Click here to listen to the episode on Spotify
In the twenty-second episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with W. Bradford Wilcox, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox begins by discussing what constitutes a family-friendly institution and what colleges and universities can do to make good on such commitments. While Wilcox points to policies as being important, he also notes one should observe the landscape of the campus and note whether children are welcomed and present. Wilcox discusses the influences that led to his transition as an undergraduate student of government to sociology and, in particular, sociology as a means of understanding the well-being of families as his life calling. As an example of those efforts, Wilcox discusses his most recent book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilizations. He then closes by sharing his thoughts concerning the virtues sociologists need to develop and the ways those virtues enhance their ability to assess the opportunities and challenges families are facing.
- W. Bradford Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (HarperCollins, 2023)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
—
Our guest is W. Bradford Wilcox, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Thank you for taking time to join us.
Brad Wilcox: Great to be with you here today, Todd.
Todd Ream: Colleges and universities are often fond of arguing they’re family-friendly when it comes to benefit plans, employment policies, and organizational culture. How do you determine whether an organization of any kind is, in fact, family-friendly?
Brad Wilcox: Yeah, Todd, I think that there are a few key marks that would be kind of emblematic of a family-friendly organization. And one mark, I think, would be, do you see, you know, people walking around the place, you know, the university, the business, the community with, you know, with children, with infants, with toddlers.
And, you know, I think on that indicator, the evidence suggests that many universities, many colleges today are not particularly family-friendly. I mean, I rarely see babies and toddlers and young children kind of running around UVa so I think that’s one mark kind of against a university like UVa.
At the same time, I have seen over the course of my career here at UVa, kind of the, the, the character and the quality of benefits for parents, both in terms of well, primarily in terms of kind of time off, clock kind of slowed for tenure that’s all become much more generous. So that’s, that would be a mark in favor of UVa. And I’d say, you know, having some kind of, you know, paid parental leave at an institution that would kick in, especially for a larger institution that has more flexibility would be another kind of mark in my view of being family-friendly.
And then I think the third thing that I would just mention as well is we have seen some, you know, businesses, and some, even some nonprofits kind of give a kind of baby bonus, if you will, to their employees, you know, right around the time of birth or adoption. And so that would be another mark. So doing things like that, I think are helpful.
But, but again, I think that the first point I made is just important in terms of like, is it the case that the parents and parents of young children kind of feel welcome at a place? And if you don’t see a lot of little kids running around, that’s probably, you know, cause for concern.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Members of generations identified as being Millennials and Gen Z reportedly desire greater symmetry between their lives at work and their lives at home. In what ways, if any, do you believe colleges and universities are prepared to welcome individuals with such a desire into their organizations?
Brad Wilcox: Well, I think again, I mean, I think when it comes to taking time off, you know, for birth and for adoption, you know, we’ve seen a lot of good progress on those particular fronts, but I haven’t seen colleges and universities really think creatively about ways to sort of integrate kids into the life of their institutions. And also to kind of even make provision for college students who are parents themselves. And so I think doing more to communicate to students that kids are welcome on grounds, or that’s what we call a campus here at UVa.
And then also to kind of figure out ways to even have more student housing for parents at UVa would be kind of concrete measures that a place like the University of Virginia could take and other universities and colleges could take to to make them more authentically family-friendly.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Church-related colleges, not to be outdone here in particular, often argue they are also family-friendly. In what ways, if any, should a discernible difference exist between how colleges and universities as a whole, refer to themselves as family-friendly and how Church-related colleges and universities refer to themselves as family-friendly?
Brad Wilcox: Well, I think beyond the policies we’ve just discussed, I think it’s also even in a sense, more incumbent on Christian universities and colleges to have a few required courses where they kind of educate their students about kind of the theology, the sociology, and the psychology of relationships, marriage, and parenthood. So that, you know, students are better equipped when, once they graduate, to be good spouses and good parents.
I think what we often see across the culture today, Todd, is there are kind of too many young adults, even within, you know, the Christian community who have what I call kind of a Midas mindset where they think life is primarily about, you know, education, work, and kind of building your own brand, rather than kind of discerning a vocation to marriage, getting married, having kids and having a strong family. So I think doing more to equip college students for a family future.
