The kids are not okay. 
We now have an enormous amount of poll data suggesting that Generation Z has some very serious problems, problems that they didn&#8217;t create for themselves.
These are problems created by generations of bad parenting in the United States of America.
A new NBC News poll shows young people are not fond of the idea of getting married or having babies — and they like socialism.
This is disastrous.
According to the NBC News poll, respondents aged 18 to 29 were asked about 13 different options for their top priorities. For women, the number one priority, the number one priority in life, was having a job or career they found fulfilling. Number two was having enough money to do the things that you want to do. Number three? Achieving financial independence. Number four? Having emotional stability.
And then, if you go all the way down the list, number ten was having children, and number 11 was being married.
This is a massive problem. If young women between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that it is a 10th priority to have kids and an 11th priority to get married, and their number one priority is having a job or a career, that is a gigantic mistake when it comes to the purpose of life.
How about for men?
Number one, having a job or career that you find fulfilling. Number two, having enough money to do the things you want to do. You have to go all the way down to number seven to get to “being married.” And number eight, “having children.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2276-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Any society that does not make its number one focus — not number two, not number three —  getting married and having kids, is a society doomed to failure because that is the priority of any society. You cannot pass your values on to the next generation if there is no next generation. And you can&#8217;t pass your values on to the next generation if you have no values.
The reality is that the central purpose in life comes from the book of Genesis: Leaving your father and mother, marrying a member of the opposite sex, and having kids. 
And that&#8217;s not just because it&#8217;s in the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis has lasted from time immemorial specifically because that happens to be true. Any society that believes yearning for individualistic pursuits — as shown here by the number two priority being having enough money to do the things you want to do — any society that is focused on hedonistic personal fulfillment is a society that is doomed to failure. 
People will stop having kids. People will stop getting married. People will not be happy. And when they are not happy, because it turns out that the fruits of economics are not enough to make you happy, they will turn on the economics themselves, because you cannot fill that family-shaped hole in the heart with cash. 
It is not possible to do it. You can&#8217;t. What gives fulfillment in life to human beings is getting married and having kids. 
I know in our radically individualistic society, we&#8217;re supposed to believe that all forms of familial formation, all forms of sexual behavior, are equally admirable and equally the target of aspiration for society. 
That is wrong and untrue. We should be teaching our kids that it is important to marry a member of the opposite sex, and have kids with those people. 
Will there be people for whom this doesn&#8217;t apply? Sure, because for every rule there are exceptions. But if that is not the societal aspiration, what you end up with is people who are inward-focused. 
That’s because what takes you out of your own emotional narcissism is getting married and having children. 
In my book “Lions and Scavengers,” I talk about this: The word in Hebrew for love is “ahava.” The root of the word “ahava” is “hov,” to give. Thus, giving is at the root of love. 
If you have no one to give yourself to, if you do not have, as it says in the Bible, an “ezer kenegdo,” which means a “helper against him,” it is not good. 
The point is that a woman completes a man and a man completes a woman. And yes, they do need each other, and that is a beautiful thing. And when they come together, they have children. And that is the most beautiful thing. 
Any society that vitiates that purpose and treats that purpose as not only secondary or tertiary, but 10th on the list of priorities, is a society that won’t have kids, and is doomed for unhappiness. 
And then when that unhappiness materializes, people blame the economic system. These two things are connected. There&#8217;s polling data showing that young people, in particular, are warming toward socialism. 
Why? 
The answer is that if you can&#8217;t get what you want in the form of economics, then you tend to blame the economic system. It used to be that so long as you were able to earn for your family, that was the purpose of earning: to be able to buy a house for your family. Not just for you. For your family, to provide a better life for your kids.
But if you separate family and kids from that purpose, no amount of money that you earn will ever be enough to do all the things you want to do, because there are always new things that you want to do. 
I don&#8217;t blame young people for this. I blame their parents. Parents did not hand down the values that they were taught by their parents to their kids.
We now have three generations in American life that have degraded the value of family and childbearing and child-rearing in favor of atomistic individualism that was supposed to provide a libertarian fulfillment.
It’s empty. People are unhappy.
The reality of the world is that it is women, traditionally speaking and biologically speaking, who long to have children. This pretend, nonsense, made-up world in which women are taught that they shouldn’t want to have children is unnatural.
There&#8217;s a reason why every study of rhesus monkeys shows that if you give female rhesus monkeys a truck, they will take the truck and start cradling the truck. The male rhesus monkeys will start hitting each other with it.
Men and women are different. When you tell women they don&#8217;t want the most natural thing for them to want, you get unhappy women. And when men can&#8217;t fulfill their highest purpose because many women don&#8217;t want to fulfill that purpose either, they get angry at women, and they become counterproductive and bad citizens of society.
When you alienate women from their magical superpower, having children, and you tell them that&#8217;s exactly what they shouldn&#8217;t want, that what they actually should want is to be more like men working 2200 billable hours at a law firm, what you&#8217;re going to end up with is an enormous amount of unhappiness.
And that unhappiness stems from women who have been alienated from the central purpose in life, and men who actively would like to form families with women and then fulfill their central purpose in life.

