On September 15, the Seattle City Council <a href="https://www.kuow.org/governing/2026-09-15/seattle-makes-polyamorous-pan-and-asexual-people-a-protected-class">voted unanimously</a> to add &#8220;family and relationship structure&#8221; to the city&#8217;s civil rights code. Polyamory, asexuality, aromanticism, chosen family, and multigenerational households are now protected classes, covered in employment, housing, business licensing, public accommodations, city parks, and how police are trained to treat residents. It takes effect in June 2027. It gave polyamory civil-rights protection in the name of equality.
This is the final phase of deconstruction of what used to be the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known.
Marriage has historically been defined by three stabilizing norms: permanence, complementarity, and monogamy. These characteristics did not become central to marriage across civilizations by happenstance. Each serves a distinct, child-centered purpose.
Permanence matters because children need both parents for life. Before no-fault divorce, marriage could be dissolved only when one spouse was deemed &#8220;at fault&#8221; for violating their vows. In California, that changed in 1969. <a href="https://thembeforeus.substack.com/p/ronald-reagans-biggest-regret">No-fault divorce</a> allowed adults to exit a marriage if the wife &#8220;had an unseen mental load,&#8221; if the half-his-age secretary made a better vacation companion, or simply when that &#8220;chapter of their life&#8221; ended. Research consistently shows that divorce is associated with long-term <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/807432">physical</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2006.00191.x">emotional</a>, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6559749/">academic</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00197.x">relational</a>, and <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/01/divorce-affects-children.html">economic</a> disadvantages for the children involved. No-fault divorce marked the first time our laws formally declared that <a href="https://thembeforeus.substack.com/p/when-parents-say-divorce">marriage was not a child-centric institution, but was instead primarily about adult happiness</a>.
Complementarity requires that both halves of the human species be represented in a child&#8217;s home. That matters because mothers and fathers are not interchangeable. Children do not need &#8220;parents&#8221; in the abstract; <a href="https://thembeforeus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Fast-Facts_Gender-Matters.pdf">they need a mother and a father</a>. Men and women bring <a href="https://thembeforeus.com/gender-matters-2/">distinct, embodied differences</a> critical for child development. But post-Obergefell, marriage was legally redefined to exclude sexual complementarity altogether. Male and female presence was treated as optional, leading to the intentional creation of motherless and fatherless homes, and the <a href="https://thembeforeus.com/tag/lgbt-parents/">identity struggles and mother or father hunger</a> that go with it.
Monogamy matters because biology matters. It protects children by keeping their biological parents in and unrelated adults out. A child’s own mother and father are <a href="https://thembeforeus.com/biology-matters/">statistically</a> the adults most likely to be connected to, invested in, and protective of that child. The presence of unrelated adults in the home consistently correlates with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr074.pdf">higher risks of abuse and neglect</a>, a pattern so well-documented that it is known among sociologists as the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235222001076">&#8220;Cinderella effect&#8221;</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/17/us/differences-found-in-care-with-stepmothers.html">Stepmothers spend less money on children, take them to the doctor less, and buckle their seatbelts less often</a>. Stepfathers and live-in boyfriends? <a href="https://www.center4research.org/child-abuse-father-figures-kind-families-safest-grow/">Statistically the most dangerous people in a child&#8217;s life</a>. Monogamy may be the most effective tool of child protection in humanity&#8217;s arsenal.
That&#8217;s why, at every stage of marriage&#8217;s redefinition, adults gained freedom and &#8220;equality,&#8221; but children paid the price.
Seattle&#8217;s ordinance doesn&#8217;t create a new protected category for poly-identifiers. It extends the city&#8217;s existing definition of sexual orientation to cover polyamory, folding &#8220;consensual relationships with multiple partners&#8221; directly into what the law already protects under &#8220;sexual orientation.&#8221; Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck called it equal protection under the law, the same phrase used for the previous round of family redefinition. Somerville, Massachusetts, made the identical argument in 2020, when it became the first U.S. city to recognize polyamorous domestic partnerships: love is love, we deserve equal protection, we&#8217;re not harming anybody. Seattle is the latest of several cities to follow suit, and I’m sure it won&#8217;t be the last.
Nobody in that council chamber spoke for the kids who will grow up inside these arrangements. And if they did, they likely would&#8217;ve repeated the same dangerous lie: polyamory just means more adults to love a child. In line with everything else we know about child protection, namely that unrelated adults always increase the risk of abuse and neglect, the research on polyamory and polygamy specifically says the opposite.
Anthropologists note that polygynous households carry<a href="https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5811/files/henrich/files/henrich_boyd_richerson_2012.pdf"> elevated risks of intra-household abuse, neglect, and homicide</a>, because more partners means more genetic strangers in the home, more unrelated dyads.<a href="https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/news/unrelated-adults-in-the-home-associated-with-child-abuse-deaths"> Children who live with one or more unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die from an inflicted injury</a> as children living with both biological parents. Additional adults in the home don&#8217;t multiply love. They multiply risk.
Seattle is using marriage to validate adult sexual identity. As always, children will pay the price.
***
Katy Faust (@Katy_Faust) is president of Them Before Us, and author of the books &#8220;Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement,&#8221; &#8220;Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City,&#8221; and &#8220;Pro-Child Politics.&#8221; Subscribe to her Substack: <a href="http://thembeforeus.substack.com/">http://thembeforeus.substack.com</a>.

Rear view of happy young family holding hands, walking in meadow

Seattle Just Protected Polyamory, So Who Protects The Kids?

child welfare

family structure

marriage

opinion

polyamory

seattle

Gloria Steinem shaped the way America thought about women and sometimes how women thought about themselves. After her death, it is worth considering whether her vision delivered the liberty for women that she promised.
She was an icon to many women, remarkable in many ways for coolly championing women’s rights. I appreciate her work to fight sexual harassment and discrimination against women in the workplace and for equal pay. Steinem and Concerned Women for America Founder Beverly LaHaye, though completely different in their worldviews, contemporaneously blazed a trail for women to stand on the national stage of public policy.
However, Steinem was greatly misguided on the matter of abortion and tragically misled women into believing that their unique capacity to bear life is something to be feared, not celebrated.
Gloria herself admitted to having one abortion, saying, “It gave me my life. I mean, I wouldn’t have been able to live my life otherwise.” Her worldview led women to believe the lie that they cannot have a successful career or live the lives they want if they have children. It is tragic that this pervasive worldview helped to enable 63 million abortions from Roe v. Wade through 2022, when it was overturned. Today, we finally have the ability to fight for life on a state-by-state basis.
But she was wrong, dead wrong. The reality is that millions of women have successful and fulfilling careers while bringing new life into this world. Athletes like Allyson Felix, Serena Williams, Kerri Walsh Jennings, or influencers like Meghan McCain and Allie Beth Stuckey. Most notably, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, mother of seven, has laid to rest that lie, and more will follow.
Women should not feel they must choose between motherhood and their careers. Our society should help women embrace the gift of motherhood and flourish in whatever occupation they want. A <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10257365/">study</a> from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that 60% of women who had abortions would have preferred to carry their pregnancies to term if they had received greater support, resources, or assistance.
She was also wrong about marriage. She viewed marriage as “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” a phrase she popularized. It was certainly misguided and has also led women to needlessly choose between career and marriage. Even she realized her error on this front. An <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/gloria-steinems-forthcoming-memoir">excerpt</a> from her forthcoming memoir is revealing: “Given my generation, I also grew up assuming that I would have to marry my identity, not become it. This scary idea caused me to put off marriage, and to live a temporary life. Not until my forties did I begin to see that a different kind of life was possible, one where I wasn’t bound to fulfill my husband&#8217;s dreams and depend on him financially. I learned that the work I loved could also create the future I wanted.” This is problematic both from the idea that a woman cannot flourish in her own God-given calling as a married woman and from shaming other women who want to live their lives forging a paycheck to serve their families. That too is changing.
I am glad she eventually embraced marriage, a trusted partnership that can provide love and stability, mutual satisfaction, and a solid foundation to raise children. Sadly, she was only married for three years before the love of her life, David Bale, tragically died of brain lymphoma.
Correctly, Gloria fought for women to be seen and recognized for their unique qualities and contributions. Today we are going in a completely different direction in which the unique dignity of women is being cast aside in favor of men and of gender identity politics. We see this most recently in the California ruling that undermined fairness in women’s sports. Women should defend women when biological sex is at stake.
The women’s movement that Gloria helped to lead ultimately wanted women to be equal to men, but her definition of equality trampled on the unique role of women to bear life, to be a mother, to desire marriage, to create a family, but in the end did not satisfy. A <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-so-blue-liberal-women-are-less-happy-more-lonely-but-why">recent study</a> found that only 12% of leftist women describe themselves as “completely satisfied with life,” but their conservative peers were three times more likely to be happy.
Today, young women are forging their own path again. A cooler version of conservative women are stepping up to the microphone and standing up for God’s unique design. Their workplace struggles continue, but they have seen through the propaganda and have found identity and liberty in the things of God rather than the world, truly choosing a path for themselves, not one that the Left has chosen for them. And for this I say, “you’ve come a long way, Baby!”
*** 
Penny Young Nance is CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, and author of “7 Rules for Success in Business and Life: A Woman’s Guide.” <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/">https://concernedwomen.org/</a>

