with-higher-incomes-and-more-education">data from online dating sites show that it is highly educated, high-income men who attract the most attention from women</a>, and thus presumably would be best able to follow a short-term mating strategy if they chose to do so. If dating apps truly created unlimited opportunities for high-status men to avoid commitment, as some authors suggest, these men should be the least likely to marry and the most likely to divorce. In fact, the opposite is true. The strategy of maximizing the number of sexual partners appears to characterize only a relatively small and atypical minority of men. Further, this evidence also suggests that women are using dating apps primarily to pursue long-term, reliable mates, and are not switching to pursuing short-term mates to the extent Larsen and colleagues argue.
Similarly, it is now the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-marriage-how-breadwinning-matters-for-both-men-and-women-today">highest-income young women with the most access to resources who are most likely to marry</a> and have children (and they tend to marry high-income men). Assortative long-term mating is well-established, and the trend has become more pronounced in the last 50 years. By the authors’ logic, women with their own resources should be least likely to marry and stay married because they would be best able to live independently, but this is not what we see.
Second, declining fertility and marriage rates cannot be attributed to women’s empowerment alone, a point that Larsen and his coauthors themselves acknowledge. Other factors — including rising housing costs, cultural shifts, and widening educational gaps between men and women — play substantial roles. Public policy matters as well. For example, in Sweden, as documented by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00324728.2022.2134578">Martin Kolk</a>, the transfers to women who have children enable them to take family leave and stay home to care for their kids. It does not enable women to work more hours, as women with the most children work the fewest hours over the course of their lives. High-status women are more likely to marry and have children, but this is largely because they enter motherhood with stable, high-status careers they can retain after having children, thanks to generous parental leave policies. This is government subsidization of female employment, which leads to more women working than would otherwise be the case. At the same time, these benefits in practice tend to advantage higher-status couples, effectively redistributing resources upward and likely exacerbating the difficulties lower-status men and women face in forming stable unions.
Third, there is little evidence that one of their proposals for low fertility — “more generous support to women wanting to solo parent” — would be effective at raising fertility rates. Even in societies where state support for single parents is most generous, such as in contemporary <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-018-9492-2">Scandinavian countries</a>, lower-status women are more likely to forgo childbearing altogether than to have children outside stable partnerships. If women generally favored raising children independently with genetically “desirable” partners, such patterns would be unlikely to emerge.
Further, the promotion of single parenthood is a poor solution to low fertility because substantial evidence shows that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/family-structure-matters-for-rich-kids-too">stable, two-biological-parent families provide the best outcomes for children on average</a>, including lower mortality, <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w33776">higher educational attainment, and greater adult earnings</a>.
Finally, Larsen and colleagues’ historical argument is also problematic. They suggest that arranged marriages in pre-industrial societies mitigated mismatches in mate preferences by overriding female choice. However, arranged marriage is primarily associated with agricultural societies, a relatively recent phase in human history. For <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Evolution-and-Gender-Why-It-Matters-for-Contemporary-Life/Hopcroft/p/book/9781138956162">the vast majority of human evolutionary history</a>, both men and women likely exercised choice in selecting partners. Indeed, the very existence of female choosiness implies that women historically had the agency to select mates; without such agency, there would have been no basis for this trait to be selected. Female selectivity and unequal mating outcomes for lower-status males are not novel phenomena but <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Evolution-and-Gender-Why-It-Matters-for-Contemporary-Life/Hopcroft/p/book/9781138956162">longstanding features of human societies</a>.
Men and Women Still Need Each Other
Thus, although sex differences in the choice of partners are a psychological reality, and women’s economic empowerment likely has promoted less marriage and lower fertility than in previous eras, Larsen and colleagues’ scenario of men and women pursuing short-term mating strategies as the primary reason for extremely low fertility overlooks the realities of marriage and parenthood in most developed societies. In fact, it is the men and women who are best able to pursue a short-term mating strategy and live independently without a long-term partner who are most likely to marry and have children.
The empirical evidence shows that most men and women today still find each other useful as long-term mates, and those who are successful at finding and keeping one are the most likely to have children who will be successful. The increased individualization of reproduction that the authors recommend is an unwelcome dystopian solution that is unlikely to be successful at improving reproductive outcomes at either the individual or societal level.
***
This is republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/lab-made-babies-wont-solve-the-fertility-crisis">here</a>.
Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Evolution and Gender: Why it matters for contemporary life (Routledge 2016), editor of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, &amp; Society (Oxford, 2018), and author (with Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber) of Not So Weird After All: The Changing Relationship Between Status and Fertility (Routledge, 2024).