TOPSHOT-CUBA-MAY DAY-DEMO

Disaster: Gen Z Hates Babies, Likes Socialism 

Ben Shapiro

Children

Dinks

Gen Z

Marriage

Opinion

Social Issues

Voters

Like many of you, I’m exhausted by the endless cycle of outrage.
Every viral clip is designed to shock us, every headline crafted to rile us up. We spend our days reacting to the brokenness of the world instead of daring to imagine something better. Caught in this endless cycle of reaction, we think we’re fighting the good fight. But we’re not. Reaction is not a strategy, it’s a stall.
Giving in to the rage is not enough to save Western civilization. If we really care about preserving what’s good and true and beautiful in the West, then the work can’t stop at identifying what’s wrong. We have to start creating what’s right. And that responsibility doesn’t only belong to content creators online. It belongs to every single one of us, wherever we are, with whatever influence God has entrusted to us.
We don’t need more rage. We need builders.
The Left understands this. Some six decades ago, the American Communist Party wrote a terrifying long-term playbook for cultural change, and Leftists have worked tirelessly to implement it ever since. That’s why we find ourselves here today, in a society that calls good evil and evil good.
The other side may have gotten a head start. But we still have time to write a different story. Doing so will require ordinary people like you and me to courageously decide to live differently from those who came before us.
That begins with what I like to call quiet acts of courage. These aren’t the kind of moments that will make headlines or go viral on TikTok, but the kind of decisions that ripple outward and change the world.
It’s raising your hand in class when your professor spreads propaganda and calmly offering the truth. It’s choosing to go to church on Sunday morning when the culture tells you faith is outdated and pointless. It’s daring to actually fall in love, commit to marriage, and start a family in an age that glorifies hookup culture and selfishness. It’s choosing to seek out real sources of truth online instead of letting yourself be spoon-fed the easy and ever-present propaganda of mainstream media.
Each of these decisions may seem small, but together, they can be revolutionary. They chip away at the lies holding our society hostage. They model for the next generation what it looks like to live with integrity and courage. And collectively, they create a culture worth defending.
That’s where I hope the Isabel Brown Show comes in.
I will always call out evil for what it is. But this show, and this community we’re building together, is about something more than rage or reaction. It’s about sketching a blueprint for a new American Dream — one rooted in faith, family, and truth — that we can pass on with pride.
So, here’s my challenge to you: stop letting the worst people set the agenda. Start living as though your choices matter — because they do.
Let’s go on offense, with quiet acts of courage that will echo for generations. Together, we’ll create a new American Dream.

IB Flag Image

Is The American Dream Dead?

America

Communism

Isabel Brown

A new <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-gen-zs-gender-divide-reaches-politics-views-marriage-children-suc-rcna229255">NBC News Decision Desk/SurveyMonkey poll</a> of over 30,000 adults reveals what many conservatives have long suspected: young Americans — particularly women who voted for Kamala Harris — are abandoning traditional American values at an alarming rate.
The poll, which surveyed nearly 3,000 Gen Z adults (ages 18 to 29), shows a sharp cultural divide — not only between men and women — but between those who support Trump and those backing the Biden-Harris agenda. And when it comes to the values that define a successful life, the contrast is stark.
Gen Z men who voted for Donald Trump overwhelmingly valued family, faith, and financial independence. They ranked having children as the number one marker of success. In fact, the top five values among this group included being married, being spiritually grounded, and making their family or community proud.
Contrast that with Harris voters — especially women — and a radically different picture emerges. For Harris-voting women, having children ranked 12th out of 13. Being married was even lower. Being spiritually grounded was virtually irrelevant. These voters instead prioritized emotional stability, self-fulfillment, and using their talents to help others — feelings above family and faith.
For example, while Gen Z women who supported Harris obsessed over emotional well-being, Trump-supporting women ranked spiritual grounding and home ownership far higher — hallmarks of personal responsibility and long-term investment. Three weeks before the 2024 election, Business Insider <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/single-women-political-power-voting-kamala-harris-election-2024-10">noted</a>, &#8220;In a 2023 Pew survey, more than seven in 10 single women identified as a Democrat or leaned Democratic, compared with 45% of married women. &#8230; A recent Ipsos survey found Harris leading among single women voters by nearly 40 points.&#8221;
In the NBC poll, nearly two-thirds of Gen Z women said they felt anxious “most” or “all of the time.”
It’s a generation caught in emotional turmoil. Instead of finding stability in tradition, they are endorsing a worldview that lives by an entirely different moral code that rejects the very principles that built Western civilization.

US-VOTE-POLITICS-HARRIS

Gen Z Harris Voters Reject Traditional Values Like Marriage, Children, And Religion: Poll

General

Kamala Harris

Poll

U.S.

Taylor Swift is officially off the market, and it’s no coincidence that America’s most beloved pop star didn’t say yes to another brooding actor, a melodramatic musician, or even some tortured poet. She ended up engaged to 6-foot-5, 250-pound Travis Kelce, a Super Bowl champ with a well-groomed mustache and a macho swagger. 
In other words, after years of dating men typically referred to as artsy “soy boys,” Swift said yes to the quintessential jock.
Swift may be an unapologetic lib, and Kelce may have shilled for Pfizer during the COVID pandemic, but this celebrity pairing actually bodes well for conservatives. Someone with her massive cultural influence over women is bound to start trends, and thanks to this latest development, old-school proposals and traditional marriage might be officially back in style. It’s only a matter of time before wedding-themed earworms start taking over the airwaves. 
Photos of the staged proposal were straight out of Swift&#8217;s wildest dreams. Kelce got down on one knee in a sun-dappled garden. The pop star is wearing a sundress and a soft smile. Swift posted a photo of the ring alongside the caption, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” 
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For this particular Hollywood love story, there was no girl bossing, no modern twists, no glorification of living in sin forever. This viral moment had everyone swooning because it was – gasp! – traditional. That makes it a cultural win for conservatives, even if the main characters are leftists through and through.
And there’s something very significant about the man Swift chose to spend forever with. This wasn’t a petulant man-child or anti-hero with a guitar and endless pathos. This is a bruising, six-foot-five athlete who knows how to win and isn’t afraid to go after what he wants.
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Kelce took the lead from the very outset of their relationship. In 2023, during Swift’s Kansas City tour stop, he confessed on his “New Heights” podcast that he tried to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it. When she didn’t get it, he joked about being “butt-hurt.”
Swift later said she thought his attempt was “metal as hell.” The nation’s biggest pop star admitted that confidence and directness are attractive. In an age when men are told to be sensitive, to cry, to ask permission before winking at a woman or sending a DM, Kelce came in strong with a solid attempt without any creepy overture. That’s the difference between being a man who leads and a boy who cries about not getting his way.
In so many ways, this isn’t just another celebrity love story. It’s a reminder of something our culture has tried to forget: women are biologically wired to be drawn to strength, confidence, and dominance. For centuries, and across cultures, overtly masculine traits like physical strength and the ability to protect and provide have been considered signs of a good partnership for women. These days, it&#8217;s written off as dated, old-fashioned, or, worse, &#8220;toxic.&#8221; But Swift’s decision to commit to Kelce speaks to the truth of women’s attraction to certain types of men on a deeper level.
Women are naturally drawn to a strong jawline, a muscular build, and height as cues of sound genetic fitness. This hasn’t changed for much of human history, despite so many current attempts to downplay it. 
It’s easy to see the difference when comparing her romance with Kelce to Swift’s ex-lovers. The “Shake It Off” singer has famously dated a lineup of artsy men, including indie actors and sensitive musicians who made more appearances in her lyrics than they did in the spotlight. This may have been a boon for fans craving the next great breakup song, but it wasn’t ideal for Swift herself. 
Joe Jonas. Jake Gyllenhaal. Lucas Till. John Mayer. Harry Styles. Joe Alwyn. Swift’s list of exes sounds like a who’s who list in the tortured soul competition she knows all too well. 
Kelce also doesn&#8217;t appear threatened by Swift’s fame or popularity. As a professional athlete, he&#8217;s accustomed to playing for tens of thousands of fans on any given Sunday. And even if Swift is on a different level in terms of fame and notoriety, so far, he hasn’t appeared fazed by the newfound attention. The NFL star seems smitten, just like the rest of her fans. 
Underneath all the glitz and glamour, this story is simple. Taylor Swift, the most successful female artist of her generation, chose strength. She chose a man who could protect, provide, and lead. She chose someone who isn’t afraid of pressure. 
That’s not an accident. It’s not a coincidence. It’s biology at work. Real men, whether they’re referred to as jocks, providers, or alphas, are usually winners because they&#8217;re wired for it. Feminists can whine about &#8220;toxic masculinity,&#8221; but human nature is what it is. Women like Swift, at their core, seek strength that complements their own. As she sings in &#8220;So High School,&#8221; a song inspired by Kelce, &#8220;You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.&#8221; 
It&#8217;s poetic. After so many artsy flings with overly sensitive men, she&#8217;s going home with the jock. Ladies, take note: nature always wins.