The Feminist Press 35th Anniversary Gala Dinner

Gloria Steinem’s Legacy Was Largely Anti-Woman

abortion

feminism

gloria steinem

women in the workplace

Finally, some good news on the family front.
A growing share of the American people, led by Republicans, believe it is very important that a couple is married when they have a child together.
According to new <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/713234/americans-likely-say-parents-marry.aspx">Gallup polling</a>, roughly four in 10 Americans say it is very important that “couples who have a child together” should be married, a 10-percentage point increase over the past six years.
Among Republicans, there has been a 22-point increase, up to 58% who say marriage is very important for couples with a child. Independents have seen a 9-point increase in that direction, and Democrats have experienced a 3-point increase.
It is encouraging to see more Americans valuing marriage in the way it should be. Given the fact that this uptick has been driven by Republicans, we can attribute this trend in large part to the work that Right-leaning think tanks — like the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/get-married-charlie-kirks-most-important-advice-to-young-men-and-women">Institute for Family Studies</a> and the <a href="https://www.aei.org/research-products/journal-publication/the-marriage-paradox-understanding-and-remedying-the-paradoxical-place-of-marriage-in-america/">American Enterprise Institute</a> — have done in recent years to spotlight the value of marriage, the ways in which conservative media outlets and voices — like the Daily Wire, Isabel Brown, and Ben Shapiro — have underlined the importance of marriage, and the encouragement that Republican leaders like Vice President J.D. Vance have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mkNg8GZ2bk">offered</a> us to “fall in love, get married, and start a family.”
Of course, Charlie Kirk’s <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/get-married-charlie-kirks-most-important-advice-to-young-men-and-women">life and message</a> were especially important in driving this conservative interest in marriage. Kirk was famous for <a href="https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-unveils-60-foot-tribute-charlie-kirk">urging</a> his followers to “Get married. Have children. Build a legacy. Pass down your values. Pursue the eternal. Seek true joy.” Just days before he was killed, on Laura Ingraham&#8217;s Fox News show, Kirk <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/get-married-charlie-kirks-most-important-advice-to-young-men-and-women">addressed</a> the decline in marriage and fertility rates, arguing that young women were chasing “careerism and consumerism” instead of what he considered more meaningful goals. “Having children is more important than having a good career … my kids matter more than how many social media followers I have,” he said. Kirk was also a big booster of <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey">data</a> showing that women and men who embrace marriage and family life are significantly happier than their peers who are single and childless. The attention he devoted to the cause no doubt played a central role in marriage’s rising popularity among Republicans since 2020.
But as encouraging as this turn in public opinion is, the numbers are only back up to 2013 levels, so there is still room to grow. If more growth is to happen, conservatives can lead the way. Through culture, research, public policy, and leading by example, conservatives can speak clearly about the necessity of married, stable families for the next generation.
First, pro-marriage scholars and policymakers must use the data to make their case. That is the focus of my work at the Get Married Initiative within the Institute for Family Studies: Providing the research and data to show the value of marriage for children, adults, and the nation as a whole. Overwhelmingly, the data show that married men and women are <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey">happier</a> and more <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/in-pursuit-marriage-motherhood-and-womens-well-being">fulfilled</a> in life. Marriage is <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/mortality/19-310689-Health-E-Stat-Mortality-H.pdf">linked</a> to better <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/08/health/marriage-cancer-wellness">health outcomes</a> and greater <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health">life expectancy</a>. It also serves as a powerful motivator for men to get their <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/marital-horizons-the-motivating-power-of-marriage-for-young-men">lives together</a> at work and in their behavior. Married women <a href="https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=4359">feel safer</a> and have better <a href="https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=4410">sex lives</a> compared to unmarried women.
Children who come from married, stable families <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/family-structure-a-key-factor-hidden-in-plain-sight-the-case-for-federal-reporting-in-education">do better</a> emotionally and in school than those who do not — they are, for instance, about <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/get-married-brad-wilcox?variant=43991601676322">twice</a> as likely to graduate from college and <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/get-married-brad-wilcox?variant=43991601676322">half</a> as likely to end up in jail or prison. Marriage can even <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/rings-to-roofs-part-i-one-million-homes-through-marriage">help tackle</a> the housing shortage in a time when more Americans are unsure about whether they can afford to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/first-the-ring-then-the-roof-376a2880">buy a home</a>.
And marriage is a better bet than critics like Andrew Tate — who <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/get-married-brad-wilcox?variant=43991601676322">says</a> most marriages end in divorce — would suggest. Contrary to conventional wisdom, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/divorce-in-decline-about-40-of-todays-marriages-will-end-in-divorce">divorce is down</a> since 1980, and most marriages today are predicted to go the distance.
Pro-marriage sentiment is the rare issue that unites all factions of the Right. Conservative podcasters, think tankers, lawmakers, church leaders, and intellectuals — ranging from the classic Right to the new Right — all understand the central role marriage plays in family formation and perpetuating our civilization. Already, conservatives get married at <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-lefts-marriage-problem-fewer-liberals-marry-and-liberal-teens-are-giving-up-on-it">higher rates</a> than liberals, and young conservatives are more likely to desire marriage than their liberal counterparts. Marriage is an important part of the conservative identity, even for those who do not live it out perfectly.
But conservatives can do better. Every conservative family can lead by example to their extended families, churches, communities, schools, and the other social organizations they might be part of.
Leading by example matters for our public leaders as well. As my colleague Lyman Stone shows, peer culture and celebrity culture are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/america-needs-more-famous-families?author=Lyman+Stone&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=America+Needs+More+Famous+Families">both impactful</a> forces on fertility rates. Undoubtedly, a similar dynamic is at play with marriage.
Conservative media personalities, like Kirk and those at the Daily Wire, can play a vital role in promoting marriage simply by talking up the power, beauty, and joy of family life in public and walking the walk in private. It matters when conservative leaders take a pro-marriage position in their commentary. What goes even further is when they have beautiful families for the public to see.
Using data and leading by example must be paired with a pro-marriage policy agenda that strengthens marriage and facilitates family formation. Reforming the tax code, expanding family-oriented tax credits, building more family-friendly starter homes, promoting marriage in schools, and incentivizing marriage prep are some ideas that conservative policymakers should advance in Congress, state houses, and localities across America.
Improving men’s economic prospects to make them more marriageable could also lead to higher <a href="https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=4492">marriage rates</a>, as the Institute for Family Studies’ new <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/mapping-marriage-in-america-where-young-adults-marry-most">marriage maps</a> show. Investing in trade school pipelines and male-oriented sectors like manufacturing could improve male employment and earnings. Tackling <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/republicans-embrace-the-vice-economy/">the vice economy</a> to get men off gambling apps and pot could make a difference as well.
The polling data already indicates that conservatives’ efforts to promote marriage in our culture are working. Scholars, media personalities, and political leaders must keep up the fight if we are to rebuild the American family. This is the best way to honor the “legacy” of Charlie Kirk’s all too short but profoundly pro-family life.
***
Brad Wilcox is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Get Married Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. He is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Get Married Project at the University of Virginia. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRK

Charlie Kirk’s True Legacy May Be A Surge In Young Families

charlie kirk

family policy

gallup poll

institute for family studies

“Traditional is totally out,” proclaims Olivia Grayce, a Columbus, Ohio, wedding planner. Today’s weddings, Grayce <a href="https://614now.com/2026/614-magazine/hold-on-tight-the-august-issue-of-614-magazine-is-teleporting-us-back-to-the-90s">says</a>, are meant to be a couple’s “showcase.” Couples should only invite the “people they love most” and should prioritize “customization and individualization,” she said. They should also, it goes without saying, spend a lot of money.
The average American couple now<a href="https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/economic-insights/wedding-spending.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/economic-insights/wedding-spending.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3aKLDUA7OGO27J7sXI6FSk"> spends $36,000</a> on their wedding. That’s more than double what they&#8217;d have spent in 1990. The ballooning price tag is not simply due to inflation or tariffs; the American wedding industry has been steadily growing for decades, sitting now at an <a href="https://wedding.report/action/wedding_statistics/view/market/id/00/idtype/s/location/United_States/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://wedding.report/action/wedding_statistics/view/market/id/00/idtype/s/location/United_States/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2KdtT_bORpk8v1LIPR_Gqe">estimated $65 billion</a> annually.
There are several factors at play, including the fact that people are <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/marital.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/marital.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1hVDp8VfZZiqAn94zA-Ncb">getting married older</a> and that marriage is <a href="https://aibm.org/research/will-college-educated-women-find-someone-to-marry/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://aibm.org/research/will-college-educated-women-find-someone-to-marry/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2HMEcafTCgs7mJWqpHGk9L">skewing toward the higher-educated</a> (and therefore wealthier).
But weddings have a way of revealing a culture’s values. If Grayce’s perspective is any indication, our weddings have become extravagantly expensive because we’ve made them into something they didn’t used to be. Sociologist Brad Wilcox with the Institute for Family Studies says we’ve turned weddings into a status symbol, a “signal of success rather than a ritual that ushered young adults into adulthood.”
A &#8220;showcase,&#8221; as it were.
For a decade, marriage researchers such as Wilcox have cautioned against this shift. They note a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id%3D2501480&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3TzFG8PvFtAmu9b1Zjw_-J">landmark study from Emory University</a> in 2014 that found a correlation between expensive weddings and higher divorce rates. Following hundreds of couples over several years, researchers concluded that couples who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding (equivalent to about $28,000 today) were more than three times more likely to divorce than couples who spent $10,000 or less ($14,000 today). A more expensive engagement ring was also correlated with higher divorce risk.
Researchers hypothesized then that it was a stress issue: more money, more problems, basically. But as the entire wedding process has become commercialized — from the professionally photographed proposal to the choreographed walk from the reception to the Uber — the price tag itself points to a bigger issue.
The problem is we’ve objectified our weddings into a blunt instrument of self-expression. Ironically, that seems to have cheapened our idea of marriage itself.
Wedding photographers Abby and Michael Smithers recently shot a wedding with a prequel.
“They wanted to do a breakfast picnic just the two of them,” Abby recalled. “Up on the hill at their venue, to just share their private vows.” Later that afternoon, the couple had the standard event: big ceremony with family, photos and more photos, a cocktail hour, dinner reception.
It used to be that the vows themselves — made, crucially, in front of family and friends —were the wedding. But now, at least for this couple, the big event was something else entirely.
American weddings are much less religious than they used to be. <a href="https://baptistnews.com/article/why-are-weddings-so-expensive-today-and-why-are-so-few-held-in-churches/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://baptistnews.com/article/why-are-weddings-so-expensive-today-and-why-are-so-few-held-in-churches/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3drGHOA8rV1qxV5Crn7wz7">More occur outside of a church</a> than in one, and most are officiated by someone outside the clergy. Receptions have become far more elaborate and expensive than the ceremony. More couples <a href="https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/who-pays-for-the-wedding" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/who-pays-for-the-wedding&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2rvBKvxzSoW6MRBbLcLR0P">pay for their own weddings</a> now, which means parents are probably exerting less influence over everything from the guest list to the size of the budget itself — as well as the level of allegiance to tradition.
“People still seem to want all the symbolism of the marriage ceremony, but they’ve dispensed with most of its old meaning,” says sociologist Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins who has studied marriage trends since the 1970s. “The older meaning was to evoke religion as a way of blessing a couple’s union … and to have two families be involved in unifying.”
Indeed, many modern American weddings communicate a much different meaning than fidelity or family. Couples are hiring &#8220;content creators&#8221; to drive the &#8220;editorial direction&#8221; of their wedding. Photographers no longer capture just the wedding and reception; they’re hired for the proposal, the engagement party, and the staged “getting ready” the morning before the wedding. Brides can’t just ask their friends to serve as bridesmaids; they must do it with elaborate gestures and gifts marketed specifically for the occasion.
The sheer number of accessories and clothing upon which one can find the word “bride” imprinted (for a price) is a masterclass in entrepreneurship. Couples are commissioning ice sculptures and painters to live-sketch the ceremony as it is happening. These aren’t just Taylor and Travis; they’re your pushing-upper-middle-class friends. Capitalism has absolutely risen to the occasion of the modern American wedding.
Trina How, a young bride who recently wed her husband in Charlottesville, Virginia, told me she had to instruct her photographer to take photos of her entire family at her wedding, even if the photos weren’t the right &#8220;aesthetic&#8221; for her social media reels. Many wedding videographers include in their packages the option for an edited theatrical trailer for the wedding, as well as 30-second and three-minute footage cuts for couples to post as reels on their social media.
“Having a magnificent wedding is a way of signaling to your peers, to your family and friends, that you’re a successful person,” Brad Wilcox said.
If he’s right, weddings are no longer the &#8220;cornerstone,&#8221; as he put it, of adult life. They’ve become a social &#8220;triumph.&#8221; And a triumph calls for a much, much bigger party. There’s nothing wrong, surely, with wanting beautiful photos of your wedding. But at what point does this preoccupation with aesthetics start to feel suspect? Is it possible some young couples aren’t getting engaged entirely because they’ve chosen to enter a committed marriage, but because they want to have The Party?
Consider another, darker trend that’s hit the marriage economy: <a href="https://www.realsimple.com/why-divorce-parties-are-trending-12022275" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.realsimple.com/why-divorce-parties-are-trending-12022275&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3_BIB1zvOmhpjEXA4lCxhu">divorce parties</a>. (They’re exactly what they sound like). Isn’t this another side of the same coin?  If all life is a personal branding opportunity, all relationships eventually become another facet in the kaleidoscope of your #aesthetic. Turning our major rites, including matrimony, into status symbols has inevitably cheapened them — no matter how expensive the dress was.
There is one exception to the relationship between wedding cost and marriage duration. Indian weddings are notoriously elaborate and expensive, often involving multiple days of parties and rites. Indian families come from all over the world to see their loved ones marry. The guy rides in on a white horse. And yet the Indian divorce rate is among the lowest in the world, at <a href="https://divorcebylaw.com/divorce-rate-in-india/">around 1.5%</a> (although some data suggest many more couples separate without officially divorcing in order to avoid the stigma). For Indian Americans, the divorce rate is <a href="https://vivaahready.com/blog/indianamericanmarriagestatistics2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://vivaahready.com/blog/indianamericanmarriagestatistics2026&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0GKr7hhGmFH5RmzNWrN81_">not much higher</a>.
But Indian weddings are also notoriously family-oriented. Indeed, <a href="https://nationalmarriageproject.org/2014-i-do" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalmarriageproject.org/2014-i-do&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1788452124319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw326_KCtVqUF0qlqEnd2FWq">research suggests</a> that the size and level of involvement of a couple’s family and community is a much better indicator of their marriage’s success than the extravagance or frugality of their wedding.
It’s intuitive that couples with more involved families and friends have a bigger network of support when troubles come. But a deeper, tighter community also implies accountability. A couple who promises to stay together through an unknown future in front of their entire family, who’ve maybe spent days (in the case of Indian weddings, which often last a week) and thousands of dollars on this very event, no doubt feel a deeper sense of duty than couples who insisted their day is their own personal “showcase.”
That’s probably why so many of us feel vaguely gross about all the “bride” merch and people throwing around the words “editorial direction” in reference to their wedding. The ceremony can be as extravagant and bespoke as a couple wishes it to be. But marriage is still, first and foremost, a commitment. The strength of any given marriage is rooted first in the couple’s commitment to commitment itself.
Wedding vows — at least the traditional ones, I don’t know what people say at their private Pinterest vow picnics — say “for better or worse” precisely because we can never really know which one it will be. The point is promising anyway, and you can do that for very little coin. Maybe, if the fanciest wedding you’ve been to really is the weakest marriage you know, it’s because the couple didn’t value that part enough.
***
Maria Baer is a contributing writer at the Institute for Family Studies and co-host of the Breakpoint podcast with The Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" 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.