New parents watching babies in hospital nursery

Love, Marriage, And A Baby Carriage

Fertility crisis

Leave it to the bloodthirsty, despotic mullahs running the totalitarian regime in Iran to turn the sacred institution of marriage into a grotesque assembly line for human shields.
On Monday, the Islamic Republic <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260519-iran-stages-mass-weddings-for-couples-ready-for-war-sacrifice">staged mass public weddings</a> across Tehran for hundreds of young couples. But this wasn’t a celebration of love or family; it was a sick, state-sponsored propaganda stunt designed to boost wartime morale. Under the shadow of a giant image of the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — who inherited power after his father was eliminated on day one of the war — couples arrived at Imam Hossein Square in military jeeps mounted with machine guns.
These couples were there to enlist in the regime&#8217;s twisted janfada (&#8220;self-sacrifice&#8221;) scheme. By signing up, these brainwashed or coerced newlyweds literally pledged to sacrifice their lives for the state — agreeing to form human chains outside targeted power stations to act as shields against potential U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. One bride, clad in a white Islamic dress, spoke to state media as if this madness were normal, saying, “Certainly, the country is at war, but young people also have the right to marry.”
The sheer desperation of this tyrannical regime is entirely on brand, as the regime views its own population as completely expendable. Just two months ago, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-sparks-international-outrage-turns-12-year-olds-into-expendable-tools-of-war?utm_source=chatgpt.com">officially lowered</a> the minimum age for military support roles to just 12 years old, deploying heavily armed, untrained children to roam the streets of Tehran with assault rifles.
The mullahs are pulling directly from their darkest, bloodiest playbook. During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime notoriously sent tens of thousands of children — some as young as 12 — into &#8220;human wave&#8221; attacks, handing them plastic &#8220;Keys to Paradise&#8221; before forcing them to detonate Iraqi minefields with their own bodies.
Now, facing a renewed existential threat from President Donald Trump, the regime is doing what it has always done: using the most vulnerable as meat shields. Whether it is 12-year-old boys at checkpoints or newlyweds in bridal gowns on the front lines, the survival of the dictatorship is all that matters to Tehran.

The Wedding Of SelfSacrificing Couples

Marriage As Martyrdom: Iran’s Mullahs Turn Newlyweds Into Human Shields

Iran

Millennials everywhere are letting out a collective &#8220;Feeny!&#8221; scream as news hits that the beloved &#8220;Boy Meets World&#8221; actor has an &#8220;open marriage&#8221; with his wife of nearly 75 years.
William Daniels, who played Mr. Feeny in the popular &#8217;90s coming-of-age sitcom, saw other people during his marriage, as did his wife, actress Bonnie Bartlett.
Now in her 90s, Bartlett discussed the arrangement with <a href="https://www.dailymail.com/tvshowbiz/article-15793313/william-daniels-bonnie-bartlett-marriage-hollywood.html">the Daily Mail</a>.
Bartlett explained that the pair &#8220;did go in different directions&#8221; early on in their marriage, but never formally discussed rules for the open marriage.
&#8220;There was never any discussion as to what we were going to do, but in 75 years, the two of you together, you know, it would be abnormal if you … weren&#8217;t attracted occasionally to other people,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;So there have been times, yeah, both of us, on both sides, yeah, and that is in the book,&#8221; the actress said. Bartlett released her memoir, &#8220;Middle of the Rainbow,&#8221; in 2023.
&#8220;It was non-spoken,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Bill and I never sit down and make rules. We never sit down and talk about these things. We just don&#8217;t. We just live our lives. And if he&#8217;s away for a year, he&#8217;s away for a year.&#8221;
&#8220;Our lives just went on, but we never got unhinged,&#8221; the 96-year-old continued. &#8220;We never got unhinged, but our lives did go in different directions occasionally.&#8221;
Fans of the show were quick to react to the news. For example, one account <a href="https://x.com/Howlingmutant0/status/2056457449490559485?s=20">posted</a>, &#8220;I got worried when I saw Mr Feeny from boy meets world was in the New York Post cause I thought he died but it turned out to be worse.&#8221;
&#8220;Oh no…Feeeney…Fah, Fah, Fah Feeny is a degenerate weirdo,&#8221; another account <a href="https://x.com/metathomist/status/2056502553911906727">commented</a>. 
Bartlett, who will celebrate her 75th wedding anniversary with Daniels in June, has previously discussed hardships the two have faced during their union, including the tragic death of their son. The child died just a day after his birth due to complications. Bartlett and Daniels went on to adopt two boys.
&#8220;That&#8217;s the best thing that ever happened to us,&#8221; she said of the adoption, during a 2024 interview. &#8220;And it happened after losing a child, after great pain and sadness, and then we got these two wonderful boys, and they have been a joy the whole marriage. I can&#8217;t imagine life without them.&#8221;

William Daniels Signs Copies “There I Go Again: How I Came To Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, And Many Others”

Internet Grossed Out By Beloved ‘Boy Meets World’ Actor’s ‘Open Marriage’