Kelce and Swift

No More Tortured Poets: Taylor Swift Picked The Quintessential Jock

No More Tortured Poets: Taylor Swift Picked The Gym Teacher

Entertainment

Kansas City Chiefs

Masculinity

romance

swifties

Taylor Swift

Travis Kelce

In our household, we lean more Carrie Underwood than Taylor Swift. It’s nothing personal — though, I’ll admit, it sometimes feels personal when celebrities use their platforms not only to sing but also to lecture half the country. Taylor Swift has been explicit in her support of President Biden and left-leaning causes. Travis Kelce, for his part, was the face of a national campaign telling Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the COVID shot. So, let’s be clear from the outset: their politics aren’t mine, and their cultural influence often points in the opposite direction of what I want for my family and this country.
And yet, here we are — celebrating their engagement. And celebrating is exactly the right word.
Because while my ideological Venn diagram doesn’t perfectly overlap with “Swiftie Nation” or its new hubby, there is one place where the circles meet in the middle: the enduring institution of marriage. Two people at the absolute height of their careers, perhaps the most famous singer and the greatest tight end to ever wear an NFL uniform, have chosen to stop, look each other in the eye, and say: “This is the person I want to commit my life to.” That is worth applauding.
Swift commands more than 280 million followers on Instagram alone. Kelce has over seven million. Combine their reach, and you have a cultural juggernaut — bigger than most cable networks.
Young people study their lives like Scripture. So, when two such figures choose marriage — not another “situationship,” not cohabitation without vows, not endless serial dating, but marriage — they are broadcasting a message stronger than any new single or touchdown dance: love is worth binding. Commitment is worth celebrating.
That matters in a culture where marriage is often delayed, derided, or dismissed altogether. Divorce rates may be down, but so too are marriage rates, with many young people opting out of family life altogether. Celebrities, more often than not, model instability rather than stability. Swift and Kelce choosing marriage provides an image of permanence at a time when our culture too often glorifies impermanence.
Make no mistake: this isn’t an argument that either of them has suddenly found their inner Ronald Reagan. I’m not suggesting Taylor Swift is about to record a country ballad praising the Second Amendment or that Travis Kelce will do the Trump dance after his next touchdown. Their politics are what they are. But we conservatives don’t need to agree with someone on everything to recognize when they’ve taken a step toward timeless truth.
Marriage is older than the United States. It predates kings, constitutions, and pop charts. It is the bedrock of civilization. Even when cultural elites mock or minimize it, they cannot erase the reality: when a man and woman bind themselves together in marriage, they are creating the most time-tested foundation for family and community that the world has ever known.
That’s why this engagement — between two people we wouldn’t consider political allies — is so instructive. It reminds us that truth has a stubborn way of showing up in places we least expect it. It reminds us that marriage is attractive even to those who don’t share our worldview. And it reminds us that conservatives should not be shy in celebrating when culture, however briefly, affirms what we’ve known all along.
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Taylor Swift has sung about breakups for nearly two decades. Now she’s signaling something far more meaningful than another heartbreak anthem. Travis Kelce has been praised for toughness on the field; now he’s showing a different kind of courage off of it — the courage to commit. For young people watching — and let’s be honest, tens of millions of them are — this story has the potential to shift the narrative. Instead of “just keep swiping,” the message becomes: “choose one, and choose forever.”
There’s a deeper point here for conservatives. Too often, we — myself included — reduce culture to a scoreboard of “us versus them.” Who endorsed Biden? Who took a knee? Who did the Bud Light ad? That matters, yes. Ideas have consequences, and politics shapes the future. But not everything has to be reduced to the partisan trenches. Sometimes, culture reminds us that God’s design still resonates even when people don’t recognize it as His design.
Marriage is one of those reminders.
So no, I don’t expect Taylor Swift to headline CPAC anytime soon. And no, I don’t expect Travis Kelce to start quoting C.S. Lewis in the locker room. But I do expect that their engagement will make some young people pause and reconsider the script they’ve been fed — that career comes first, that love is temporary, that vows are outdated. Seeing the most famous woman on the planet say yes to marriage — and seeing one of the NFL’s biggest stars embrace that same choice — undercuts the lie that commitment is uncool.
We don’t have to be Swifties to be happy for them. We don’t have to endorse their politics to endorse their vows. In fact, it is precisely because we disagree with them on so much that celebrating this moment becomes even more powerful. It shows that conservatives can recognize and affirm the good, even in those who don’t see the world as we do.
And maybe — just maybe — Swift and Kelce will discover that the overlap between their world and ours is bigger than they think.
For now, let’s give them this: congratulations. Marriage is still worth singing about.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