GettyImages-2198066561

You Spent Too Much On Your Wedding

divorce

family

lifestyle

wedding industry

This year&#8217;s most talked-about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Taylor_Swift_and_Travis_Kelce">wedding</a> featured a bride who earns far more than her husband. Pop superstar Taylor Swift <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinadilicosa/2025/12/30/the-highest-paid-musicians-of-2025/">earned at least four times</a> as much as NFL star <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2025/09/07/the-nfls-highest-paid-players-2025/">Travis Kelce</a> last year and her net worth is much higher than his. This reflects a broader social trend. Marriages in which the wife earns more than the husband have become increasingly common in the United States, rising from about <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same/">5% of married couples in 1972</a> to roughly 16% today. The trend is likely to continue as young women outnumber men in universities and increasingly dominate many professional occupations.
For decades, sociologists and other scholars predicted that this economic shift would gradually erode the traditional male-breadwinner norm. As women became more economically successful, they argued, people generally would become more accepting of role reversals within the household, and the greater instability historically observed among female-breadwinner couples would disappear. According to this view, those higher separation rates were largely the product of social disapproval and conflict arising from violations of traditional gender norms.
That prediction received support from a widely discussed <a href="https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/2/4/218.abstract">2016</a> study, which reported that although wives earning more than their husbands increased the risk of divorce among couples married in the 1960s and 1970s, this was no longer true for more recent marriage cohorts. The authors of that study argued that changing gender norms had weakened the influence of the traditional male breadwinner ideal. Other studies, however — including <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/husbands-with-much-higher-incomes-than-their-wives-have-a-lower-chance-of-divorce-">research previously discussed on this page</a> — found that female-breadwinner couples continued to face a higher risk of divorce, even among recent marriage cohorts.
The issue has now been revisited by one of the authors of the 2016 study, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.70081">Pilar Gonalons-Pons, together with Allison Dunatchik</a>, using high-quality data on 544,911 married and cohabiting couples across 29 affluent countries between 2004 and 2020. Their findings strongly support the earlier findings: couples in which the woman is the primary breadwinner — defined as earning more than 60% of the couple&#8217;s total income — are more likely to separate in every country except Hungary and Cyprus (Figure 1).
The size of the effect varied across countries. In the Netherlands and Spain, female-breadwinner couples were about twice as likely to separate during the four-year study period as male-breadwinner couples. In Estonia and Bulgaria, there was little difference between couple types, while in Poland and Slovenia, the increase in risk for female-breadwinner couples was relatively small. The researchers also found that the relationship between female breadwinning and separation has diminished but not disappeared among younger cohorts.
Figure 1. Proportion of couples separating by women&#8217;s relative earnings category 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1168321" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129-.jpg" alt="" width="1876" height="1338" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129-.jpg 1876w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129--300x214.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129--808x576.jpg 808w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129--768x548.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure1-129--1536x1096.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1876px) 100vw, 1876px" /></div>
Data sources: SIPP (US), GSOEP (DE), BHPS and UKHLS (UK), and EU-SILC (all other countries). Country legend: AT = Austria, BE = Belgium, BG = Bulgaria, CY = Cyprus, CZ = Czech Republic, DE = Germany, DK = Denmark, EE = Estonia, EL = Greece, ES = Spain, FI = Finland, FR = France, HU = Hungary, IE = Ireland, IS = Iceland, IT = Italy, LT = Lithuania, LU = Luxembourg, LV = Latvia, NL = Netherlands, NO = Norway, PL = Poland, PT = Portugal, RO = Romania, SE = Sweden, SI = Slovenia, SK = Slovakia, UK = United Kingdom, US = United States
Multivariate analyses controlling for factors known to affect relationship stability — including the education of both partners, marital versus cohabiting status, parenthood, and homeownership — produced similar results. Female-breadwinner couples were 36% more likely to separate than male-breadwinner couples, all else equal. Equal-earner couples also faced a slightly higher risk, being about 6% more likely to separate than male-breadwinner couples. As expected, higher education, having children, and homeownership were all associated with greater relationship stability, but none of these factors explained the higher separation rates among female-breadwinner couples. As other studies have found, cohabiting couples were more likely to separate than married couples, but the increase in separation risk associated with having a female breadwinner was similar for both married and cohabiting couples.
<h3 class="p7">National Gender Norms or Other Factors?</h3>
The authors also examined whether this relationship was influenced by differences in national gender norms. It was not. Female-breadwinner couples were more likely to separate regardless of the proportion of people in the country who: endorsed traditional beliefs such as &#8220;a man&#8217;s primary role is to be the breadwinner,&#8221; supported dual-earner marriages, believed that children suffer when mothers work, or agreed that employed mothers can develop relationships with their children that are as warm and secure as those of stay-at-home mothers (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Average marginal effects of women&#8217;s relative earnings categories 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1168323" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116-.jpg" alt="" width="2054" height="1202" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116-.jpg 2054w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116--300x176.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116--984x576.jpg 984w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116--768x449.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116--1536x899.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/figure2-116--2048x1198.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2054px) 100vw, 2054px" /></div>
Data sources: SIPP (US), GSOEP (DE), BHPS and UKHLS (UK), and EU-SILC (all other countries). 
Nor did the association vary systematically with broader measures of gender equality, such as the prevalence of female-breadwinning couples in the country, the country&#8217;s gender wage gap, or women&#8217;s educational advantage over men. The study likewise found little support for several other commonly proposed explanations. Female-breadwinner couples were not substantially less stable because women had greater financial independence, or because women increased their earnings in anticipation of divorce, or because husbands were unemployed, or because female breadwinning reflected financial hardship within the household.
So what factor did matter? The presence of children. Among couples with dependent children, female-breadwinner couples with children were 49% more likely to separate than male-breadwinner couples, a much higher rate than the 23% higher risk of separation faced by female breadwinner-couples without children. The authors suggest that this pattern is consistent with work-family conflict contributing to relationship instability, although it does not fully explain the association between female breadwinning and the risk of couple instability. Even female-breadwinner couples without dependent children faced a higher risk of dissolution.
Overall, the study provides strong evidence that female-breadwinner couples remain more likely to separate than other couples across a wide range of developed countries. Contrary to a common expectation, this pattern cannot be explained by the prevalence of traditional gender norms or by several other leading sociological explanations. Although work-family conflict appears to play some role, much of the association remains unexplained. The authors conclude that existing theories are insufficient and call for further research into why female-breadwinner couples continue to experience higher rates of relationship dissolution.
<h3 class="p7">Why These Findings Matter</h3>
These findings are unexpected. With the dramatic changes in women’s educational attainment, labor-force participation, and earnings over the past half century, gender norms have changed in many developed societies. Yet despite these changes, the relationship between female breadwinning and couple instability has proven remarkably persistent. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this is because <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-02623-005">sex differences in mate preferences</a>, shaped over humanity&#8217;s long evolutionary history, continue to influence modern relationships. From this perspective, the association between female breadwinning and relationship instability reflects enduring psychological predispositions rather than simply social norms. Perhaps this is why there <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/travis-kelce-taylor-swift-net-worths-compared-engagement">has been discussion</a> in the media about the fact that Taylor Swift is a billionaire and Travis Kelce a mere millionaire, even though at those stratospheric levels of wealth, it might appear irrelevant. Whether this explanation is correct remains a matter of debate, but these new findings suggest that the phenomenon of the greater instability of female-breadwinner couples is unlikely to disappear simply because societies become more gender egalitarian.
***
This is republished with permission from the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/">Institute for Family Studies</a>. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/female-breadwinner-couples-are-still-more-likely-to-split-up">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).

Composite photo collage of happy businesswoman smile run promotion aim chance success hold briefcase path isolated on painted background