Both of kind of the big picture piece, maybe like a theology class on the family but also by equipping them with some real concrete skills that we know are helpful. Work done by John Gottman, for instance, psychologist at University of Washington, kind of is helpful, I think, in equipping young adults for dealing with conflict having more successful kinds of communication in their relationships.
And these skills I think would be helpful or virtues would be helpful in terms of, you know, increasing the odds that they have a strong and stable family, you know, when they leave the grounds, the campus of their respective institution, and then later in life, you know, typically, get married and have kids.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In what ways, if any, should say, go back to again, benefit plans, employment policies, and culture of, you know, in this case, Church-related colleges and universities, and what ways should they reflect, if any, an understanding of the family as delineated by the church, whether it’s a particular denomination or the Church writ large?
Brad Wilcox: So I think beyond doing more to teach around family issues and beyond kind of having some kind of good paid parental leave, I mean, I, and, and a baby bonus, you know, these are all things that would be helpful.
I guess the other thing that I would mention is even sort of considering some kind of family wage, you know? And so thinking about how parents who are working for a university or college you know, could be eligible for an ongoing kind of, you know, bonus of sorts that would sort of recognize that they have kids. And I would sort of like in terms of just, you know, the cost of that kind of measure, kind of focus that on faculty members who have kids under the age of 18 as a way of kind of, you know, targeting that measure financially to folks who are, you know, currently raising kids in the household.
And we have seen, you know, obviously BYU, for instance, you know, there is a lot of housing for both married couples and also for married couples with kids, you know, and so kind of doing something specific around those two groups would also be helpful as well in my estimation
Todd Ream: Thank you. When we think about members of the generations I just mentioned before, Millennials and Gen Z, in what ways, if anything, do you think Church-related colleges and universities might be better positioned than colleges and universities as a whole in terms of embracing and welcoming them into their respective workforces?
Brad Wilcox: Yeah, well, I think one of the challenges facing a lot of employers today is that they feel like, you know, their employees, their younger employees don’t necessarily have like some of the virtues when it comes to fortitude, for instance. And, you know, some of the kind of just basically kind of a sort of a responsibility, reliability piece that’s all related in part to fortitude.
And so I think what, you know Christian colleges and universities can do is to really try to cultivate those virtues both in the classroom context, but also kind of in the broader life of the university in ways that, you know, make them better and, and more attractive, and more productive employees once they leave their Christian community.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to transition now to ask you a little bit about your sense of vocation and how it’s evolved over time. And to begin, I just have a really simple question. Why families? What compelled you to spend your life studying families?
Brad Wilcox: In terms of my own sort of personal sense of vocation in this domain, I was raised by a single mother and kind of had a keen sense– she was an undergraduate here at the University of Virginia that marriage was an important institution for connecting typically dads to their own children. And then that kind of led me to want to pursue a career sort of studying American families and did that a little bit later as a graduate student in sociology at Princeton and then came back to teach at the University of Virginia. And so it kind of had this interest in kind of marriage and family life and fatherhood really since my college years probably just because of my own family of origin experience.
But I think it’s also the case too, that as I’ve kind of been doing this work as a family sociologist, it was initiated, I think, done in part to kind of help people understand and appreciate how much marriage matters for kids, but as I’ve dealt with more and more young adults, particularly younger women at UVa and elsewhere who are kind of expressing frustration about dating and relationships and their prospects for marriage, have come to the conclusion that we need to kind of need to a better job of educating and preparing young adults for marriage.
And so my book Get Married is really focused more on making the case to adults about the benefits of marriage for adults. And then also kind of giving them some ideas about how they can forge strong and stable marriages themselves. You know, and I think that’s in part because a lot of young adults are fearful or worried about their prospects for establishing a good marriage. I think that there are ways that they can go about doing that in a manner that’s going to maximize their odds of having a reasonably happy marriage and a stable marriage as well.
Todd Ream: In terms of the research you’ve conducted over the years, and you just mentioned one of your most recent books that I want to ask you about here in a few more minutes but what do you hope is the enduring impact?