2025 Stanley Cup Final – Game Four

Love Wins: Even When We Don’t Vote The Same

Conservatives

Dating

Liberals

It&#8217;s rare that we have news so big, so incredibly important, that it trumps not only all the other news of the day, but all the other news of the year, the decade, the century, nay, perhaps the millennium.
Yes, it&#8217;s finally happened. The most important event of our lifetime: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged.
I know. I, too, am flabbergasted. Shocked. I am also ecstatic.
Yesterday was a magical day in the history of the United States and perhaps all of Western civilization.
Listen, I will admit when I&#8217;m wrong. Two years ago, when these two lovebirds began their relationship, I thought this was just another one of Taylor Swift’s relationships that would end with a breakup album in which she sang like a 17-year-old about how sad she was that she&#8217;d been rejected, but don&#8217;t worry, she don&#8217;t need no man.
But she does need a man — and that man is Travis Kelce.
I have to say, unironically, I think it&#8217;s great. I hope they have a wonderful marriage. I hope they have lots of kids. I hope she sings lots of songs about being married and having kids, and all those songs are better than her normal songs.
That&#8217;s what I hope for her, because I think that would be a very good thing for the West, for America, for young women particularly — who have been taught for generations that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, and that romance is somehow a giveaway to patriarchal institutions.
A core component of human happiness has always been finding a member of the opposite sex, marrying them, having babies with said member of the opposite sex, and enjoying a long-lasting relationship built on love and mutual commitment. That is a very good thing.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2268-bombshell-taylor-swift-engaged-plus-other-stuff-happens-but-nobody-cares?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
According to <a href="https://variety.com/2025/music/news/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-engaged-1236135520/">Variety</a>, “The couple shared the big news on Instagram with a carousel of photos and the caption, ‘Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.’” 
Forget the whole idea that Taylor Swift would be a great English teacher; the pictures are quite charming and quite normal, and I&#8217;m here for it. The normie revolution is happening.
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Sure, she&#8217;s a billionaire, and he is a multimillionaire athlete, and that is a very, very large ring. That is some serious jewelry. They can afford it.
But you know what? Good for them. It&#8217;s charming and it is good.
I hope that many other people take advantage of the situation to get married and follow in their footsteps, and then have long-lasting, decades-long marriages filled with children and grandchildren. 
This is culturally significant because over the course of the last few decades, there has been a rebellion against normality, against the very idea that men and women ought to get married to one another.
Instead, the idea that was purveyed was that any decisions that men and women made with regard to relationships were equally praiseworthy, and equally useful, and equally likely to lead to happiness.
It’s not true. Tacitly, the reason people are celebrating this marriage is that singledom is not ideal. It is not, in fact, a wonderful, happy existence.
That doesn&#8217;t mean you have to be miserable if you&#8217;re single. What it does mean is that aspiring to be married, to be part of a happy marriage, is a wonderful thing. It&#8217;s an aspiration that is natural to the human heart.
And that is why people are happy for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. The idea that a traditional romance between the high school cheerleader and the high school quarterback is a platonic ideal in America is because that is the basis of the forwarding of civilization.
Marriage is the fundamental, bedrock institution of all successful civilizations. That&#8217;s good.
This is tacitly a cultural rejection of the idea that the actual ideal is non-marriage, that the actual ideal is prancing around like Madonna in your 70s, being a faded pop star, and trying to convince everyone that you are super-duper happy waking up drunk in the mornings by yourself in a five-star hotel.
These images of Swift and Kelce are great. They&#8217;re wonderful. They&#8217;re good for the world.
Perhaps we’ll get a Taylor Swift baby boom. That would be an excellent development for Western Civilization.
What&#8217;s going to be fascinating is to see what comes next for Taylor Swift, aesthetically and musically. We made fun of her album cover a couple of weeks ago on the program, a very kind of over-sexualized album cover, and pointed out that she&#8217;s been getting more and more sexual on her album covers.
It&#8217;s going to be hard to do that when you&#8217;re married and you presumably go on to have kids; it won’t have quite the same sort of resonance.
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So what&#8217;s going to happen to Taylor Swift?
Taylor Swift is amazing at marketing herself. But pop music is a teenager’s medium. It is a medium made for teenage girls and people who have a prolonged adolescence in their mid-twenties.
Pop music is based on certain tropes; being brokenhearted about your latest breakup, being messed up about your latest breakup, or something else about your latest breakup. All pop music is basically rooted in sexual lust in terms of its lyrics and or emotional problems. That&#8217;s what pop music is about, which is why people age out of it. The minute that women stop being sexually alluring, it&#8217;s very difficult for them to be successful in the pop world.
Women age out of that in the pop world pretty quickly. Katy Perry, who is five years older than Swift, is the butt of enormous mockery online for her latest tour. She&#8217;s considered to be too old for the game.
I would not be shocked if Taylor Swift&#8217;s next album moves back toward country music. It&#8217;ll be fascinating to watch.
But again, my great hope here is that an entire generation of young people — particularly young women who have been told by the feminist movement and by pop stars like Taylor Swift that relationships are bound to fail and thus they should act with teenage angst — start to mature, along with Taylor Swift.
That would be amazing.

Instagram: Taylor Swift and Killatrav

Bombshell: Taylor Swift Engaged

Celebrities

Music

Pop star Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce have announced their engagement after two years of dating.
Swift, 35, confirmed the news via a joint Instagram post, which included the caption, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” She had comments turned off, but within 15 minutes, the post had racked up two million likes from Swift’s 280 million followers on the platform.
The photo carousel includes photos of Kelce down on one knee in front of Swift, plus a close-up of her engagement ring. There are more images of the couple posing together in a flower-filled garden.
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Fans have been speculating for months whether an engagement was imminent. Recently, the “Shake It Off” singer made a rare appearance on the “New Heights” sports podcast, which is hosted by Travis and his brother, Jason Kelce. Travis is currently the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, and Jason retired in 2024 after playing center for 13 years with the Philadelphia Eagles.
During the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/taylor-swift-pokes-fun-at-male-sports-fans-sick-of-seeing-her?author=Amanda+Harding&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Taylor+Swift+Pokes+Fun+At+%E2%80%98Male+Sports+Fans%E2%80%99+Sick+Of+Seeing+Her">appearance</a>, Swift poked fun at herself and the backlash she’s gotten from sports fans sick of seeing her featured during football games.
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“You guys have a lot of male sports fans that listen to your podcast. And I think we all know that if there’s one thing that male sports fans want to see in their spaces and on their screens, it’s more of me,” Swift said during the episode.
Entertainment outlets such as Page Six have been reporting for weeks that the pair was about to get engaged as insiders confirmed Kelce was ring shopping and had asked Swift’s father for permission to propose.
The couple met following a missed connection. Kelce attended Swift&#8217;s Eras Tour concert in Kansas City in 2023 and tried to give her a personalized friendship bracelet with his phone number, but security denied him access. He later told the story on “New Heights,” which led to the pair meeting and a romance developing.
Neither Swift nor Kelce have been married before. Previously, the pop star dated Joe Alwyn for six years, but kept their relationship mostly private.