Hollywood

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Call her daddy? More like call her mommy. 
“Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper’s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DYcNSWLjsjV/?hl=en">pregnancy announcement</a> sent the internet into a frenzy — not because a woman is having a baby, but because this woman is. The host who built an empire telling young women to stay unattached, sleep around, and never apologize for it is now married, expecting, and apparently just fine with all of it. Critics cried hypocrisy. But are they right?
Now, I&#8217;m not here to defend Alex Cooper&#8217;s rhetoric, content, or influence over young women&#8217;s decision-making in any way, but I can&#8217;t help but notice that the criticism of her supposed anti-marriage, anti-motherhood stance misses the point.
Most criticisms surrounding Cooper’s announcement were that she “secretly” dated, decided to get married, and now is becoming a mother after she had told young women to be forever single. So much for a secret! Cooper announced her &#8220;intimate beachside wedding in the Riviera Maya&#8221; in <a href="https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/alex-cooper-and-matthew-kaplan-wedding">Vogue</a>. And her pregnancy announcement was foreshadowed by, ironically, a full episode titled, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TamkxdBiNyY">“I’m Not Ready For A Baby…”</a> in which she openly discussed trying to get pregnant with her husband Matt Kaplan, including going off birth control and questioning whether she was fertile, ultimately concluding the timing wasn&#8217;t right. Hardly the words of someone opposed to motherhood.
Cooper’s podcast has unashamedly encouraged young women to hook up with whomever they want, whenever they want, for however long they want. She has sold a young woman’s twenties as a time to explore any and all desires, party on, and not give an “eff” about what anyone else says. It’s the Samantha Jones philosophy for sex. But unlike the &#8220;Sex in the City&#8221; character, Cooper has chosen monogamy and motherhood — fortunately, as will many other girls who grew up listening to her bad advice.
Millennial women grew up in one of the most &#8220;sex-positive&#8221; moments in history, choosing to not align with traditional timelines for marriage or child-bearing and to &#8220;enjoy their youth&#8221; instead. But this doesn’t mean they’re not getting married or having kids, just like Cooper. Rather, women are delaying these milestones into their late-20s and 30s.
According to a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, Cooper’s pregnancy comes at a, dare I say, “normal” time in her life. Lyman Stone, who shared a study <a href="https://x.com/lymanstoneky/status/2056453849054167132?s=20">on X</a>, says this: 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
For a non-Hispanic white woman married to a non-Hispanic white man with no children prior to marriage where both have a college degree, 48% of first births were between ages 29 and 33.
Since virginity at ages 29-33 is a statistical minority, and even single-partneredness is, we…
— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) <a href="https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/2056453849054167132?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
If Cooper’s timeline isn’t exactly late, and even with her pro hook-up culture rhetoric, she still has the natural desire to get married and have kids, then some may argue, what’s the harm in all of this?
The reality is that women (and certainly men) are using their twenties to party and sleep around — and for some, it might even result in finding the right person. It did for Cooper. But the larger dilemma is that in the name of bodily autonomy, many women find themselves entering a life of adult adolescence, which delays these milestones for a larger portion of the population than in the past. Many women eventually find themselves asking: Where did I go wrong? When in reality, the choices they made may not have been shaping them into the kind of women men envision as &#8220;wifey material,” and leave them feeling like a shell of themselves.
There are many nuances to this theory, but what time cannot change is this: the standards are different for men and women. Society has encouraged young men to “sow their wild oats” and choose to settle down once they reach a place of financial stability that is enough to support a family. Women, on the other hand, even after decades of so-called “progress” and feminism, will still be called slanderous names for having multiple sexual partners.
In season 2 of &#8220;Sex and the City,&#8221; Carrie wrestles this truth: “If you’re a 30-something woman living in Manhattan and you refuse to settle and you’re sexually active, it’s inevitable that you’ll rack up a certain number of partners. But how many men is too many men? Are we simply romantically challenged — or are we sluts?”
The danger in Alex Cooper&#8217;s so-called advice and laissez-faire sexual philosophy is that although she may have ended up in the right place, the question remains: is it working out for the women who have listened to her? It may have for some, as many women desire marriage and motherhood even while playing the field. But for others, they&#8217;re left confused and wondering why, at 30 or older, they still can&#8217;t seem to find a husband.
The truth is, women still want these things, and they are very good things. The best, actually. And rather than empowering themselves by sleeping around like men — without emotion, detached, and &#8220;just for fun&#8221; — many women are turning up feeling left behind, unprepared, and diminished by choices they once thought were liberating. This is the real danger.
Alex Cooper&#8217;s story has a happy ending. The question worth asking is whether the philosophy she sold along the way leads other women to the same place, or leaves them stranded somewhere in the middle, wondering where the script went wrong. Empowerment that only works for the person selling it isn&#8217;t empowerment at all. Call her what you want. Just don&#8217;t call her a role model.
***
Isabella Redjai is a multimedia marketing and senior producer at the Manhattan Institute.

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Alex Cooper Told Women To Delay Settling Down. Now She’s Having The Fairytale Ending.