Why More Money For Wives Can Mean Less Marriage

family studies

gender norms

taylor swift

travis kelce

Over the past few years, I&#8217;ve done a lot of shows talking about men: what men need to fix, where men fall short, and how men can step up. I haven&#8217;t really turned that same sort of attention toward women.
It&#8217;s time for an honest conversation. We have some things to discuss. It&#8217;s time to get your sh*t together.
Victimhood, of course, has now become the drug of choice for virtually every subgroup in the American population, and women are not an exception.
But they are not victims. Not remotely. They earn more college degrees. They have longer life expectancies. When adjusted for hours worked and time out of the workforce, they earn more than men.
So when I see women standing and protesting outside the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a woman who murdered her three young children, including a baby, I need to ask some questions, because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re seeing now: the sense of victimhood.
There&#8217;s some empirical basis for the idea that American men are failing because they are earning fewer degrees, committing suicide at higher rates, dropping out of the workforce at higher rates, and earning less money. That&#8217;s not true of American women.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2491"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-981859 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Yet many women are addicted to the idea that they are somehow victims of the phantom patriarchy. This is the only way I can explain what the hell is happening outside the Lindsay Clancy trial. I do not understand it. What are they protesting?
Lindsay Clancy’s children were the true victims because they ended up being strangled by their mother. If Lindsay Clancy was the victim of anything, she was a victim of her mental illness.
But you don’t typically have protests against mental illness. That&#8217;s like protesting cancer, heart disease, sunshine, or wind.
These are things — often bad — that happen in life. But very rarely do people gather outside a courthouse to protest an illness. Typically, when you&#8217;re outside a courthouse protesting, you&#8217;re suggesting someone has been wronged by the system.
That&#8217;s what some women have been saying over the last few days.
Lindsay Clancy, just like every other person in the United States charged with a crime, deserves a defense. I&#8217;m even sympathetic to the mental illness defense here, as I&#8217;ve made clear.
But what in the world is going on with these women making heart hands outside the trial? What are they protesting for or against? Postpartum psychosis?
I&#8217;ve seen all these tapes of women saying they&#8217;re “just like Lindsay.” If you say you are just like Lindsay Clancy, you should immediately be put into involuntary commitment.
I think that there is an underlying message.
Let&#8217;s start with the obvious. There is an underlying idea that women are victims. This has become a trend: the idea that women are, in some sort of vague way, victims of the justice system or the American system or the patriarchy.
No women in all of human history have it better than American women. A woman named Peachy Keenan <a href="https://x.com/KeenanPeachy/status/2090602646369608067">wrote</a> on X:
<blockquote>Why are so many women sooo angry? They won. They got everything they wanted. Men have never been doing this badly, and women have never been doing this well. They make more, they have the majority of jobs, they are the majority of college graduates, (UCLA undergrad is 60% female), they make more money, have much lower rates of suicide, addiction, and alcoholism, and live longer. They won: they took over all men-only spaces, they took over the Boy Scouts, they ended men’s bathrooms, they can fly fighter planes and be in combat. Marriage is optional, divorce is no-fault, they win 99% of the custody battles, they can control fertility at will, and they can’t get drafted. We are all living in the female future they promised.</blockquote>
This is correct.
Why are women so angry? It is not economic underperformance. It is certainly not the patriarchy. It is not a lack of education or anything like that.
Yet women&#8217;s happiness has declined markedly. According to a study from PubMed Central, female happiness declined from the 1980s through 2000 and continued to decline after that.
Here is my controversial contention: The reason why so many women in American society are so angry and so much unhappier than they were in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is that so many women are single.
This does not mean all men are good or that all marriages are good. But when you look at the actual data, it shows that married women are much, much happier than single women. In fact, married moms are twice as likely to be very happy as single or childless women.
Studies say that the unhappiest group of women, by far, is unmarried women with children.
That makes sense. They don&#8217;t have a partner. They don&#8217;t have a spouse, somebody to help protect them, care for them, and take care of the kids.
If you look at men&#8217;s happiness, the same thing is true. Married men with children are the happiest men.
This is not a giant shock. Marriage is good for both men and women. Marriage makes people happier, and marriage with children makes people significantly happier. That is true for women, and it is true for men.
But we have an entire society built around the idea that marriage is an imposition on women and that women are suffering because of marriage, which is a lie.
Why do women get happier when they get married and then when they have kids?
Because men and women are different, which is the single most fundamental fact of human biology. Our brains don&#8217;t work quite the same way.
Women are driven by compassion. This is the driving evolutionary force in female biology. Why? Because women need to be compassionate toward children to keep the species functioning. They need to be there to feed and take care of children. A byproduct of that is that women are far more social than men.
Women have deep friendships, and polling data shows women are far more likely to turn to family and friends for support than men.
Women are people-oriented. Men are things-oriented.
This is why men also often end up in engineering, because men like machines. They like things.
Women like people. This is why women are overrepresented in places like nursing, and men are overrepresented in places like mechanics.
It&#8217;s also why, if you leave a man alone for the weekend, away from his wife and kids, the most likely outcome is that he will pop open a beer and watch football, but if you leave a woman alone for the weekend, away from her husband and kids, she&#8217;s probably going to phone one of her friends and go out for lunch.
If you take that in the toxic direction — where men don&#8217;t get married — men have aggressive, antisocial instincts. And when you channel those aggressive instincts away from family, men are wildly destructive. If you think of the worst men you know or have heard of, they are people who abandon all responsibility and then victimize everybody else. Men who are left to their own devices and are not socialized become nihilistic, aggressive, and gross, and they harm other people.
The female compassion instinct, channeled away from family, however, results in misdirected compassion, and that can mean sympathy for some pretty bad people.
Women want social connection. And when they can&#8217;t find a real social connection, if they go online and they find a fake social connection, that&#8217;s a pretty good substitute. Women are far more social creatures than men are.
What does that mean for protests?
There are two different types of protests. When men gather to protest, it&#8217;s usually for one of two reasons. Either they really, really, really believe in the cause, or it&#8217;s time to riot and loot and grab a TV.
Why do women show up to protest?
Because it is a gigantic way to hang out with other people in a situation of social confirmation. Thus, polarized men will turn toward destructive societal movements, and polarized women will turn toward ways they can demonstrate compassion through things like protest.
Which is what’s happening with Lindsay Clancy.

IMG_6216

The Victimhood Trap Making Women Miserable

gender differences

lindsay clancy

postpartum psychosis

victimhood

Over the weekend, AOC announced to the world that she is freezing her eggs. She claims the message “educates” and “empowers” women. It does not. Her unsolicited declaration perpetuates a myth that women can have the ideal life whenever they want without consequence. It also makes it likely that even more children will grow up in fatherless homes.
The democratic socialist congresswoman’s decision was surprising to many people given her 11-year relationship and four-year engagement to fiancé Riley Roberts. Freezing your eggs at 36 when you already have a partner you claim to love seems unnecessary and raised suspicions. The media later reported that the couple quietly <a href="https://x.com/TMZ/status/2087294265843908813?s=20">ended their relationship two years ago.</a>
If true, AOC’s motives are even more transparent. In addition to clicks and attention, she wants insurance for the moment when she does decide to have a family that she’ll have viable eggs to do so — even if there is no man in the picture.
With their “pro-family at any age” argument, some <a href="https://x.com/LydiaMoynihan/status/2086821381044305933?s=20">conservatives are condemning those who criticize AOC’s choices</a>. Conservatives cannot be the pro-family party without supporting egg freezing, they say.
What they fail to acknowledge is that encouraging women to freeze their eggs opens the door to an influx of fatherless children. Nothing could be less “pro-family” or worse for society than that. <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/do-two-parents-matter-more-than-ever">Research</a> shows that children raised in a two-parent household — specifically with a mother and a father — find more success in life, whether that be educational, financial, health, or emotional.
Feminism succeeded in convincing women that financial gain, upward mobility, and independence were admirable goals — more admirable than finding a partner and starting a family. Thus, America is now filled with so many successful, independent, and single women that it’s often called the “<a href="https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/womens-impact-on-the-economy">Sheconomy</a>.” Women comprise nearly half the U.S. labor force, and single women, almost a quarter.
Many women wear this status as a badge of honor. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lPQZni7I18">Songs are written</a> to glamorize it. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJfhrLoQl5w">Movies are produced</a> to sell it. However, it has also made finding a worthy partner more challenging for these women.
They no longer choose a partner for financial stability or a man’s ability to be a good father. They choose based on credentials that are often difficult to meet, adopting a romanticized version of love sold by Hollywood.
Women still tend to want to “<a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/krCGqdc9BYk?si=TCkuFo6JW8jI3_Iw">marry up</a>,” but when they already have successful careers, a house, and multiple degrees, the bar is very high for most men to clear. Many women say they can’t find a mate that meets their standards.
Feminism has taught women that, in fact, they don’t need a man and then, through policy and cultural shifts, concocted a society to make that possible, even without large paychecks.
Yet, biology is real, and women can’t outrun Father Time or Mother Nature. That clock will start ticking. Why not have a child without a father? they ask. A woman like AOC can now afford it on her own (or with likely <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/10/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-announces-actions-to-lower-costs-and-expand-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-and-high-quality-fertility-care/">increasing government subsidies</a>), culture has told her it’s “bad ass” and “empowering” to freeze her eggs, and science has figured out how to impregnate her without a husband, calling it “reproductive care.”
This puts the desires of adults before the needs of children, as <a href="https://x.com/Katy_Faust/status/2086847676000485652?s=20">Katy Faust</a>, founder of <a href="https://thembeforeus.com/">Them Before Us</a>, often points out. The purpose of a marriage is the “establishment of an environment that’s beneficial to children,” <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/gP79Xb0kznA?si=AXgjaRU2T1ZImtyV">Jordan Peterson says</a>, not the happiness of the husband and wife.
Society has delayed and then medicalized the most natural part of a woman’s life cycle — getting married and having children. It seems the harder we try to optimize women’s lives, the <a href="https://theworlddata.com/womens-mental-health-statistics-in-us/">more miserable they are</a>.
Rather than manufacturing unnatural solutions to today’s <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-demographic-dead-end-2026-state-of-fertility-report">declining replacement rates</a>, health agencies and researchers should focus on uncovering the <a href="https://www.factsaboutfertility.org/">root causes</a> of delayed marriage and inability to conceive, and <a href="https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/saving-america-saving-the-family-foundation-the-next-250-years">restore the proper purpose of marriage</a>.
Science has done many wonderful things, but redefining family and re-engineering the natural order and goodness of family is not one of them.
The <a href="https://a.co/d/0jc0UaZZ">first and most crucial bond</a> for a healthy society is marriage and the natural family. Disrupting it places primacy on the state, which is why our country has found itself increasingly engulfed by federal policy and bureaucratic solutions.
Maybe this is why AOC is encouraging women to freeze eggs, even with the potential financial and health risks involved. More women having babies without fathers means more opportunities for the state to step in.
A home with a mother and a father in a loving relationship is the best scenario to raise a healthy child. While that is not always possible, freezing eggs will not get us closer to that ideal situation — it will push us further away. AOC’s choices are not a model to uphold.
***
Jennifer Galardi is a Senior Policy Analyst for Restoring American Wellness at the Heritage Foundation.