Brad Wilcox: So I think they, the hope from my perspective is that more Americans will understand and appreciate how much marriage matters for kids and for adults and for the larger commonweal. And that I’m also able to have a hand in advocating for and succeeding in getting legislation passed at state level and the federal level that strengthens marriage and family life in the United States.
And having done those, you know, two things, you know, the hope is there some knock on effects in other countries, just given the way in which the U.S. often influences how people approach things like family life, you know, just based upon what they’re encountering in American higher education and media in part.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Perhaps you’ve already answered this question, but when I ask you in particular to now, is there one question more than any other related to families that captures your interests— that gets you up in the morning?
Brad Wilcox: Well, I’d say right now, one of the things that I’m really interested in is exploring the question, does marriage matter more than ever for women and men today? I’ve been making the argument for a while that marriage is good for women and men, you know, good for kids for many, many years, not particularly a new argument for me to make or think about.
But I think, Todd, in a context where we’re seeing a lot of people distracted by what I call electronic opiates devices like this. And where our society is more economically unequal in a context where a lot of our religious and secular communities are more anemic and where many of our norms are less likely to govern and guide our lives in kind of a common way. In this newer economic and technological and communal and normative context, it’s certainly possible that on some key outcomes we’re going to be seeing that it’s not just that marriage matters, but that marriage and I say even having a family and having kids and then grandkids down the road, et cetera, would be even more consequential for adult well-being than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.
And so I’ve already kind of been able to see with my colleague, Dr. Wendy Wang, that financially it does look like the sort of premium that comes from marriage is bigger income premium that is today than it was say back in 1970, the year that I was born. And I’m now with some colleagues exploring if that same kind of pattern is true for things like mortality, happiness, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation.
And again, if you think about marriage and family as crucial sources of social integration in the contemporary world, as other sources of social integration wither to some important extent, maybe marriage and family matter more than ever for the welfare of adults. That’s a big question that I’m, you know, interested in exploring in the coming years.
Todd Ream: Great. We’ll look forward to the results of those studies and how you share them with us when the time comes. Thank you.
You studied government at UVa, and as you mentioned a few minutes ago, you then went on to Princeton where you studied sociology. Would you please describe the arc of your vocational discernment as you came to understand yourself as a teacher and scholar and made that a sort of transition from one field formally to the next? Well, there are some similarities there in terms of policy maybe, but yeah, how that developed.
Brad Wilcox: So when I came to the University of Virginia, I was thinking that I would move into politics. And so I did a degree in politics honors at the University of Virginia. But, you know, I had a professor here at UVa in my fourth year, who was a sociology professor, James Hunter, who’s probably known to your audience. And James is, I think, pretty, pretty clear and compelling in arguing that culture was in some important respects upstream of politics.
And so once I kind of came across, you know, James Hunter’s perspective, that led me to kind of shift my focus to the value of pursuing a kind of a PhD in sociology rather than in political science. And you know, given my interest in marriage and family I did a lot of research and, you know, education around that set of issues as a graduate student at Princeton.
Also thought too, that, you know, kind of the Church broadly defined was a pretty important player in shaping American family life. And so did my dissertation on religion and family life for American men. But then I’ve kind of moved beyond just the religion and family nexus since then, to reflect in a variety of ways about, you know, how a number of different cultural, public policy and civic institutions are shaping the contours of American family life. That’s sort of a quick sense of how I’ve moved through different parts of my undergraduate and then graduate and now current professional life.
And I would say another kind of noteworthy point about my work is that I’m really trying to reach not just academics, but a broader audience. And so I do write for more public venues like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic and National Review, as ways, you know, to kind of get my findings and my ideas out to a more general audience as well.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You may have mentioned one already, but were any mentors, in particular, influential in that discernment process?
Brad Wilcox: So as an undergraduate I had two primary mentors, both James Hunter and then Michael Eshelman who were UVa teachers of mine. And then as a graduate student, I would say that Sara McLanahan, who studied family structure and poverty and single parents at Princeton.
And then Robert Wuthnow, who studied sociology of religion, were both instrumental in my kind of training and thinking as a graduate student while at Princeton. So those would be four different people who played a pretty important role in my intellectual development, both as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student.
Todd Ream: Are there any authors, in particular, perhaps it was through some of their work as well as their personal influence on you, but are there any authors in particular that you think are important to mention in terms of this development?