family

Pregnancy

Women

In 1960, nearly 85% of prime-age adults (those between 25 and 54) were married. Today, that figure has collapsed to roughly 54%.
However, the topline marriage data conceals that America’s marriage rate is propped up by immigrants. While 64% of foreign-born adults in America are married, fewer than 52% of native-born American adults are married. That&#8217;s a 12-point gap. Without the steady arrival of immigrants who still prioritize marriage, America&#8217;s marriage rate would be even lower and, consequently, so would the birth rate.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1094841" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1.jpg" alt="" width="1800" height="1336" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1-300x223.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1-776x576.jpg 776w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1-768x570.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/1-1536x1140.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px" /></div>
At first, one may think that immigrants are more likely to be married because many of them arrive through marriage. But two facts disprove this argument. First, there was no gap in the marriage rate between immigrants and natives as early as 1970. And second, when we divide immigrants by how old they were when they first came to the United States, it becomes clear that the younger immigrants are when they arrive in the United States, the more they look like the average American when it comes to marriage. Culture is driving the decline in marriage, and immigrants and their children are unfortunately assimilating into America’s low-marriage culture.
When you look only at immigrants who arrived in the United States before turning 18, and thus well before marriage-based immigration could explain their presence, they still marry at a higher rate than native-born Americans. But when you compare immigrants who arrived before age 10 to those who arrived as teenagers, the pattern is unmistakable: the more years an immigrant spends growing up in America, the less likely they are to ever marry. <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/the-vanishing-immigrant-marriage-advantage-how-assimilation-leads-to-fewer-marriages">The marriage gap</a> between native-born Americans and immigrants who arrived as young children has completely vanished this century.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1094845" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2.jpg" alt="" width="1800" height="1443" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2-300x241.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2-719x576.jpg 719w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2-768x616.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/2-1536x1231.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px" /></div>
This is what assimilation looks like, except in this case, it is a bad thing. Immigrants aren&#8217;t bringing some exotic disease called &#8220;low marriage rates&#8221; with them. They&#8217;re catching it in America.
It raises a question that should haunt every American who still believes families are the building blocks of a free society: What exactly are immigrants assimilating to?
The answer becomes even more disturbing when you look at the second generation, that is, the U.S.-born children of immigrants. Second-generation Americans grew up in households with two married parents under one roof at rates their native-born peers did not. They lived in <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w19843">neighborhoods</a> that were more likely to provide upward mobility, and they enjoyed unparalleled opportunity in the richest country on earth. By every reasonable theory of how culture is transmitted, they should be the strongest defenders of marriage.
Yet, they aren&#8217;t. The children of immigrants don&#8217;t just match the marriage rates of multigenerational Americans; they often underperform them.
Among college graduates, the children of immigrants are less likely to marry than college graduates whose families have been here for generations. The pattern holds across every major ethnic group: white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. The kids who grew up with married parents are now marrying at lower rates than the kids who didn&#8217;t.
After controlling for age, education, and ethnicity, Americans with one immigrant parent marry at a rate 3.3% less than their multigenerational peers. For Americans with two immigrant parents, the gap widens 4.8 percentage points. Whatever cultural advantage their parents brought from abroad reverses in a single generation.
The most striking case is among black Americans. Black immigrants marry at a higher rate than native-born blacks. While about 55% of black immigrants aged 35–39 are married, only 35% of native-born blacks are married at the same age. Yet second-generation black Americans marry at roughly the same rate as multigenerational native-born black Americans.
The same story repeats in every ethnic and educational subgroup. Approximately 85% of Asian immigrants in their late 30s are married — the highest rate of any subgroup studied, and consistent whether they have a college education or not. Yet only 63% of the American-born children of Asian immigrants get married: over a 20-point drop from the Asian immigrant rate. A similar phenomenon occurs in Hispanic immigrants&#8217; marriage prospects, which collapses to match native-born Hispanics in a single generation.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1094849" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3.jpg" alt="" width="1800" height="1486" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3-300x248.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3-698x576.jpg 698w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3-768x634.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/3-1536x1268.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px" />
So what are young Americans assimilating to? They&#8217;re assimilating to an American culture that increasingly treats marriage as optional and unnecessary. The children of immigrants are immersed in a culture saturated with messaging that careers come first, that commitment is risky, and that families are a &#8220;lifestyle choice&#8221; rather than the foundation of human flourishing.
The sad consequence of immigrant marriage assimilation is that the third generation won’t be as numerous or prosperous as the second. For defenders and detractors of immigration alike, this poses ironic challenges. Defenders of immigration often point to the fact that immigrants exhibit conservative values by being more likely to marry, but this doesn’t last. Opponents often say that immigrants don’t assimilate, but in this case, they do, however undesirable. If immigrants and their children marry less often, then they will have fewer children and should be less threatening to the native population in the eyes of opponents.
The decline of marriage isn&#8217;t mainly a story about economics, but one about culture. The children of immigrants are marrying less often than their peers whose families have been here for generations and whose parents were less likely to be married. Immigrants are assimilating into American marriage norms. Conservatives really shouldn’t want that to happen.
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Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an economist.

High angle view of husband and wife exchange vows and rings during their wedding ceremony.