Egg storage for IVF

Freezing Eggs Is One Step Toward A Fatherless Dystopia

alexandria ocasio-cortez

egg freezing

fatherlessness

A clip of a bride reacting strongly to being called by her new husband’s last name went viral this week, with commenters saying it’s proof of how society disrespects men.
The viral post is overlaid with text that reads, “When they forget to tell the officiant that she isn’t changing her name…” The video begins with the officiant saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present the newly married couple, Mr. &amp; Mrs. Brandon Key!” 
At that moment, the bride whipped her head around in shock, said something to the officiant, and he quickly rolled his eyes before changing course and introducing the bride by her maiden name.
The interaction inspired discourse about name changes for women. It also raised questions about a man&#8217;s role in modern relationships. Many clip viewers noted the groom’s submissive-looking behavior in the video.
“Some really basic red flags that guys can look for ahead of marriage. So much heartache and misery could be avoided. Here’s one of the most basic red flags. If she won’t take your last name, don’t marry her. Very simple. Marriages where the woman keeps her maiden name are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce. There’s a reason for that,” Daily Wire host Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2087211116740968957">wrote</a> on X.
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles reacted too, writing, &#8220;&#8216;A quarrelsome wife is like the constant dripping of a leaky roof.&#8217; (Prov. 19:13) ‘Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.’ (Prov. 21:19)&#8230; ‘A headstrong wife is regarded as a b*tch.&#8217; (Sir. 26:25).”
“If a bride doesn&#8217;t take the husband’s last name … and she makes a scene and corrects the officiant during the ceremony like a girlboss … that “marriage” is doomed,” one person <a href="https://x.com/TaylorRMarshall/status/2087201984185028991">said</a>. “The groom has his hand in his pocket and knows he has been publicly neutered.”
“The issue in this video isn&#8217;t whether she takes her husband&#8217;s last name or not. The issue is she makes a scene out of it instead of just going with it in the moment. This is unlikely to be a happy marriage,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/Supersonics67/status/2087233288276738495">observed</a>.
Currently, about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marriage-was-supposed-to-mean-us-then-came-identity-politics">80% of married women</a> in America still take their husbands’ last names. Feminists have resisted this norm for decades, claiming it’s another symptom of the evil patriarchy.

Marriage

WATCH: Bride Freaks Out After Being Called By Her New Husband’s Last Name

viral video

Jane Austen fans eagerly await yet another adaptation of &#8220;Pride and Prejudice,&#8221; which is due for <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/pride-and-prejudice-cast-photos-release-date-news">release by Netflix</a> this fall. Certainly, this most beloved of Austen’s novels — about first impressions and their limitations, as experienced by protagonist Elizabeth Bennet and her eventual husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy — offers plenty of food for thought about love and marriage. But the truth is that many of Austen’s precepts in &#8220;Pride and Prejudice&#8221; apply narrowly to her own time and make only a clumsy transfer to ours. 
In Regency England, with its system of primogeniture, nearly all women needed husbands to achieve any measure of independence or financial security. To remain unmarried was, for most women, to exist on the charity begrudged them by male relatives (as the Dashwood sisters and their mother do at the start of Austen’s &#8220;Sense and Sensibility&#8221;). This is why Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s best friend in &#8220;Pride and Prejudice,&#8221; marries the insipid, detestable, self-important Mr. Collins. Such a storyline is inherently dated. Today, of course, Mr. Collins would either shape up or become an “incel.” 
That’s partly because 21st-century women in first-world nations are, by and large, fortunate enough to be in the position of the final Austen heroine who debuted within the author’s lifetime: the financially independent heiress Emma who declares near the beginning of Austen’s eponymous novel that she will never marry. 
So, if we’re going to search for modern lessons about marriage in Austen’s 19th-century corpus, we would do well to focus our attention on &#8220;Emma.&#8221; Austen’s depiction of a woman who eschews marriage because she does not need to be a wife for material reasons is as prescient and prophetic as it is unflattering. 
The lessons Emma learns — that she is not as capacious, insightful, or charitable as she would like to believe and that her ostensibly disinterested conception of romance and marriage is shallow, self-important, and transactional — are ones that many of today’s young women desperately need. 
What makes a man husband material?
To pay attention to dating discourse today is to recognize that, for a host of reasons, young men and young women are increasingly <a href="https://www.research-live.com/article/features/healing-the-rift-understanding-the-growing-divide-between-men-and-women-/id/5135613">fed up with</a> one another. Fewer and fewer Americans are <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/state-of-our-unions-2026-the-dating-recession">dating</a>, <a href="https://usafacts.org/articles/state-relationships-marriages-and-living-alone-us/">marrying</a>, or <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-sex-recession-the-share-of-americans-having-regular-sex-keeps-dropping">having sex</a>. 
Apparently, the battle of the sexes has become something of a cold war. 
Males’ <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/elizabeth-grace-matthew">extended adolescence</a> and failures to launch no doubt play a central role here. So does the reactionary misogyny evinced by the so-called “manosphere,” where disgruntled <a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/yelling-at-ambitious-young-women?r=1g6s4d&amp;utm_medium=ios&amp;triedRedirect=true">young men</a> pine for the days when the Charlotte Lucases were compelled to marry the Mr. Collinses against their own inclination. I am not discounting either of these left-coded explanations for falling rates of coupling up; there is truth in them. 
That said, many college-educated women’s disdain for non-college-educated men in particular has less to do with those men’s failure to grow up than it does with their failure to conform to left-coded elite pretensions and pass various ideological litmus tests. Thus, our ever-increasing political polarization both reflects and serves to perpetuate the growing gulf between the sexes, as more young women attend college and veer hard Left while more young men eschew college and lean Right. In this context, of course, fewer young men seem, to many young women, like plausible life partners. 
Austen has no brief for this kind of female arrogance. 
When Emma manipulates her less fortunate friend Harriet into rejecting a marriage proposal from an honorable farmer (and persuades her that she is in love with a smarmy clergyman instead), she does so out of nothing but self-important prejudice. Emma is sure that a man who works with his hands (and is ignorant of some of the finer manners she is accustomed to in gentlemen of her own class) could never be <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/07/lifestyle/nyc-womens-insanely-high-dating-standards-are-screwing-them-over-expert/">good enough</a> for her friend. Of course, Emma’s unwarranted meddling nearly wrecks Harriet’s happiness. Meanwhile, Austen throws her heroine’s myopia and solipsism into sharp and unforgiving relief. And, indeed, Emma learns some humility and gains some valuable perspective. 
Unfortunately, many of today’s <a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/bridget-jones-25-dating-young-women/">similarly situated women</a> seem determined to put incomplete, infantile notions of what makes a marriageable man ahead of both their own and others’ well-being. 
Is marriage just another transactional negotiation?
Emma’s perennial insistence that she has no interest in marriage herself falls by the wayside when her former governess’ stepson comes to town. Frank Churchill is dashing and intriguing. His admiration and love would be a feather in Emma’s cap. That fact, more than anything about Frank himself, piques her interest — until she learns that Frank is flirting with her only to maintain the secrecy of his engagement to someone else. 
Emma’s shallow interest in romance as self-aggrandizement finds its modern echo in popular videos from internet influencers who declare that they won’t date men who don’t get them an <a href="https://cheezburger.com/46295557/new-york-woman-demands-first-date-order-an-uber-to-pick-her-up-sparks-debate-when-he-refuses">Uber on the first date</a> or <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/02/lifestyle/womans-money-relationship-opinion-divides-because-youre-a-man/">reflexively pay</a> for luxury versions of everything. That is, they won’t deign to date a man unless he essentially portends and embodies a full-life “upgrade.”
As if the upgrade to being a married couple weren’t enough. Which, to these sorts of women, it isn’t. 
When women relied on marriage for financial security, independent wealth like Emma’s obviated the presumed need for nuptial partnership. Now that nearly every young woman earns (or could earn) an income to support herself, marriage writ large has become a want (or not) rather than a need.
Do today’s women want the right thing? Too many of them, it seems, do not. 
Emma’s ultimate partnership with her neighbor Mr. Knightley is as fine a portrayal of the egalitarian, companionate marriage as one could hope to see. Both must admit a degree of fault in how they thought about the romances of others. 
Only, unlike in the case of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, the greater fault — and therefore, the greater need for character growth — lies with the woman. Emma learns that marriage is not only a vehicle for the upward mobility of which she has no need, but a context for the happy embrace of the holistic responsibility to which she is called.
&#8220;Pride and Prejudice&#8221; may be the Austen novel we want. But more than ever, &#8220;Emma&#8221; is the one we need.
***
Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about books, education, and culture, including <a href="https://elizabethgracematthew.substack.com/about">on Substack</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" 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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Jane Austen’s Most Uncomfortable Lesson For Modern Women