Swift and Kelce

Taylor Swift And Travis Kelce Announce Engagement After Two Years Of Dating

Actress Halle Berry’s ex-husband revealed some telling reasons why their marriage didn’t work out, explaining that it had a lot to do with how the Oscar-winning star saw her role as a wife compared to what he’d experienced growing up.
Former MLB player David Justice, who got hitched to Berry in 1993, said during a recent podcast interview that he started to question their compatibility after a brief “honeymoon phase” early in their marriage.
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&#8220;My knowledge and my understanding, my wisdom around relationships just wasn&#8217;t vast,&#8221; he said on an episode of Matt Barnes&#8217; “All the Smoke” podcast. &#8220;So, I&#8217;m looking at my mom — and I&#8217;m a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I&#8217;m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, [be] traditional, you know?&#8221;
&#8220;Then I&#8217;m thinking, &#8216;OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?&#8217; &#8221; Justice continued. &#8220;At that time, as a young guy — she don&#8217;t cook, don&#8217;t clean, don&#8217;t really seem like motherly, and then we start having issues.&#8221;
Justice, now 59, said he and Berry didn’t receive “negative attention” until they broke up in 1996.
&#8220;She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months,&#8221; the pro athlete added. &#8220;I said OK, because I couldn&#8217;t say no. Who&#8217;s going to say no at that time?&#8221;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if my heart was really into it, but I didn&#8217;t want to make her feel bad and say no, you know, or [if] I was just in the moment,&#8221; he went on.
&#8220;We spent a lot of time apart because she was doing movies in this country, that country. And we honestly probably could have made it if I knew about therapy. If we knew about therapy, we probably could have made it,&#8221; he told Barnes.
&#8220;We never had any major issues like that,&#8221; Justice said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just &#8230; because I was young and had only been in one real relationship before her.&#8221;
Justice married his current wife, Rebecca Villalobos, in 2001 and has three children with her. 
Berry, 58, was married twice more: to Eric Benét from 2001 until 2005, and to Olivier Martinez from 2013 until 2016. The actress has a daughter with French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry and a son with Martinez. She has been in a relationship with musician Van Hunt since 2020.

Halle Berry David Justice

Halle Berry’s Ex-Husband On Why They Split: She Wasn’t ‘Motherly,’ Didn’t Cook Or Clean

Halle Berry's Ex-Husband Said They Split Because She Wasn't 'Motherly,' Didn't Cook Or Clean