The Marriage Crisis Is Worse Than You Think

Immigration

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Olivia Rodrigo, Gen Z pop sensation, was recently <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA83ff8680-7825-48b1-6a19-617e05a0c9af" href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/olivia-rodrigo-british-vogue-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/olivia-rodrigo-british-vogue-interview&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777580000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3w_Hh525UFKupsfjDPKaXx">asked</a> if she sees marriage as part of her near future. “What am I,” she quipped, “a child bride?” According to Rodrigo, “life is full of so much joy that is unrelated to a husband or kids.” Women agree. Only about a <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA28f0d5f7-a682-002c-3f0d-888af3973f15" href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/in-pursuit-marriage-motherhood-and-womens-well-being" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/in-pursuit-marriage-motherhood-and-womens-well-being&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777580000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1fmTZxzew7Q78cZBDyynFd">third</a> of them believe marriage makes a woman happier. Despite her edgy brand, Rodrigo isn’t a rebel in her apathy for marriage and children.
But Rodrigo is no pessimist. “That being said,” she continued, “I want to be a mom more than anything.” In one breath, Rodrigo shrugs off marriage and family anytime soon while affirming it as her heart’s desire. She isn’t alone. Research <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA16154a5d-cfb1-fdf1-6eae-92d3e4cc260b" href="https://aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/New-Trends-and-Enduring-Patterns-in-American-Family-Life.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/New-Trends-and-Enduring-Patterns-in-American-Family-Life.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777580000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0m1wkeI7Bz6g8B62j5_V0S">shows</a> that many young adults do not see marriage as realistic or desirable in their 20s, but they still imagine a future filled with family. People want marriage “sometime,” but they don’t want it now.
This is an unrealistically optimistic vision for a so-called anxious generation. Gen Z might be <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA602c065d-0d05-5b55-6f16-021ed2d29c85" href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/08/milestones-to-adulthood.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/08/milestones-to-adulthood.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777580000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1RVeb-fMmpuAdGHRI8iW8V">maturing</a> more slowly than previous generations, but they are grown enough to understand that babies aren’t delivered by stork. While marriage can be postponed, fertility — which peaks in a woman’s 20s and <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWAe0294086-6588-cce7-7b08-86e226a5c030" href="https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378%2817%2931107-9/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378%252817%252931107-9/fulltext&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Ru8ylyW3XM5qVKz5Q95zs">declines</a> gradually by the early 30s — cannot. As journalist Lisa Britton <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA3feed1dd-cd7e-6799-e259-0c217c7de486" href="https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/they-lied-to-us-about-having-it-all-and-it-s-costing-us-our-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/they-lied-to-us-about-having-it-all-and-it-s-costing-us-our-children&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P_g9RfxqOYXfejefmdWUZ">puts</a> it, “later” has a terrifying habit of becoming “never.”
Peddling a message that marriage and kids can wait sets people up for disappointment. Up to <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWAa2ee1875-11c8-8fed-9022-8e07db78b913" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618656/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618656/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0o2oY8E6JpVWngO3Fz89AZ">half</a> of women report at the end of their childbearing years that they wish they had more children. If motherhood is the heart’s desire of many women, unrealized fertility of this magnitude is nothing short of widespread heartbreak.
One woman <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/older-mom-parent-regret-wait-have-kids-prioritize-career-2024-3">wrote</a> for Business Insider that she regrets putting off children to prioritize her career. Leslie Dobson had her first child at 33 and used IVF for her second child at 38. “I still get sad,” she writes, “thinking about being 52 when my daughters graduate high school.”
Another woman was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business under the title “Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career.” Brigitte Adams <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWA30c3b130-f7ed-c522-7794-e9e5c6bfb977" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/01/27/feature/she-championed-the-idea-that-freezing-your-eggs-would-free-your-career-but-things-didnt-quite-work-out/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/01/27/feature/she-championed-the-idea-that-freezing-your-eggs-would-free-your-career-but-things-didnt-quite-work-out/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1hJFg0mEy1-R0NHsJt3_Sr">froze</a> her eggs in her late 30s and dedicated more time to building her career. She unfroze her eggs at 45. After using a sperm donor to conceive, Adams had six embryos. All of them failed. Upon this discovery, Adams screamed like a “wild animal” and collapsed to the ground.
The ache of unrealized fertility can’t be eradicated, but it can be lessened. Cultural influences should recognize the trade-offs our choices require. Some women will choose a future with more degrees and vacations and fewer children; others will choose a future with more children at the expense of career maximalism. But women should not be duped into believing that their <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWAed9840cc-4ccd-8d2d-61b0-ad1cdc31fda2" href="https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/40-is-not-the-new-fertile-heres-the-data-nobody-wants-to-show-you" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/40-is-not-the-new-fertile-heres-the-data-nobody-wants-to-show-you&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0y22CnM0r7YT4qP6xqTvnR">40s are “the new fertile”</a> or that marriage will make them lose their identity. Stories of women who waited too long should serve as a warning.
As Lisa Britton recently <a id="m_3792005810466347922m_-8281995869076015002OWAa616f0f4-623f-c18c-b06a-ad933ef54c35" href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/wilcox-is-right-a-warning-from-a-woman-who-waited-too-long" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/blog/wilcox-is-right-a-warning-from-a-woman-who-waited-too-long&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778595777581000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0ZjcqcNzln-Xrf1L00EDUe">wrote</a>: “I’m now in my late 30s, childless and unmarried. Sadly, I fear I’ve become the very figure younger women are warned about today: the cautionary tale of what happens when you put family on the back burner for too long.” Britton was sold the lie that career came first, and she’s paid the price for it. Many of her friends share the devastating experience of remaining childless in their 30s and 40s, and perhaps forever.
Rodrigo doesn’t have lifelong childlessness in mind. She struggles with the tension afflicting many young women: delaying marriage and motherhood despite wanting children. These women have been harmed most by messaging telling them to spend their most fertile years prioritizing everything other than marriage and children.
Those who want to be mothers “more than anything” should explain their reasons for the delay. Why wait on your heart’s desire? The problem is many women are frozen with fear: being childless scares them, but so does motherhood. Cultural messaging — such as the videos made by “the girl with the list,” who has curated a list of reasons not to have children — has made women terrified of motherhood. Choosing to get married and have children is not a question about what people value most, but what they fear most.
Women who desire motherhood but put it off should be warned, not frightened. When I got married at 21, people were critical. I was told I had “too much potential,” as if enjoying the greatest blessing life has to offer — lifelong love and companionship — is a waste.
At every turn, influences tried to inject me with fear. But the answer to fear is love, the glad assumption of risk. To love at all, C.S Lewis once said, is to be vulnerable. Those who are ruled by fear can never open themselves up to this. I chose to marry my husband not because remaining unmarried was scarier than early marriage, but because love triumphed over my fear.
Women who waited too long for marriage should lovingly warn others. But recognizing loss is different than letting it be our primary motivator. To use fear as fuel will cede power to the influences most capable of harnessing our emotions. Teaching people to be guided by fear is to turn them away from love, which casts out fear. A loveless culture will not become a pro-marriage culture; fear cannot be what drives people to choose what requires courage.
Our culture cannot define love. The closest we have is an empty tautology — love is love — which tells us nothing of the nature of what is being defined, much like the modern Left’s inability to define “woman.” Conservatives have the upper hand. We are the people who know what a woman is; we can also be the people who know what love is. That clarity is how we will win over the anxious generation.
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Liana Graham is a research assistant in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation.

