Category: Marriage/Family

Young men still view work as a key indicator of their successful entrance into adulthood, per a new IFS report.

Readiness matters—both for securing marriage in the first place and for making it work long-term. If those same blue collar and working-class people imbibe the meme without the nuance, rushing marriage without taking a realistic inventory of their life circumstances and skills, including many of the soft skills increasingly demonized in the same media ecosystems, they will be setting themselves up for failure and disappointment. As Christopher Lasch explains, “Our ideal of ’true romance‘ puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”

When the first concerns of parents for their children are money and status rather than building families, then the odds against a renewal of marriage and the family seem insurmountable.

Getting married at 22 never felt limiting to me. Looking back 20 years later, I believe it helped me flourish professionally and personally.

In our new report, American’s Demoralized Men, we show that most young men want to get married, and they want to have children.