Hollywood

After he graduated from Vanderbilt, a man named Nathan Halberstadt began working at the Boston Consulting Group. This is a familiar path for students who attend schools that are highly ranked. Often they&#8217;re hired by one of the &#8220;Big Three&#8221; consulting companies, which on paper, means that they&#8217;ll provide useful advice for large businesses and the government.
Very quickly, though, Nathan realized what the job actually entailed. In his words, working for a big consulting group meant that you had to promote, &#8220;the bureaucratic optimization of opioid sales, mass migration, off-shoring, and DEI.&#8221; You had to churn out bogus <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imLMG7C6oF4">statistics</a> to advance anti-American agenda items — like that fake McKinsey study a few years back, which claimed that &#8220;diversity&#8221; somehow makes companies more profitable. That&#8217;s what &#8220;consulting&#8221; actually means, in practice.
New graduates from Vanderbilt aren&#8217;t really walking into companies like Boeing and Apple and blowing their minds with their unique insights. Instead, in many cases, they&#8217;re simply giving executives a pretext to do exactly what they wanted to do all along.
Seeing all this, Nathan decided to quit. Instead of manipulating data to promote the destruction of the United States, he decided to spend his time identifying statistics that actually matter. He would look through government data and try to find important connections that no one else has made before. And the other day, as you may have seen, Nathan accomplished that goal. He published this remarkable chart, which has already been cited by several members of Congress and seen by millions of people. Here it is:
<div id="attachment_958477" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958477" class="wp-image-958477 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-1024x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Nathan Halberstadt" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-05-32-PM-8972-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Nathan Halberstadt</div>
It&#8217;s a graph that shows the estimated percentage of 30-year-olds who are both married and own a home. The data runs from 1950 all the way through 2025. In the 1950s, the number was more than 50%. In other words, in 1950, well over half of the 30-year-olds in this country were both married and living in a home that they owned.
But as you can see, the percentage has been steadily dropping since then, until it fell off a cliff in the 1990s. And now, in 2025, the percentage is well below 20%. In fact, according to this estimate, only around 15% of 30-year-olds are married and own a home. Something that was once commonplace in this country is now rare. 50% to 15%.
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Right off the bat, it&#8217;s impossible to look at an estimate like this without immediately asking: Why haven&#8217;t we heard these numbers before? For all of the very granular information we have about gross domestic product and unemployment numbers and per capita manufacturing output, it took a random Vanderbilt graduate to produce this particular chart. To be sure, we all knew that these numbers were bad. It was very evident that fewer young people were getting married or owning homes. But the scale, and the timing of the decline, weren&#8217;t remotely clear. Frankly, this is a lot worse than anyone realized, which is why the chart has attracted so much attention.
But the numbers were always available to anyone who wanted to look for them. All you have to do is look up the marriage data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which tabulates the &#8220;median age of first marriage&#8221; — along with Pew surveys on the percentage of people who are married at 30 — and then factor in home ownership data from the Census. It&#8217;s not a perfect calculation; some estimation is involved. We recently covered the problems with Census data and how unreliable it can be. But the overall story is pretty clear, and it&#8217;s corroborated by other sources.
In Ohio, for example, researchers at Bowling Green State University have <a href="https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/FP-25-10.html">compiled</a> similar estimates.
Amazingly, though, very few of our political leaders are talking about this. It&#8217;s not a topic of mainstream conversation at all. Making sure that Americans are getting married and acquiring homes by the age of 30 should be the urgent priority of every politician in the country. It&#8217;s hard to think of many other things that could possibly be more important. But it&#8217;s not getting anywhere near the attention it should.
To the extent that some action is being taken in Washington, it raises some unanswered questions. For example, this week a very unusual alliance <a href="https://www.wsaz.com/2025/08/02/sen-kennedy-warrens-new-bill-aims-build-more-affordable-housing/">formed</a> in Washington between Elizabeth Warren — the socialist from Massachusetts — and John Kennedy, the Republican from Louisiana. The two senators have introduced legislation called the &#8220;Build Now Act,&#8221; which would withhold taxpayer funds from states that don&#8217;t build enough housing, while sending taxpayer money to states that build more housing. Unlike most proposed legislation that you hear about, this particular bill actually has a good chance of passing, because it was just unanimously approved by a Senate committee. Here&#8217;s Kennedy&#8217;s explanation of the plan:
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It is stunning that the median age of a first-time home buyer in America today is 38.
We’ve got a problem.
By incentivizing cities to slash red tape and start building homes again, my Build Now Act would help open the door to homeownership. <a href="https://t.co/LfCV7k3Y1T">pic.twitter.com/LfCV7k3Y1T</a>
— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenJohnKennedy/status/1950234826381918263?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @SenJohnKennedy/X
As a general rule, whenever Democrats and Republicans — and in this case, a conservative like John Kennedy and a socialist like Elizabeth Warren — team up to promote legislation, it&#8217;s usually a good idea to be skeptical. The only ideas that have bipartisan support in Washington are bad ones, generally speaking. And as we all know, socialists are well-known for making housing even less affordable, by introducing high-minded plans to manipulate markets (as New York City is about to discover the hard way).
That said, more housing is obviously a good idea. Increasing the supply of housing usually means that prices will go down. That&#8217;s basic economics. And although it&#8217;s reasonable to be concerned about the federal government throwing taxpayer money around, this is one of those rare times where it makes sense. Certainly, the federal government helped many homeowners in the 1950s, with the GI bill and so on.
At the same time, it&#8217;s reasonable to ask whether this kind of legislation will simply provide incentives for the creation of, say, more dilapidated housing for the homeless to use as drug dens, or more rental units for neighborhoods that are already flooded with them. This is a problem that&#8217;s becoming increasingly apparent, as you may have noticed. Large institutions are buying up homes in suburbs and renting them, instead of putting them up for sale. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Priced out: More Americans renting rather than buying" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5lW0ruPVNbg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Credit: NBC News/YouTube.com
Constructing new housing doesn&#8217;t necessarily address this particular problem, if the houses are being purchased by institutions and rented out as apartments. A lot depends on why the homes are being constructed, and where they&#8217;re located. Kennedy&#8217;s bill does have provisions that provide incentives for new construction in high-demand areas, but again, you still might wind up with apartment complexes where you actually want single-family homes.
That&#8217;s not to disparage this particular bill, or to declare that it can&#8217;t possibly help matters. But it&#8217;s safe to say that this legislation won&#8217;t come close to solving the underlying problem, which again, is that young people aren&#8217;t getting married and can&#8217;t afford homes. Those are problems with a lot of different causes — probably too many to list. Compared to the 1950s, we have tens of millions more illegal aliens living inside our borders. We&#8217;ve devalued the dollar to an almost unprecedented degree. We&#8217;ve opened up our job market to the entire world, driving down employment. And on and on. There are also many cultural factors that have — in many cases deliberately, by design — make marriage and family life seem less appealing to younger generations.
But there is one aspect of this new data that&#8217;s worth homing in on, because it does suggest one practical way forward. In the 1950s, roughly 90% of 30-year-olds were married, and more than 50% were homeowners. By contrast, right now, only around 50% of 30-year-olds are married, and roughly 30% are home-owners. So both numbers dropped by huge margins. But the marriage decline has been drastically more significant than the drop in home ownership. More than any other time in this country&#8217;s history, men and women are choosing not to get married. And there&#8217;s reason to believe that this broader cultural trend is what&#8217;s convincing a lot of young adults to forgo home ownership, as well.
After all, if you&#8217;re single, the prospect of paying most of your savings to a bank in the form of a down payment for a house isn&#8217;t exactly appealing. You don&#8217;t need all of that space for yourself and your dog. Before I was married, I never even considered trying to buy a home. As soon as I got married, I felt a sudden and very strong pull to buy a home and have a piece of land that we could call our own. Within about three years of getting married, we bought our first home. But for single people the financial sacrifice seems irrational and unnecessary, so if they have any extra money to throw around, they’re more likely to put it into Bitcoin or something else instead. On the other hand, if you&#8217;re intent on starting a family, then the cost of a mortgage makes a lot more sense. People can make it work, in many cases. I&#8217;ve said before that home ownership is attainable for almost anyone with a full-time job and decent credit. It&#8217;s often a matter of priorities. And as we look at the plummeting numbers of homeowners who are young and married, it&#8217;s a fact that needs to be restated. In this case, as in many other cases, decline is actually a choice.
And make no mistake — this is decline. Millions of young adults (who aren&#8217;t even that young at 30) have no skin in the game, no real stake in the country or its future. Getting married, starting a family, and owning property are the basic fundamental pillars of the American dream. They&#8217;re the starting point for a fulfilling and productive life, and a well-ordered society. As this new data reveals, most young people were able to achieve those milestones in the 1950s. But they&#8217;re not achieving them anymore. And those numbers are only getting worse by the year. Things are trending in the wrong direction, and quickly. If we want the kind of country we had in the 1950s — which is to say a country that has the potential to survive for another century — then one way or another, that needs to change.

