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Brad Wilcox’s Get Married debunks misguided conventional wisdom and offers both challenge and hope to Christian singles.
Marriage and family are much discussed today, and not only among Christians. Marriage rates are going down, the meaning of marriage is contested, and dropping fertility is raising worries of a lonely and childless future, even in the church. Meanwhile, many Christian singles are left hoping their local church will somehow help them get married—or that our growing numbers will finally convince congregations to stop making us feel like second-class Christians.
The latest contribution to this conversation is Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, a new book from Brad Wilcox, a Christian professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox is experienced, widely published, and respected in his field. He’s pulling off an admirable feat: leading a secular institution without compromising his Christian values or reducing his work to a “fringe” project only valued inside the church.
Get Married is a popular-level distillation of that academic work. Wilcox argues that while most culture shapers in our society—from journalists to celebrities, artists to influencers—promote a cynical idea of marriage, data shows that perspective is wrong. And we need to understand the good of marriage, he contends, because the alternatives to a society where most people get married are worrisome: either fewer children (which means a less dynamic economy and declining family and community life) or more out-of-wedlock births (which means more child poverty and more crime).
The book follows a consistent pattern: Each chapter introduces a popular negative idea about marriage, then presents a mountain of mainstream research (much of it conducted by Wilcox himself) and anecdotes debunking the claim. For example, popular wisdom says single people are happier. But the data shows that’s not true; in fact, no single factor better determines happiness and life satisfaction than marriage. Wilcox similarly debunks common claims that single people are wealthier, that divorce is often unpreventable, that parenthood makes you unhappy, and that economic pressures are the main reason marriage and fertility rates are so low.
Continued below.
www.christianitytoday.com
Marriage and family are much discussed today, and not only among Christians. Marriage rates are going down, the meaning of marriage is contested, and dropping fertility is raising worries of a lonely and childless future, even in the church. Meanwhile, many Christian singles are left hoping their local church will somehow help them get married—or that our growing numbers will finally convince congregations to stop making us feel like second-class Christians.
The latest contribution to this conversation is Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, a new book from Brad Wilcox, a Christian professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox is experienced, widely published, and respected in his field. He’s pulling off an admirable feat: leading a secular institution without compromising his Christian values or reducing his work to a “fringe” project only valued inside the church.
Get Married is a popular-level distillation of that academic work. Wilcox argues that while most culture shapers in our society—from journalists to celebrities, artists to influencers—promote a cynical idea of marriage, data shows that perspective is wrong. And we need to understand the good of marriage, he contends, because the alternatives to a society where most people get married are worrisome: either fewer children (which means a less dynamic economy and declining family and community life) or more out-of-wedlock births (which means more child poverty and more crime).
The book follows a consistent pattern: Each chapter introduces a popular negative idea about marriage, then presents a mountain of mainstream research (much of it conducted by Wilcox himself) and anecdotes debunking the claim. For example, popular wisdom says single people are happier. But the data shows that’s not true; in fact, no single factor better determines happiness and life satisfaction than marriage. Wilcox similarly debunks common claims that single people are wealthier, that divorce is often unpreventable, that parenthood makes you unhappy, and that economic pressures are the main reason marriage and fertility rates are so low.
Continued below.
The Data-Backed Case for Marriage
Brad Wilcox’s Get Married debunks misguided conventional wisdom and offers both challenge and hope to Christian singles.
www.christianitytoday.com