Brad Wilcox: So I’d say kind of a more foundational level, Alasdair MacIntyre was certainly, you know, an important thinker that I came across as an undergraduate at UVa. I think in Princeton, I had the pleasure of getting to know Robbie George and being exposed to his perspective on natural law thinking, for instance, among, among other topics while I was at Princeton.
And then in kind of the family space broadly understood, David Popenoe, who is a sociologist at Rutgers, now retired and David Blankenhorn, who was the head of the Institute for American Values and wrote on fatherlessness among other topics in his work, you know, as a public intellectual. These were all people who kind of played an important role in some way or another in my formation as a young adult, writer, and scholar and thinker in the kind of family and fatherhood space.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I’ve got to ask, of all the research you’ve conducted over the course of your career, what findings concerning families were perhaps the most surprising? And then what findings were perhaps the least surprising or most predictable?
Brad Wilcox: So, I mean, if you read my work and my writing, I mean, you know, I’m obviously a cheerleader for marriage and fatherhood. And so I don’t think we need to kind of talk about things that aren’t surprising. It’s pretty obvious for anyone to take a look at my work.
I’d say three things that are more surprising for me are number one. I kind of have this, this assumption that kind of kids would benefit uniformly across the globe from intact, you know, married families and the presence of a father since I was raised without a father in part. That was kind of my assumption, my prior, if you will. But I have done some research over the years where I found that fathers are not helpful or valuable when it comes to kids’ educational attainment in some parts of the globe. And that was a surprise to me.
And so I had to kind of like, look more carefully at those places. And what I found among other things is that often these were, you know, societies where dads are not that involved with their kids in general or with their kids’ education in particular. And so that’s what helped me to understand that. But nonetheless, it was kind of surprising to find the kind of kids didn’t always benefit from, you know, being raised on, on average, in an intact home with their own father.
And then for the new book for for Get Married what I found when it comes to kids, what was most surprising is that young men today are more likely to go to prison or jail by the time they turn about 30, if they come from a non-intact family than they are to graduate from, you know, a college or university like the one that you’re, I think, at right now. So that was surprising to me, that there was just a very stark reminder of the link between family structure and flourishing for young men in our culture. And by contrast, young men from intact families are way more likely to graduate from college than they are to spend any time in jail or in prison so that was kind of a striking finding.
And then for adults, the most interesting finding or surprising finding I should say is that I found in a YouGov survey that Wendy Wang, my colleague and I did, today about 66 percent of church going couples have sex at least once a week or more than that. And that compares to less than half of couples who are not religious, who are married. And that was a big gap that surprised me.
I mean, I expected to find that religious couples were actually more sexually satisfied than then secular couples actually runs against a kind of interview that was in the New Yorker, that was kind of, you know, basically slamming evangelical Christian men and their, you know, and their marriages, painting a very negative portrait of evangelical Christianity’s impact on marriage.
So what I think was so frustrating about that New Yorker article was it kind of just gave this sort of sense that kind of a more old school understanding of sex and approach to sex was leading to kind of hangups and guilt and, you know, lots of marital problems. But for the average couple what you see, Todd, is that couples who are connected to a religious community are more likely to be flourishing in their marriages, and that’s true in the sexual domain as it is in many different domains and in ways that again kind of run counter to a way a lot of I think elites and elite publications might, you know, expect or might depict things.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You’re the author or editor of six books, as well as numerous journal articles, popular articles and reports. I want to ask you for scholars establishing lines of research in the social sciences, you know, perhaps most broadly at this point, what advice would you offer?
Brad Wilcox: So I think it’s important as a graduate student and as a new faculty member to really kind of conform to your discipline’s expectations. So, you know, my initial publications were kind of in top tier sociology publications, and I did a book for Chicago, which is kind of a top tier university press for sociology. And I think it was helpful to kind of understand the craft, you know, both in terms of, you know, journal articles, and then in terms of a university press.
But that once you’ve kind of done that and gotten some familiarity with your disciplinary norms, you kind of can, I think, feel free to kind of push beyond them to some extent and to do work either for the public square as I have, or for your local church, or for your broader church community or some other kind of broader constituency if you feel like you have a certain, you know, gift to speak to an audience that extends beyond the academy. So that’s sort of what I would say.