Suburban homes photo

This One Shocking Stat Proves That The American Dream Is Dying

Economy

Housing

Matt Walsh

Mortgages

Around a decade ago, Chip and Joanna Gaines remained mostly silent after Buzzfeed published a hit piece condemning them for attending a church that believed in a biblical definition of marriage in 2016.
This year, the couple cast a gay couple with adopted twin boys in a show on their Magnolia Network.
Now, the couple’s conservative supporters are wondering: what happened?
It would be an understatement to say that the Gaines family of 2016 is nothing like the entertainment powerhouse couple they’ve become today. Chip and Joanna have built a sprawling lifestyle empire, including a retail brand and emporium, partnerships with major brands like Target, a sit-down restaurant in their hometown of Waco, a renovated hotel, and most significantly, the Magnolia Network, a television channel all their own.
This success all goes back to the couple’s big break, with the HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” Prior to being discovered by the lifestyle network, Joanna said she and Chip were “broke.”
“I remember when we first got married the only money we had was what was in Chip’s pocket,” Joanna <a href="https://people.com/home/hgtv-chip-joanna-gaines-were-broke-before-fixer-upper/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> People in 2020. “He always had a wad of cash, but we were broke. If I needed to go grocery shopping it’s whatever was in his pocket. That’s how we paid the bills.”
After “Fixer Upper” debuted in 2013, everything changed. America couldn’t get enough of the loving, wholesome couple living on a Texas homestead and teaming up to tackle renovation projects in the Lone Star State. And while they didn’t openly evangelize on the show, viewers were able to draw a few conclusions about their faith based on both their lifestyle and where they went to church. Soon, they’d amassed a huge audience among Christian conservatives.
It also didn’t escape notice that while HGTV mainstays such as “House Hunters” frequently included same sex couples, “Fixer Upper” never did. All of this helped make the Gaineses poster children of conservatives seeking woke-free, kid-friendly content to watch with the whole family.
Buzzfeed hit back against the couple’s rising popularity in 2016 by insinuating that Chip and Joanna were unrepentant bigots.
“Their church, Antioch Community Church, is a nondenominational, evangelical, mission-based megachurch. And their pastor, Jimmy Seibert, who described the Gaineses as ‘dear friends’ in a recent video, takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight,” reporter Kate Aurthur <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/chip-and-joanna-gaines-church-same-sex-marriage?utm_term=.cpdX61PGe#.uc324KnVY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> in the piece.
Aurthur said she reached out to Antioch representatives so they could clarify their stance, only to find herself directed to the church’s <a href="https://antiochwaco.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> for clarification. That’s where the teaching still says, “Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God since both are created in God’s image.”
The author also quoted a sermon Seibert delivered in 2015 following the legalization of gay marriage.
&#8220;This is a clear biblical admonition. So if someone were to say, &#8216;Marriage is defined in a different way,&#8217; let me just say: They are wrong,&#8221; the pastor told his congregation at the time. &#8220;God defined marriage, not you and I. God defined masculine and feminine, male and female, not you and I.&#8221;
Following the publication of the Buzzfeed piece, HGTV was quick to say they supported and affirmed same sex relationships.
“We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series,&#8221; a rep for the network said.
But the Gaineses didn’t release a statement directly for either side of the argument. Instead, at the time, they alluded to being hurt by the allegations and issued vague statements about “loving everyone” while remaining neutral on the main point of contention.
Two months after the BuzzFeed News article was published, Chip appeared to reference the controversy in a since-deleted blog post on the Magnolia Market website.
“It’s not about what color your skin is, how much money you have in the bank, your political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, or faith,” he wrote. “That’s all fascinating, but it cannot add or take away from the reality that we’re already pulling for you. We are not about to get in the nasty business of throwing stones at each other, don’t ask us to cause we won’t play that way.&#8221;
Then, during a 2021 <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/chip-joanna-gaines-fixer-upper-magnolia-network-1234975027/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a> with The Hollywood Reporter, Joanna said she was sick of constantly being dragged by leftists.
“The accusations that get thrown at you, like you’re a racist or you don’t like people in the LGBTQ community, that’s the stuff that really eats my lunch — because it’s so far from who we really are,” she told the outlet. “That’s the stuff that keeps me up.”
Everything exploded earlier this month when the Gaineses featured Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs on their Magnolia Network series “Back to the Frontier.” The married men appear on the show with their 10-year-old twin sons, Ethan and Lucas.
The men said they chose to go on the show to help normalize their family structure.
“We’ve always felt it to be important that we try to be an example for same-sex couples,” Hanna said during an <a href="https://www.queerty.com/these-dads-fought-to-be-legally-recognized-as-parents-now-theyre-blazing-new-trails-on-back-to-the-frontier-20250711/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a> with the outlet Queerty. “And so we’re super honored that, when they were choosing three modern day families, they did choose the same size couple as a modern-day family — because we are; we’re your neighbors, and your coworkers. And so it was this amazing opportunity to [continue to] normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families.”
The inclusion of Hanna and Riggs may have had leftists feeling smug. But conservatives and Evangelicals who had looked to the Gaineses as role models over the years felt betrayed.
Ed Vitagliano, vice president of the American Family Association, publicly called out the couple for disappointing their fan base.
“This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very influential in the evangelical community,” Ed Vitagliano, vice president of the American Family Association, said on X.  “In the past, they have stood firm on the sanctity of marriage regardless of the personal cost that has entailed.”
Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelist Billy Graham, also posted about the controversy on X, calling it “very disappointing.”
“While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s Word. His Word is absolute truth. God loves us, and His design for marriage is between one man and one woman. Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin,” he <a href="https://x.com/Franklin_Graham/status/1944182299630645553" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.
The backlash was swift and fierce, which prompted Chip to issue a response on social media.
“Talk, ask [questions], listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never,” he shared with his followers just after the show premiered. “It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.”
The response caused even more anger among the Gaineses&#8217; former fan base. Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro laid out why that might be.
“Many of the followers of Chip and Joanna Gaines are not only upset with the fact that the show is featuring this sort of stuff, they’re upset with the fact that Chip is now sneering at them, looking down his nose at them, and suggesting that the real problem here is not that he has violated his own faith standards by promulgating a set of values that is unChristian, but that he believes that Christians themselves, by objecting to that promulgation, are thus demonstrating that they’re intolerant and vicious and mean by objecting to the normalization of what Christians consider to be sinful,” he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chip-and-joanna-gaines-sell-out" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
“That is not mean or intolerant,” Shapiro added. “That is simply saying there is a standard, and if you purport to be an upholder of that standard, you should abide by it.”
Finally, Seibert — still the pastor at Antioch Church — issued a new statement reiterating his position on the issue. While he didn’t mention the Gaineses specifically, his timing couldn’t have been more obvious.
“In Genesis 1, the Scripture says that God created us male and female. He created us in His image and He blessed us. There’s two genders – male and female. We’re to celebrate that and honor that,” Seibert said in a <a href="https://x.com/JonnyRoot_/status/1946621963847516412" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> posted July 19.
“Secondly, in Genesis 2, we see that marriage is between one man and one woman in covenant for life, and that children are to be born in that context of covenantal marriage, and that out of that to be loved, blessed, and cared for.”
He says if anyone finds themselves “in a different perspective,” they should go back to Jesus and “realign to God’s design of covenantal marriage between one man and one woman for life.”
Seibert notes that the church’s position hasn’t changed in 25 years, and that the message is one of “compassion” and of “clarity.”
Chip and Joanna Gaines adapted to mainstream culture when many of their fans celebrated them for doing the exact opposite. Only time will tell whether or not this shift will cut into their commercial success.