dating and relationships

emma

jane austen

pride and prejudice

Marriage was once understood as a commitment that required sacrifice. Husbands and wives argued, disappointed each other, went through dry spells, and occasionally wondered whether they had married the wrong person. None of those experiences automatically meant the marriage had failed.
Today, many therapists tell clients the opposite.
As a practicing psychotherapist, I&#8217;ve watched my profession gradually redefine what counts as a healthy marriage. Instead of asking whether a relationship is fundamentally sound, many therapists encourage clients to audit it. Is every emotional need being met? Do you feel consistently validated? Is your partner helping you become the best version of yourself?
Those questions sound reasonable on their own. Together, they turn marriage into a performance review, and most marriages, evaluated that way, will fail.
Marriage begins with a vow. Too much of today&#8217;s therapeutic culture treats it like a satisfaction survey.
I&#8217;ve worked with couples who came to me after months, sometimes years, of absorbing messages from other therapists, social media, and self-styled relationship influencers. By the time they arrived, ordinary marital frustrations had already been reframed as attachment injuries, emotional labor imbalances, or proof that a partner was no longer &#8220;showing up.&#8221;
Clients often arrive speaking the language of therapy culture: &#8220;Protect your peace.&#8221; &#8220;You attract what you tolerate.&#8221; &#8220;This relationship isn&#8217;t serving you anymore.&#8221; Those aren&#8217;t conclusions they&#8217;ve reached. They&#8217;re scripts they&#8217;ve learned from therapists, social media, and self-appointed relationship influencers.
&#8220;Protect your peace&#8221; may be the slogan that best captures what&#8217;s gone wrong. It sounds like wisdom, but too often it&#8217;s permission to avoid difficult conversations, stop tolerating ordinary imperfection, and make personal comfort the measure of a marriage. A good therapist doesn&#8217;t encourage anxious patients to organize their lives around avoiding discomfort. Marriage deserves the same wisdom.
The problem isn&#8217;t that concepts such as attachment injuries or emotional labor are always wrong. Sometimes they accurately describe serious problems. The problem is that therapists have become remarkably good at turning ordinary marital dissatisfaction into psychological pathology, then treating the diagnosis as a reason to leave.
Therapy once emphasized resilience, responsibility, and learning to tolerate frustration. Today it often encourages people to treat dissatisfaction as evidence that something in their lives must change. Marriage is sometimes the first casualty.
The language of self-care has reinforced the shift. Healthy boundaries matter. Leaving an abusive relationship saves lives. No serious person disputes that. But those ideas are now routinely applied to ordinary marital conflict. Feeling criticized becomes emotional invalidation. Compromise becomes people-pleasing. Patience becomes settling.
Once every unpleasant feeling demands immediate relief, commitment starts looking like pathology.
Therapists know emotions fluctuate. Patients struggling with anxiety or depression are taught not to make major decisions based solely on how they feel in the moment. Yet that principle is too often abandoned when the subject becomes marriage. Temporary unhappiness is treated as evidence that the relationship itself is broken rather than something two committed people can work through.
Children are often an afterthought in these conversations, and that should concern every therapist. Most divorces do not involve abuse, violence, addiction, or betrayal. They involve two disappointed people who have lost sight of why they married in the first place. Before encouraging divorce, therapists should ask harder questions. Have both spouses genuinely tried to repair the marriage? Are expectations realistic? What will this decision mean for the children?
Children don&#8217;t need perfect parents. They need parents who know how to repair conflict, keep commitments, and show that love survives seasons of disappointment.
The irony should embarrass the profession. Effective therapists routinely teach people to tolerate discomfort, resist the urge to escape, and recognize that growth often comes from doing what is difficult rather than what feels good. Yet those same principles are often abandoned when the subject becomes marriage. Ordinary disappointment is reframed as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong. Commitment gives way to self-fulfillment. Endurance is mistaken for dysfunction.
Marriage has never promised perpetual happiness. It asks two imperfect people to honor a commitment, weather disappointment, and build a family and a life larger than either person&#8217;s immediate emotional state.
Therapists should be the first to remind people that feelings fluctuate, conflict is inevitable, and lasting commitments require perseverance. My profession, though, has lately been sending the opposite message. It encourages people to trust today&#8217;s emotions over yesterday&#8217;s vows and to mistake temporary dissatisfaction for proof that a marriage has run its course.
If therapists stop defending commitment, they shouldn&#8217;t be surprised when fewer marriages survive. And if the profession continues to redefine ordinary marital struggle as psychological dysfunction, it won&#8217;t simply witness the decline of marriage. It will bear some responsibility for it.
***
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C., and author of the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1335000658?lv=shuf&amp;channelId=500&amp;plpRedirect=mhFallback">“Therapy Nation.”</a> Find him on X <a href="https://x.com/JonathanAlpert" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@JonathanAlpert</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" 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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Why So Many Therapists Are Getting Marriage Wrong

therapy

Young Americans are increasingly told to postpone marriage. As a result, the idea of tying the knot is falling out of favor with my entire generation.
For many in Generation Z, this shift isn’t merely a product of cultural drift but rather one of well-intentioned guidance from the people we trust most: our parents, who urge an emphasis on financial stability long before marriage is even considered.
Back in the 1950s, Americans typically married in their early twenties. By 2019, the median age of first marriage had climbed into the late twenties and early thirties, and the nation’s marriage rate had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/style/marriage-decline-delay.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/style/marriage-decline-delay.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1785268470596000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Pt5mIK9kyz7StHOaEz-v9">fallen</a> to a 140-year low.
Aside from statistics, this advice often stems from sacrifice and good intentions. For many first-generation college students like myself, our parents worked hard to provide us access to an American education and greater opportunities for economic mobility. Their emphasis on financial security reflects a desire to ensure peace, stability, and prosperity for the next generation.
The American Enterprise Institute <a href="https://cosm.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/successsequencedisadvantaged.pdf?" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://cosm.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/successsequencedisadvantaged.pdf?&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1785268470596000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3bFNODLl9oj8nBxanudfdr">recommends</a> a “success sequence” to avoid poverty: earn a high school degree and secure a full-time job before getting married and having children. Among descendants of minorities and low-income families, 97% of young adults who follow the sequence avoid poverty by their thirties. A vast majority move into the middle class and beyond.
My parents’ advice reflected this success sequence, but they taught me to delay serious commitment further in pursuit of financial independence. “Don&#8217;t think about marriage until you are 27,” they said.
Of course, the pursuit of economic independence is a worthy and respectable goal that is not available to all women worldwide. Where I disagree is not that I should strive for financial success, but rather that I must do it on my own — or delay marriage until an arbitrary age.
My parents, like those of many others my age, even suggested living together before marriage as a practical step, keeping relationships casual and postponing long-term commitment. This perspective isn&#8217;t unique to my family. In fact, the Pew Research Center <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/11/06/marriage-and-cohabitation-in-the-u-s/?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/11/06/marriage-and-cohabitation-in-the-u-s/?utm_source%3Dchatgpt.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1785268470596000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0JaWZ2-V9dxsY2V_N3htPt">reported</a> in 2019 that 85% of American adults view cohabitation as acceptable.
Views like these, rooted in care and a desire for stability, have subtly influenced how my generation approaches relationships. Following this well-intentioned guidance, many of us are expected to spend our twenties climbing the corporate ladder while approaching romantic relationships casually.
Over time, I began questioning whether financial security alone was enough to define a successful life. My perspective shifted even more after my conversion to Catholicism. It changed not only how I viewed marriage, but also how I understood success as a young woman. The desire for married life became essential to my understanding of human flourishing — something not always accompanied by the culture&#8217;s definition of “fun” or practicality.
The data <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/sorry-liz-gilbert-married-women-are-increasingly-happiest-of-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/blog/sorry-liz-gilbert-married-women-are-increasingly-happiest-of-all&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1785268470596000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0lTRPiIvRpXaLOodDHwguj">support</a> this intuition. According to the Institute for Family Studies, married women “live longer, earn more, and report more meaningful lives, compared to single women.” Gallup research likewise found that married Americans consistently report higher levels of wellbeing than unmarried adults, regardless of age, race, or education.
The Catholic Church offers an explanation for why this might be true. It teaches that marriage is a vocation in which one spouse&#8217;s primary responsibility is to aid the other&#8217;s journey to heaven. This understanding of self-sacrificial love gives marriage a purpose that extends beyond personal fulfillment. If marriage consistently contributes to well-being, why has it become something to postpone until every other milestone has been achieved?
Gen Z is increasingly coaxed away from the altar by narratives that redirect this natural desire for commitment toward fears of economic instability, distorted understandings of gender roles and religion, shrinking job opportunities, and anxieties surrounding submission and self-sacrifice.
Marriage offers a stability that nothing corporate or financial can replicate. When the world offers women radical individualism on a silver platter, getting married in one&#8217;s twenties provides a unique opportunity to grow alongside someone else — financially speaking, a “start-up” rather than a “merger.” Through the years, spouses learn to serve one another, navigate challenges, and build a future grounded in shared values and enduring commitment as opposed to isolation and fear.
Gen Z must rediscover marriage as a path to human flourishing. Our culture should present marriage not as a luxury item or a bucket-list achievement, but as a foundation for shared values, mutual responsibility, and relationships built on a security that transcends the material.
Marriage should be a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-dating-reality-check">cornerstone, not a capstone, event</a> that can only come after every professional achievement has been unlocked. Entering marriage with intention in one&#8217;s twenties or thirties allows that bond to shape character, purpose, and a lifetime of shared growth.
***
Paris Apodaca is a student media fellow at the Network of Enlightened Women. She studies political science at the University of Washington and serves as president of her campus chapter of NeW.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" 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 Marriage Lesson An Entire Generation Never Learned