Todd Ream: If I hear you correctly, then you would encourage younger scholars to start with that, which is most traditional or understood to be related to their discipline and the norms of their discipline, develop that, and then use that as a base if they believe they’re called to share their sort of gifts and talents with a wider audience, then add that to their skillset versus trying to reverse that.
Brad Wilcox: Right, I think also, though, one is, as a younger faculty member, I think you, you need not censor as much today as you would have for much of my career. And the reason that I say that is because there are not only, I think, faculty positions that are opening up in, say, religious colleges and universities like we’re talking about right now to some extent, but also we’re seeing a whole host of new initiatives, often called schools of civic life at UNC Chapel Hill, at the University of Texas at Austin, at the University of Florida at Gainesville, Ohio State, University of Tennessee.
So what that means is that those places are looking for, you know, young scholars who are talented and promising, but aren’t necessarily kind of towing some kind of progressive line in their, in their scholarship. And that’s an encouraging new development. If we had had this conversation even maybe a year ago or certainly two years ago, I would not have said this.
But I do think it’s actually the case now that younger faculty and PhD students should feel freer to kind of, and in Jefferson’s words here at UVa, follow the truth, wherever it may lead, because there are newer opportunities now to find a job in academe that are not as reflexively doctrinaire.
Todd Ream: Well, thank you, thank you. No, that’s very helpful to hear. It should be good news for younger scholars in particular, who are interested in expanding, you know, sort of the nature of findings in any number of fields that would be reflective of the diversity of views that may be out there and may be grounded in the reality in which we find ourselves.
For social scientists then establishing lines of research related to family well-being, in particular, what advice would you offer?
Brad Wilcox: Well, I think it’s important to really try to figure out how you can make use of a variety of new methodological innovations that have been kind of cropping up in different disciplines in different ways. So I mean, in econometrics and psychology and and even in sociology and public policy, we’re kind of seeing people push the envelope a little bit when it comes to methods that are going to be more compelling to skeptics who would often argue that we’re kind of making, you know, arguments that are about correlation and not causation.
So just to give you one example, we are seeing like in a number of my colleagues in psychology at UVa, you know, greater and greater use of twin studies to kind of try to figure out how much of whatever findings coming up with are related to biological factors or to, you know, some kind of family of origin factor versus, you know, some other unique causal force. And so when we see, for instance, evidence that kids, whose mothers have gotten divorced are doing markedly worse than their cousins whose mother did not get divorced and who is the identical twin of their mom, right? We’ve got more compelling evidence then, Todd, that divorce per se is a risk factor for kids.
And by contrast, if we’re seeing in the data on some outcomes, which we do, and some outcomes is that both kids from the divorced home where mom is divorced and the home where mom is not divorced, but where the two moms are, you know, biological, identical twins, then that suggests there’s something about maybe their genetic endowments, you know, that is really driving the outcome. So that’s just an example of how people are using more and more sophisticated methodologies to try to figure out how different family patterns and factors are having a causal impact on child and adult outcomes, I think, is one thing I would encourage them to do.
And then also to think about whether or not there are any, you know, public policy or civic broadly defined initiatives that they can find that improve family process or marriage rates or fertility rates, especially those are things that I think are especially needful right now.
And so we haven’t really seen a lot of evidence that there are specific policies that can help, for instance, raise the marriage or the fertility rate. But I think that’s certainly a real need for us at this moment. And so to kind of keep an eye on trying to evaluate or propose policies that are designed to strengthen families, either in the United States or abroad.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You already mentioned that just briefly on a couple of occasions, your most recent book published in 2023 by HarperCollins, Get Married, the full subtitle being then Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization. Strong language there in the subtitle. Can you say a little bit more about the core argument that you make in that book and then the data that you draw upon when making that?
Brad Wilcox: Sure. So I think, you know, the last part of that subtitle is, you know, pretty provocative, but I think it is on point. And so the point that I’m getting at in the book in part is to sort of argue that, you know, marriage just doesn’t matter for kids and for adults, but it matters for the civilization itself, for the larger commonweal, to use that older language.