TODAY – Season 73

Will Chip And Joanna Gaines Pay The Price Of Compromise?

Joanna Gaines

LGBT

Television

As conservatives, we’re fond of praising marriage and family, and for good reason — marriage is both a cornerstone and a hallmark of a healthy society.
The conservative movement can’t seem to get its fill of telling young people to marry, settle down, and have kids. That’s fair enough. But unfortunately, eager to marry everyone off, conservatives tend to skip over one crucial detail: how exactly you get there.
For all their discussion of marriage, most conservatives don’t seem to touch the topic of dating with a 10-foot pole.
And to the extent they do discuss it, that discussion typically centers on the beginning of dating. They encourage men to make the first move and ask women out, or warn women against making the first move themselves. Or, their discussion centers on what not to do: don’t have sex before marriage, and definitely don’t move in together.
But no one talks about what healthy dating should look like. There’s no practical discussion of how to date in a way that’s likely to lead to marriage, or how to get to know someone and discern whether you should marry them while also maintaining healthy boundaries in the understanding that you aren’t yet married.
This leaves young conservatives caught between two flawed views of dating.
On the one hand, they’re faced with the destructive habits of their peers — hookup culture, casual dating, or even long-term dating relationships with no intention of marriage.
On the other hand, they’re confronted by the romanticism of the older generation and the ideal of the knight in shining armor, a perspective that mainly consists of strictures for the man to open the door, pay for dates, or show up with flowers, and for the woman to be “feminine” — bonus points for wearing a sundress.
While some of these principles have value, none of them address the actual day-to-day or week-to-week of dating, and it’s easy for them to turn into pressure to act a certain way simply to meet certain standards.
Perhaps it’s this black hole that accounts for the fact that, while <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw11y2CTM9KUJuVUXxIYfD1v">69%</a> of those ages 18-34 who have never been married say they hope to be married, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">a full 50%</a> of singles aren’t currently looking to date or enter a relationship.
Trapped between a hookup culture that leaves people feeling empty and broken and a romantic idealism that places performative pressure on both parties, many may decide dating is too difficult and that they have <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">“more important priorities.”</a>
For those who do decide to date, there’s a relative dearth of older role models who exemplify healthy marital relationships, let alone healthy dating relationships. In <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1t_puy52HWeCinUKRP1O3C">recent years</a>, overall marriage numbers have declined; divorces among older couples have increased; and the number of couples, including older couples, cohabitating with an unmarried partner has increased.
Add to that the chronic pervasiveness of utterly flawed dating perspectives online, and you’ve got a recipe for the current situation: one in which well-intentioned young people are left on their own, groping in the dark for wisdom to guide their dating lives.
This leaves many struggling to successfully navigate relationships. According to one survey, 67% of “daters” say their dating life is either <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-and-experiences-with-dating-and-relationships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1752769347435000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2wahDnfLqyjH79KwZEg2cG">not going too well</a> or not going well at all.
As a result, many relationships otherwise full of potential end up amounting to nothing, falling prey to miscommunication, social pressures, or other issues — many of which could be easily remedied with a dose of wisdom from an elder.
If conservatives are serious about wanting young people to get married, it’s time to stop simply preaching the merits of marriage and start offering practical advice on how to get there.
That starts at the individual level: older, happily married members of a community (like a church, for example) should come alongside younger members of that community, making themselves available to answer any questions those younger members may have.
This isn’t to say people don’t do that already. I’ve personally been blessed to have several members of my church walk with me in this manner.
But the same should also be practiced in society more broadly. Dating isn’t going to look the same for everyone—so influencers, commentators, and others in healthy marriages should share their personal stories of how they approached dating, offering examples of the ways to approach dating wisely.
Without these kinds of examples, we may stay stuck where we are now: a society where most people hope for marriage but few are capable of taking the necessary steps to achieve it.
Mary Mobley is an Editorial Fellow in the Strategic Communications department of the Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Couple getting married in church

What Conservatives Miss About Marriage 

“Full House” alum Candace Cameron Bure recently acknowledged that her almost three-decade-long marriage hasn’t always been perfect. 
The 49-year-old mom of three made the revelation during Tuesday’s episode of her podcast. 
“Val and I went through a really, really rough season in our marriage in 2020, and that’s when the pandemic hit,” Bure said of her husband, Valeri, a retired professional hockey player, whom she married in 1996.
“It was going south quickly,” she added. “And we were like, ‘I don’t know, don’t think … we’re gonna make it through.&#8217;”
The actress said it was ultimately her three children who helped them through the rough patch. Natasha, who was born in 1998, is an actress like her mother. The couple also has two sons, Lev and Maksim, who were born in 2000 and 2002. respectively.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="How Do I Know if it’s God Speaking or Just My Own Thoughts? CCB Podcast Season 10 Episode 11" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xgnq-l9enSM?list=PLXPIFDUXHLUmOYsUva7xB6CvrsL9gc1J5" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
“At one point, Lev, Maks, and Natasha, but Lev was the one leading the charge. He came up to us and he said, ‘We’d like to talk to you guys,&#8217;” Bure said. “Val and I sat down and Lev preached, like, a 45-minute sermon on marriage to us. Just had his Bible open on the couch and just talked about it.”
Lev was in his early twenties at the time.
“And I’ll never forget, because he said, ‘know I haven’t been married. And I’m just a young kid. And so it’s probably hard to take marriage advice from someone this young …never experienced it before. But I don’t need to be married to know what the word of God says,&#8217;” she went on.
The actress recalled how Lev had “such a calm voice that had so much wisdom behind it” when he broached the subject.
“He looked us straight in the eye and individually asked me, and then asked Val, ‘Have you done everything you can? Is there one step of grace, is there just some bit of more grace you can give? Is there any more grace you can give Mom? Is there one more act of kindness in you that you could give to try to reconcile?&#8217;” Bure said, describing this encounter as a “pivotal moment” that changed everything for the family.
“When we walked away from that, and Val and I were like, ‘Huh, we raised some pretty good kids,’” Bure said.
“There was a lot more to it, but it’s a whole different scenario when your kids sit you down to have a talk and go, ‘Are you being as mature as you can be and what God says?’ I’m so grateful to Lev and Maks and Natasha,” she told her podcast listeners. “They were so supportive of everything.”

Candace Cameron Bure and Valeri Bure

Candace Cameron Bure Says Son’s Bible-Based Pep Talk Helped Save Her Marriage

Candace Cameron Bure

Faith

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