dating

Relationships

upstream

Last week, I <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/cant-buy-me-love-materialism-and-marriage">discussed the rise of materialism among teens and young adults</a> and how over-prioritization of money, possessions, and careers is playing an underappreciated role in disrupting family formation today. This week, I extend that discussion by addressing two ways that research has shown that materialism harms marriages and, most importantly, what can couples do to safeguard their marriage from these harms.
Most people assume that financial problems in marriage are simply an income problem. The basic belief is that if a couple has a lot of money, they won’t have financial problems, and if they don’t earn a lot of money, they will have financial problems. This is the core assumption of those who endorse materialism as a practical fix to the economic realities of modern life — you just need to make more money!
However, research has consistently challenged this assumption. This is because materialism harms marriages in two distinct ways — one obvious, one far less so — and understanding both is essential for any couple or family navigating the financial realities of modern life.
<h4 class="p3">The Spending Problem</h4>
First, the most obvious way that materialistic attitudes can have a negative impact on marriage and family relationships is because spouses who give a high priority to money and the accumulation of material possessions are more likely to create “real money problems” by over-spending and not living within their means. This pursuit of possessions is amplified by the misuse of credit cards and other forms of lending that lead to stressful debt, financial strain, and conflict between spouses.
<h4 class="p3">The Perception Problem</h4>
The second and less obvious way materialism harms marriages operates below the surface. Materialism quietly resets the perception threshold for what a spouse considers to be a financial problem in the first place. Simply put, the more you expect, the easier it is to feel distressed by financial limitations. Materialistic spouses carry a heightened sensitivity to financial matters that lowers the bar for what gets defined as a problem. For a highly materialistic spouse or couple, it takes less financial disturbance to trigger distress and dissatisfaction. This increased sensitivity then raises the stakes, making financial problems more likely to spill over into broader marital dissatisfaction.
In a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077727X06296625">study</a> my colleagues and I conducted with a nationally representative sample of 600 married couples, we found that about one-third of spouses can be classified as highly materialistic — and those spouses were approximately 40% more likely than their non-materialistic counterparts to frequently experience finances as a problem in their relationship. Nearly half of highly-materialistic spouses reported that financial matters were &#8220;often&#8221; or &#8220;very often&#8221; a source of trouble, compared to roughly one-third of low-materialistic spouses. And most striking of all, materialism proved to be a stronger predictor of perceived financial problems than the couple&#8217;s actual income level.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1140699" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="2233" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--300x262.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--660x576.jpg 660w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--768x670.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--1536x1340.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/carroll-materialism-chart--2048x1786.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" /></div>
Let me say that again: materialism has a more profound impact on the perception of financial problems than income. The threshold for what counts as a financial problem in a marriage is not set by the bank account — it is set by the mindset. As family finance expert Dr. Bernard Poduska has <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/for-love-money-bernard-e-poduska/1101835546">observed</a>, “financial problems are frequently behavior and attitude problems rather than money problems.”
The practical implication here is that we need to stop assuming that all couples experience financial matters the same way. Couples who habitually compare themselves to those who have more are likely to feel a chronic sense of entitlement and resentment that contributes directly to marital conflict. Couples who can view their situation through the eyes of those who have less are far more likely to cultivate the contentment and gratitude that research consistently links to stronger marriages.
So, helping couples lower their financial expectations benefits marriages in two concrete ways — 1) spouses become more willing to avoid the debt-creating purchases that generate ongoing stress, and 2) they become more inclined to interpret their current financial situation with positive appraisal rather than chronic dissatisfaction. If a couple is already experiencing financial strain, scaling back expectations is often the most important first step toward regaining both financial stability and relationship peace.
<h4 class="p3">Joint Materialism Is Still Harmful</h4>
One natural follow-up question is whether the harm materialism causes in marriage is really just about conflict between partners who have different financial values. Is this just a problem for couples where one spouse is a spender and the other is a saver? Does shared materialism smooth things over?
In a follow-up <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332691.2011.613306">study</a>, my colleagues and I looked at this relationship dynamic. Using a national sample of over 1,700 married couples, we created a 2&#215;2 typology of couple materialism that distinguished couples where 1) both spouses were low in materialism (congruently nonmaterialistic); 2) couples where both were high in materialism (congruently materialistic); and 3) two incongruent groups where spouses differed (husband high/wife low, and wife high/husband low).
We found that couples where both spouses reported low materialism were better off on every measured dimension of marriage quality — including better communication, more effective conflict resolution, less problem areas, higher relationship satisfaction, and greater relationship stability. Congruently materialistic couples, by contrast, consistently reported the most problematic patterns and the fewest positive outcomes across every measure we looked at. Incongruent couples — those where one spouse was materialistic and the other was not — fell in between. What this tells us is that each additional materialistic spouse in a marriage compounds the harmful effect of materialistic attitudes. It doesn&#8217;t seem to matter which spouse is the materialistic one — what matters is how many materialistic spouses there are in the marriage.
It is important to note that just like our previous study, materialistic couples with higher income levels still fared worse on relationship quality than non-materialistic couples with lower income levels. This is perhaps the most important finding of the study for couples to hear — a high level of financial resources does not protect a marriage from the corrosive effects of materialistic values. When we examined the character traits of the spouses, highly-materialistic spouses reported lower levels of other-centeredness and reduced emotional maturity, and placed a lower level of importance on their marriage compared to other pursuits.
In a more recent study, we again found that materialism was negatively associated with how important people perceived their marriage to be. And that diminished sense of marriage importance, in turn, predicted lower marital satisfaction. Materialism harms marriages, not because partners disagree about money — but because of what placing money at the center of a relationship does to a marriage. Joint materialism is not a shared value that bonds partners. It is a shared liability.
Our research also revealed something sobering about the prevalence of the problem. In our study, 1 in 5 married couples (20%) consisted of two partners who both self-identified as highly materialistic — and because congruently materialistic couples were significantly younger than their nonmaterialistic counterparts, these patterns are likely to become more pronounced as today&#8217;s younger, more materialistic generation moves into their prime marriage years.
<h4 class="p3">What Couples Can Do</h4>
Research on materialism and marriage doesn&#8217;t just diagnose the problem — it also points toward solutions. Drawing on findings from these and other studies, five recommendations emerge as particularly important for couples navigating the current financial environment.
1. Live Within Your Means Together
Materialistic values frequently drive overspending and debt, which in turn creates the real financial strain that damages marriages. Couples who build and follow a shared budget, approach debt cautiously, and maintain financial reserves avoid one of the most potent and recurring <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-currency-of-connection-moving-beyond-the-money-fight-to-marital-unity">sources</a> of marital conflict. Financial prudence is not just good money management — it is an act of care for the relationship itself.
2. Distinguish Needs from Wants
One of the most important things a couple can do is sit down together and honestly examine their spending through the lens of necessity versus desire. Consumer culture is extraordinarily effective at blurring this line — as the saying goes, “yesterday’s luxuries have become today’s necessities.” This doesn&#8217;t require asceticism, but it does require patience and intentionality. Couples who regularly revisit this distinction together are better positioned to make spending decisions that reflect true family needs, rather than cultural pressure.
3. Beware of Financial Comparisons
A recurring theme in the research is that materialistic spouses are more likely to evaluate their financial situation by comparing upward — measuring themselves against people who have more. This creates a persistent perception of deprivation even in the absence of genuine scarcity. This approach to life generates a sense of entitlement and resentment that can infect their relationship. Couples who habitually look downward — considering how fortunate they are relative to those with less — are more likely to cultivate gratitude and contentment, both of which are strongly linked to marital satisfaction.
4. Resist the Capstone Mentality
For younger couples and those approaching marriage, be careful about getting caught in the trap of believing that marriage and parenting should wait until every financial milestone has been achieved. Completing every educational goal, reaching a certain income, owning a home — when these become prerequisites rather than shared aspirations, they can delay or prevent marriages that might otherwise thrive. <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/capstones-vs-cornerstones-is-marrying-later-always-better">Couples willing to build a life together rather than waiting until that life is already built</a> often find that doing so strengthens rather than strains their relationship.
5. Put the Marriage Before the Money
While all families must pay attention to the financial realities of life, couples should regularly and intentionally invest in the marriage itself — through time together, expressions of appreciation, and protecting relationship rituals — rather than allowing the pursuit of financial goals to crowd out the relationship. Couples under financial strain often report that they stop appreciating the dimensions of their relationship that money can’t buy — conversation, laughter, shared purpose, physical touch, trust. Deliberately investing in simple, inexpensive relationship rituals, such as regular connection, daily expressions of affection, and a weekly date, tends to reinforce the sense that the relationship itself is the most valuable thing the couple has.
Economic pressures are real, and they do matter. But the answer to financial stress in marriage is not always more money. Sometimes, it is a <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-currency-of-connection-moving-beyond-the-money-fight-to-marital-unity">different relationship with money altogether</a> — one grounded in realistic expectations, delayed gratification, gratitude, shared purpose, and the recognition that the most important things in life can’t be bought.
***
This is republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-love-or-money-two-ways-materialism-harms-marriage-and-how-to-avoid-the-trap">here</a>.
Jason S. Carroll, Ph.D. is the Director of the Marriage and Family Initiative at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Dr. Carroll is a past recipient of the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievement given by the International Association for Relationship Research.

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