And, you know, the evidence there is that we see, for instance, you know, actually a comparatively recent study at the University of Chicago, telling us that the number one factor accounting for recent declines in happiness you know, what it’s called in the declaration of the pursuit of happiness is the fact that fewer Americans today are married than was the case, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
We have relatively new evidence from Raj Chetty at Harvard kind of telling us that the number one factor he finds in his work on mobility for poor kids going from being poor as children to being affluent as adults at the community level is to share two parent families in a community. That’s why a community like Salt Lake City is much more likely to foster mobility for poor kids in a community like Atlanta. Many more two parent families in Salt Lake than in Atlanta. And even when he controls for race and controls for school spending and economic inequality and other factors, he still finds that in this 2014 work of his that the number one factor again is the share of two parent families.
New work done by Jonathan Rothwell at Brookings and Gallup tells us that one of the top factors explaining regional differences in deaths of despair is again, the share of married adults in different regions, particularly for adults who don’t have a college degree. So this just kind of gives you a sense of how a lot of important outcomes that are of kind of central concern for us today and for the health of our civilization and literally can be traced back to the state of our unions, you know, is sort of the idea here.
And so marriage matters for again, kids, adults, and for the broader civilization is the argument in the book in part. And then given that, what are some things that we should communicate to the broader public. And one thing that I’m, you know, sort of, in a sense, communicating over and over again in the book is that a lot of what our elites are telling us about marriage in general, and then the specific character of family life, is off the mark and often completely off the mark.
And so I have a chapter talking about the flying solo myth. And that’s where a lot of journalists and even academics would argue that being single is better in some ways than being married. Even though a lot of evidence points in a different direction, it comes to like, you know, financial security and happiness. There’s just no question that both married men and married women are in a much better place financially and emotionally than single Americans.
I mean, for instance, what we see is that stably married women and men as they hit their fifties have about 10 times the assets have never married women and men. They’re almost twice as likely to be very happy with their lives, compared to those who are single as well. So just kind of basically among other things, kind of telling the reader how a lot of ideas that are getting circulated today, both in the academy and in mainstream media about marriage or are wrong or off the mark.
And then two about just how specific features of marriage and family life are also kind of distorted by what I call kind of a me first messaging. One concrete example is just about finances. You’ll hear from people like Susie Orman, who’s a prominent financial guru, that, you know, couples should have a kind of his and hers account for a variety of reasons. And I call this kind of like a “me first” approach to money. And what we see not just in my own research, but in other experimental research actually is that couples who have shared accounts, where it’s about a “we before me” approach to money are much more likely to be flourishing.
In fact, there was a recent randomized approach to money that was done by a psychologist at Indiana University. And she randomly assigned the couples to joint accounts, separate accounts, and to do as they pleased. And the couples who were randomly assigned to joint accounts were much more likely to be flourishing in the first two years of marriage than couples who were assigned to separate accounts or couples who were told to do as they pleased.
So I think it’s just a good example of the way in which a more familistic orientation to marriage and family life, generally speaking, on average is better for adults and kids. And by contrast, a more individualistic approach to family life is not so good.
And we do see in my book, you know, that for instance, people who are kind of connected to a church community are more likely to be flourishing, as I mentioned before. And that’s in part, I think, because they have a more family-istic approach to life rather than an individualistic approach to life. And it’s that family-istic approach that for most of us, you know, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, it’s that family first approach that’s more conducive to forging a strong and stable marriage and family.
Todd Ream: Thank you. That’s fascinating.
I want to return now as we get closer to the end of our conversation, then to the academy. I want to ask you to start with, how do you understand the academic vocation? And we talked, you know, about cultivation of virtue earlier and the influences of some folks on their thinking. But in your estimation, what virtues are most crucial for you in terms of the cultivation and the exercise of the academic vocation as you understand it?
Brad Wilcox: So I think for me, it would be kind of the virtues of wisdom, fortitude, and courage. And I think when it comes to wisdom, just trying to, in my own domain, just stay up on some, you know, key thinkers some key research, some key journals, that kind of allow me to kind of know what’s happening in, you know, the social sciences related to marriage and family as best I can. And to think about how I can make a unique contribution to marriage and family. So that’s sort of the wisdom piece in part.