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A Growing Number Of Women Are Quietly Admitting The Same Painful Thing

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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About <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/07/about-eight-in-ten-women-in-opposite-sex-marriages-say-they-took-their-husbands-last-name/">80% of married women</a> in America still take their husbands’ last names. Some, by simply dropping and replacing their maiden names. (I did this.) Others, by dropping their middle names and replacing those with their maiden names, and then adding the new last name. (This is quite popular among my friend set.) 
But this norm of a marital name change for women has long met with resistance from <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12147-017-9183-z">some feminists</a>, who claim that marriage should not uniquely entail a woman’s forfeiture of her “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/19/health/last-name-change-marriage-reasons-wellness/index.html">identity</a>.” Why can’t women just keep their names? Or, if sharing a name is an important aspect of an enduring marriage, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-sharing-a-last-name-save-your-marriage-it-depends">which some argue it is</a>, why can’t the whole family take the woman’s name instead of the man’s?
In my view, these questions themselves — far more than any practice around last names — undermine the fundamental unity that is supposed to be marriage. 
Here’s what I mean: I have no problem with a woman legally retaining her last name after marriage for practical or professional reasons. I can quite easily imagine the circumstances in which I’d have done so myself, had I gotten married <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-dating-reality-check">later than I did</a> or with more professional accomplishments under my maiden name. And, obviously, there are cultures in which it is customary for women to retain their names after marriage, and even for men and women to take one another’s names. None of this meets with any objection from me because I am not advocating for traditional Western naming practices per se. 
I am advocating for avoiding the temptation to let incoherent ideological inclinations infect personal relationships, particularly the marital ones. 
To me, the crux of the surname debate is not surnames. It is the turning of marriage into a forum for identitarian self-expression, when it is supposed to transcend the self by definition, for women and men alike. 
Name That Patriarchy 
The primary objection to the norm of women’s name changes upon marriage is that it rests on patriarchal foundations, the origins of which involve women having no individual rights and being essentially the property of their fathers before being transferred to their husbands. This is, of course, true, though I’d argue it’s not particularly relevant to today’s brides. Relevant or not, however, the patriarchal origins of Western naming practices cannot be overcome by women retaining their maiden names. 
A woman who keeps her own name rather than taking her husband’s is almost always keeping her father’s name. The patriarchal origins of said name are inescapable. So, the refusal to change a name on that score is futile.  
No one can change a distant past peopled by the long-dead. It’s unclear why anyone would want to let said past burden her most sacred relationship in the here and now. More importantly, women who enter marriage with a “his and mine, everything equal” mindset, searching for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-pursuit-of-equality-is-ruining-your-marriage">egalitarianism and androgyny</a>, are setting themselves up for disappointment. 
When Two Don’t Become One
So much of today’s discourse on dating and marriage <a href="https://metropolitanreview.com/not-all-husbands/">pits women and men against each other</a> over concerns that really amount to a false gendering of the human condition. Men complain about feeling undervalued by women; wives complain about “the mental load.” Often, these accusations and our reactions to them take for granted that a war between the sexes is afoot, when in reality, many of these concerns simply reflect our shared humanity and its limitations. 
Feeling undervalued and overwhelmed are not gendered experiences, but gendering them gives us an enemy to blame. That’s more fun than admitting the truths at play. First, to be human is to exist within a fallen world shaped by our own fallenness; second, to be a husband or a wife is not to look for things to be an interchangeable 50/50 but to accept that (if you’re collectively doing what you ought), they’ll be a likely non-interchangeable 100/100. It’s not that there’s men’s work and women’s work; it’s that there is work that each of you, as specific individuals, will be better at. Who is the man and who is the woman will, if you are honest, be a factor in determining who does what. 
I would not want my son to marry a woman who wanted to keep her own last name rather than take his for pseudo-feminist reasons specifically. That’s not because I care about the name. It’s because I care about an adult relationship to reality, uncontaminated by a flimsily politicized lens that puts signaling some impotent blow against historical patriarchy ahead of signaling oneness with one’s husband today.
Within marriage, there is exactly zero room for him vs. her; it should be him and her vs. the world.
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Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about books, education, and culture, including <a href="https://elizabethgracematthew.substack.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on Substack</a>.

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Marriage Was Supposed To Mean ‘Us.’ Then Came Identity Politics.