Although also kind of being attentive to the way in which older ways of understanding marriage and family also are, you know, are helpful. So I, I think about in some respects, the work of Aristotle and the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, who have some things I think to tell me and to tell us more generally. But I think also when it comes to fortitude, another, another virtue to sort of, you know, being able to sort of work hard and work well works, you know, prudentially.
And you know, one trick that I try to kind of put into practice when it comes to fortitude is to tackle the most difficult thing, first thing in the day. And you tend to get more done and just feel more accomplished when you have that goal to start off your day. I think it’s an example of having, you know, embracing the virtue of fortitude.
And then when it comes to courage, I think, and this is a constant, you know, I think struggle for me is just a sort of I think the temptation is to not say things or write things that are true but which might get you into hot water with colleagues or with friends or journalists or nowadays social media types.
Not to sort of like say or do things that are needlessly provocative just to drive clicks to your work, for instance, but to sort of say the things that I think need to be said, even when saying them, you know, might get me into some kind of hot water of some sort or another. So I think that too many of us, and again, I’m speaking not just about other people, but about me as well, are not especially courageous in how we approach our teaching and our research and our writing, and that we shy away from telling the truth when it’s in politique. And that’s true on the left and the right.
I mean, it’s really on the internet. You can see people, I mean, I know conservative journalists, for instance, I know liberal journalists, conservative academics and liberal academics, and I think the challenge is particularly today is that you can see how people are tempted to write and speak to the algorithm or their community rather than to sort of do their best to tell the truth, as it is, you know, in the real world. So that’s, I think a challenge is trying to be courageous as well in my work
Todd Ream: Thank you. Tying some of the threads of our conversation together then, I want to ask, in what ways, if any, is the academic vocation a calling that’s conducive to family life, and in what ways, if any, is it unfavorable to family life?
Brad Wilcox: That’s a great question. I think, today in its expression, it’s often on, or its intention often with a good family life in the way that a lot of people live out graduate school, especially their early years as faculty members cause there’s kind of like a temptation and almost expectation that you’re devoting way more than 40 hours a week to your reading and your writing and your and your research as a graduate student and as a young faculty member.
And so I think you have to be careful to try to kind of have more of a 40 hour a week. I mean, you know, depending upon your state in life, and some people with young kids will have to devote even less time to their work as graduate students and as young faculty members. But I think it’s important to kind of try to keep your research focused, to minimize time away from family and to be able to say no to good opportunities or voluntary requests that might be sent your way from graduate students or colleagues or department chairs or universities, you know, members or whatever professional associations.
I mean, people ask you to do a lot of different things. And if you say yes to everything, you’ll have no time to give to your, real time to give to your spouse and kids. So I think you have to be comfortable saying no, nicely, but saying no on a regular basis to requests that come your way as a graduate student or as a faculty member.
Todd Ream: As we close our conversation then now, I want to ask, flip that question just a little bit then and say what advice would you offer academic leaders at Church-related colleges and universities in particular in terms of how to cultivate healthy exercises of the academic vocation in ways that are not only family-friendly, but perhaps also family enhancing.
Brad Wilcox: So I do think trying to figure out ways to incorporate family members where appropriate into the life of the college and university is really helpful. And I mean, it could be like summer camps that, you know, bring faculty members’ kids into, you know, the life of the institution in a more real way.
It could mean that there are, you know, social events where you’re having celebrations around, you know, Christmas or Easter or Advent or Lent that incorporate kids and families from the faculty and staff in a more profound way. And I think also trying to figure out how you can get students into faculty and staff homes on a regular basis is also really good.
And so maybe it’s like just having like a fund for, you know, dessert and coffee on Sunday nights and faculty can just get a little credit card that they can use to have students over, you know, to be with them on a Saturday night, whatever, but just have opportunities to kind of integrate families into the lives of students and students’ lives, the families both in homes and on college campuses as well.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been W. Bradford Wilcox, Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Thank you for sharing your insights and your wisdom with us.
Brad Wilcox: Thank you, Todd. It’s been a pleasure to be with you today.
—
Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
“…culture is upstream from politics…” — great statement.
Engaging discussion. It also never ceases to amaze me the long reach of some scholars, like James Hunter.