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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In my formative years, my perception of diamonds, engagements, and proposals was shaped largely by my favorite films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. From Audrey Hepburn in &#8220;Breakfast at Tiffany’s&#8221; gazing pensively into the Tiffany windows like a tourist craning up at the Sistine Chapel to Marilyn Monroe in &#8220;Gentlemen Prefer Blondes&#8221; enshrining the doctrine that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” these were the images that first taught me what romance was meant to look like. In such enduring portrayals, elegance came packaged in little blue boxes; they conveyed all the glitz and glamour a young romantic could imagine.
So when the time came to think seriously about proposing, the engagement ring in my mind had six prongs and a center stone, though I lacked the terminology to describe it as such at the time. And, as a willing victim of advertising, I did believe the best things came in blue.
Having since plunged into the world of engagement rings and diamonds, I have been reliably informed that I was mistaken. Jewelry is intensely personal, and an engagement ring is the most personal of all.
Women may still want the thrill of a proposal, but they generally also want some say — and final approval — over the ring’s design. They want to know it is coming, just not exactly when. Despite Hollywood’s portrayals, proposals are rarely shocking; more often, they are carefully forewarned surprises (sort of like the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound). If this strikes you as contradictory, I refer you to Oscar Wilde, who once remarked that women are meant to be loved, not understood.
In any case, fear not, gentlemen: I shall share what I have learned. Women, too, may glean something from it, as many of my own lessons came from consulting my girlfriend.
The engagement-ring market, as I discovered, is not a single industry so much as several overlapping ones. At the top sit luxury houses like Tiffany and Cartier, where one pays a handsome premium for heritage, branding (I soon learned the more apropos slogan is that the most marked-up things come in blue), and the carefully curated experience of buying there, right down to Cartier’s complimentary Champagne. Beneath them are the conventional retail jewelers found in malls, offering convenience and ready-made inventory but still carrying substantial markup. Then come wholesale independent jewelers, who source stones directly and can create custom rings, usually without grand showrooms but with greater flexibility and better value. Finally, there is the vintage, estate, and resale market, where buyers seek out older or previously owned rings for their character, individuality, or potential savings.
For the uninitiated, natural diamonds are typically judged according to the famous four Cs: cut, carat, clarity, and color. Carat refers to weight, though most people understandably think of it as size; roughly 0.9 to 1.5 carats is a common range. Cut, confusingly, does not refer to shape, but to how well the stone has been fashioned to catch and reflect light. Shape is its own category: round is the old standby, while cuts such as cushion, oval, pear, and emerald drift in and out of fashion with the tides of taste. Clarity and color, meanwhile, measure the degree of internal imperfections and tint, ranging from the visibly flawed to the nearly immaculate.
To put this in perspective with actual prices, a high-quality one-carat diamond ring from Tiffany — say, G color, VVS1 clarity, and an excellent cut — starts at around $20,000. If, instead, you skip the luxury tier and visit the sort of jewelry store your mother might browse in the mall while your father is off trying on shoes, a similarly specced ring will run closer to $8,000. Then there is the route I ultimately took: an independent jeweler recommended by a recently wed friend. There is no grand showroom, so it requires more preparation; you need to know what you want. But, as I learned, you can show such a jeweler the $20,000 Tiffany ring of your dreams and have it replicated for $5,000. Mine even told me that, if I were desperate enough, he could source the Tiffany box and papers, too. “I know a guy,” he said.
But knockoff Tiffany papers are not the only route to discount luxury in the jewelry world. You may have heard of lab-grown diamonds. With recent leaps in technology, lab-grown diamonds in the late 2010s were to the diamond industry what quartz watches were to Swiss horology in the 1980s: a major disruptor and a tech-driven solution to a laborious and difficult-to-source product. They have become so uniformly high in color and clarity that the old precision of diamond grading increasingly feels beside the point. As one jeweler explained to me, they are visually flawless diamonds, cost roughly $100 per carat to manufacture, and retail for somewhere between $500 and $1,500 per carat. They are cheap, plentiful, and readily available — ideal, if your ambition is to tone your fiancée’s arm by weighing it down with a baseball-sized behemoth that, if naturally mined, would fetch a price rivaling that of an exotic sports car. Even affluent clients, the jeweler told me, often opt for lab-grown when faced with the choice between spending $5,000 and $300,000 on what is, to the naked eye, effectively the same stone.
Given the striking disparity in cost and virtual lack thereof in appearance, why would anyone opt for a natural diamond over lab? Some bleeding-heart voices will still invoke the specter of blood diamonds. But with the Kimberley Process — the international certification scheme for rough diamonds — now covering roughly 99.8% of global rough-diamond production, it is exceedingly difficult to turn your proposal plans into a vehicle for financing African warlord insurgencies, even if you were so inclined. The decision instead comes down to preference, provenance, and resale value. They say diamonds are forever, but not all diamonds hold their value forever. Though no diamonds should be thought of as investments or reliable stores of value, natural diamonds will at least retain some fraction of what you paid; their lab-grown counterparts, however, retain virtually no resale value at all.
There is also something undeniably romantic about a natural diamond being more than a billion years old. In a world of fast and disposable fashion, it has an advantage over modern consumer goods in that it predates civilization and will certainly outlast it. If that connection to older, grander, and less synthetic worlds appeals to you, old mine-cut and old European-cut diamonds are also worth considering over the modern brilliant cut.
These were styles associated with the Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, and Art Deco eras, evolving from the squarish, hand-cut old mine style to the rounder old European before the modern brilliant arrived with the technical precision to maximize sparkle. The older cuts were fashioned to be admired under candlelight, before the widespread adoption of electric bulbs, giving them a softer, moodier glow. They feel closer in spirit to the sparkling socialites of the Gilded Age than to the moneyed influencers of social media. In the end, the European cut was the one we chose. It was a beautiful and singular stone and, as the jeweler explained, much harder to come by in such higher-grade colors and clarities: “I can get 10 of these brilliant-cut diamonds for you tomorrow. This European one? I can maybe find a handful a year.”
The jeweler also explained that, in certain friend groups and social circles, there is increasing pressure toward larger stones. “If all her friends are showing off massive three-carat diamonds, maybe she doesn’t want a quaint 1.2-carat natural.” Thankfully, this was not my predicament; none of my girlfriend’s friends are married yet.
Lab-grown diamonds, for all the snobbery they may still attract, have also democratized entry into a world once guarded by prohibitive prices. A young man no longer needs to bankrupt himself or delay proposing for a decade to participate in marriage. Engagement rings may be, in part, an offshoot of marketing and media, but they are now as fixed a feature of our culture as diamonds themselves, and, like refusing to read the directions or carrying all the groceries from the car in a single trip, seem to have become one of those things expected of us men.
The old Tiffany fantasy still has its charm, but romance, as it turns out, is not a faithful reenactment of a Billy Wilder script. Rather, it is learning what the woman you love actually wants and then finding a way (within budget) to give it to her. By the way, she said yes.
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Harry Khachatrian (<a href="https://x.com/harry1t6">@Harry1T6</a>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at <a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/">BetweenBottles.com</a>.

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Inside The Diamond Game, Where The Same Ring Can Cost $5K Or $20K Depending On One Choice

Special Reporting

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The Cut has a knack for repackaging relational instability as self-discovery. The women-focused online arm of New York Magazine that brought us pieces like “<a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/non-monogamy-equal-parenting.html">Could Opening Your Marriage Lighten Your Mental Load?</a>” and “<a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/women-regret-having-children.html">I Regret Having Children</a>” is at it again — this time with E.J. Dickson’s essay “<a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/its-good-to-have-crushes-when-youre-married.html?utm_source=insta&amp;utm_medium=s1&amp;utm_campaign=nym">The Secret to a Great Marriage? Crushes on Other People</a>.”
In it, Dickson begins by describing a co-worker named Phil, whom she compares to a swarthier Jake Gyllenhaal, and who, she notes, didn’t know what a “nut graf” was. She emphasizes that she did not know him well: by the time they stopped working together, they had exchanged only about 40 words, most of them about Steely Dan.
She mentions him occasionally to her husband of nearly 10 years, who would joke about her “frissons of nervous energy” when asked if Phil had been at work that day. When she knew he would be in the office, she found herself lingering a little longer in front of the mirror — adding lip tint and mascara, taking extra care with her hair before meetings.
Actually, much of the piece focuses on workplace dynamics and so-called “work husbands and wives.” One interviewee, Jill, 32, recalls that her now-husband once confessed to having a minor crush on a co-worker. At the time, she was feeling sexually bored in their relationship, and she describes the admission as unexpectedly “deeply erotic.” The couple later folded the subject into their pre-sex conversations. Jill said it “recalibrated” how she perceived him.
“A crush while you’re married is like a little sweet snack that gets you through the 4 p.m. slump,” said Cara, 35. “It’s harmless and invigorating,” she said, “and reminds you you’re alive and kicking and yearning and thinking.”
While some pushed back on the piece in the comments, most others were predictable: “Brace for puritan moralism,” one said. “Sad to see so many people missing the point,” wrote another, “it’s not about infidelity.” And finally: “It’s not that deep man … having crushes is human. Enjoy.”
I was surprised to feel my body tense as I read the article through for the first time. I had lived out this theory as a college student, and the lessons were still living in my muscles — little &#8220;frissons of nervous energy” that I recognized now for what they were: alarm bells. 
During a long-term relationship, I found myself co-creating a new music festival with an older mentor and friend. At first, it was innocent: writing grants after class, trading notes in a shared Google Doc. I admired his drive, his obvious talent. But admiration has a way of slipping its bounds. Soon, I felt that familiar, muscle-melting pull at the mere mention of his name.
As the months passed, we were pulling all-nighters, contacting venues, creating floor plans, evaluating artist applications, united in a common purpose and building a shared world from scratch. I found my mind wandering: what other worlds might we be capable of sharing? Electric fingers grazed my leg under the table. I was sick with confusion, regret, desire. I was in trouble. 
If this wasn’t “that deep, man,” how did I get here? From ruminating on a nagging desire to indulging it? From a passing thought to a habit of mind; from a shared project to a divided interior life; from keeping a little secret to hiding whole chambers of my heart? 
What I thought was rare, even clandestine, was anything but. Some estimates suggest that as many as 85% of affairs begin at work. “Now we have a shared purpose,” psychologist John Delony <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DHEDYfFgQC_/">explains</a>. “We’re talking about how we feel about things. We have a goal, we have metrics. I’m spending more time with her or him than I am with my spouse. Of course it happens at work.” 
Conservative politicians have gone to great lengths to avoid precisely this kind of entanglement, most famously Mike Pence, who has said he avoids dining, traveling, or spending one-on-one time with women who are not his wife. Even among my closest friends, this rule tends to draw skepticism, dismissed as a relic of the aforementioned “Puritan moralism” or an overcorrection bordering on paranoia.
But is it overkill? The Christian ethic has never limited fidelity to outward behavior alone; it presses much deeper, into the interior life. Scripture consistently treats the heart as the true seat of fidelity, as Proverbs says: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Jesus sharpens the point, saying, “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).
Desire untethered from discipline, he points out, is not neutral; it is formative. Thoughts become patterns, patterns become habits, and habits, eventually, become actions. Crushes aren’t “harmless”; they’re the beginning of disordered desire that reshapes the heart and threatens our fidelity.
“Take every thought captive,” Paul writes (2 Corinthians 10:5) because what you dwell on begins to shape what you want, and what you want begins to shape what you do. To indulge a wandering emotional or imaginative life is, in a real sense, to erode the foundation of a covenant that is meant to be steadfast regardless of passing urges. In other words, master your desires, or they will master you.
This ethic serves another purpose: It keeps us from subtly turning one another into objects. The logic of the “crush,” as the article itself admits, depends on a kind of selective vision: “You’re getting to focus on the desirable parts of that person while ignoring the parts that wouldn’t actually be fun to deal with in reality. That’s super-sexy … Relish in the fantasy.” 
That same logic appears more explicitly in other work by E. J. Dickson. In her 2016 article for the Washington Post titled &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/12/dont-worry-about-sex-robots-they-wont-ruin-sex/">Don’t worry about sex robots. They won’t ruin sex</a>,&#8221; she entertains the possibility that even deeply disordered desires might be safely redirected onto objects, writing that technologies like child sex robots could “serve as such an outlet.” 
The mistaken assumption is that desire can be indulged, even trained, so long as it is displaced onto something non-human; that objectification is not only harmless, but potentially therapeutic. But to “relish in the fantasy” is, almost by definition, to flatten a person, to strip them of their full humanity and complexity and recast them as a vehicle for your own emotional or erotic gratification.
In our marriage, my husband and I have resisted this ethic in ways that might seem excessive to secular friends: There are songs I no longer play because of the memories they evoke, restaurants we no longer visit because of vignettes they hold. We’ve chosen, deliberately, to build a shared world. And with each quiet act of discipline, each decision to honor him in thought and action, my desire is shaped and redirected, returning to the person it was always meant for. Every time, my crush on him grows deeper.
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Grace Salvatore is the senior editor of media, arts, and culture at Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Restoring the West and a contributor to Independent Women’s Voice.

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