Rebecca Traister on the Radfem-Tradfem Divide

welcome to a special place in hell um and uh welcome Rebecca Traer Our Guest very esteemed guest so Rebecca um she uh has a really long and impressive career Rebecca you're a writer at large for New York Magazine you're the author of three books is that right three I'm not leaving anything out Big Girls Don't Cry which was about the 2008 presidential election um and it's impact on women and feminism all the single ladies which deals with a lot of what we're talking about today and most recently good and mad the Revolutionary power of women's anger so okay getting back to the Single Ladies the conceit of this show is that Sarah and I look at Women's issues through the lens of our 20y year age difference um and we're really interested in this new discourse around the so-called mating crisis and the marriage crisis um you published an article in New York Magazine on September 22nd about this new discourse so maybe we should just start by asking you when you started noticing this conversation uh and what were your sort of initial thoughts about it well I started noticing it in the in I guess over the past year it's been building and I knew that there were a couple of books that were set to publish but I would say is a new iteration of this discourse but it is almost identical to waves of the same discourse that have happened really throughout American history which is one of the things I learned when I was writing all the single ladies but even within recent memory right there was a whole wave of this in fact when I went back to All the Single Ladies when I was writing the column in September I believe like the opening page is Ross doat who's one of the people who's Enga who's been engaged with this like marriage is a solution argument just over over these past six months um he was also and I was writing that book from let's see 2011 it was published to 26 in 2016 it was five years of tracing this the New York Times is constantly writing about this a lot Brad Willcox who's one of the people who's very engaged in these arguments has been he runs the marriage project or whatever it's called at the University of Virginia I was in a debate with him one time yeah he's I was in a debate marriage were you debating marriage yeah I'll tell you about it I think I lost but yeah go ahead sorry but he's he's been engaged in this like his whole career it is his career is sort of a a a academic marriage evangelism um there is this new book that was recently published by Melissa Kierney and a lot of the a lot of the commentary that I was responding to I did read kerney's book um and but then there were a lot there were a lot of like think peace columns up coming out of the publication of Melissa kier's book and Brad Willcox is going to have a new book um in in February and so it's just a reignition of a conversation that I promise you because I literally was writing about the last wave of it you know eight years ago happens again and again and again in the American Media often in the New York Times and every time it happens the the first assertion is we never talk about marriage's role and I'm like no we constantly talk about marriage's role so but in the most recent iteration it was because Melissa Kierney has a new a new book out she is um at the University of Maryland and uh you know it's it's taking a look at the economic advantages of in her view the economic advantages of um you know married couple family structure for children and then there was also this happiness study that was done um and I think Ross out that in the middle of the summer was the first to sort of tackle this the Sam peltzman happiness study because there was this it's it's not exact it's not causal but it can be interpreted in a variety of ways about declining happiness um existing over the same period of time at which there have been declining marriage rates and so Ross da that and it was Ross doat colum was amazing it took Barbie as its as its um beginning point and suggested that like all of the unhappiness in the world um could probably be addressed if Barbie and Ken just got married which was specifically hilarious if watched the movie Barbie in which Barbie and Ken like didn't like each other at all really very much did he see the movie no no it was was there any indication he had seeing the film yet and yeah it was amazing so anyway that's what prompted me to go back into this because I it has I'm I am very aware of the fact that like while I did spend years researching the history of marriage patterns and these kinds of media messages about marriage um the kinds of messages that are sent to to men and to women and to men and women of different races and and economic strata um I have been out of that's that's not been an area that I've been like thinking about every day in the years since that book was published in 2016 but this new wave this summer of suddenly deciding that marriage was the answer that we can solve our problems we can solve our personal happiness problems and we can make the world better for children and we can solve economic inequality if everybody just got married again that wave I noticed building this summer and that's when I decided to write a column about it yeah it's so funny because I stumbled upon your piece and I was actually like uh about two sentences into a long essay I was going to write about this and you you covered a lot of what I was going to say so it was a good excuse I'm sorry I abandon my p no no no I think I'm G to go back to it at some point that has never stopped any of these guys who just write the same thing as each other over and over but this is why we're women this is why we're we're we're women yes um so okay Sarah do do you want to jump in here there's um there's a lot to uh look at yeah I mean I thought so I I haven't seen this discourse play out over and over I'm kind of because I'm only like 12 years old so yeah I'm uh yeah actually 14 now Megan I know um uh but um but I think that you know I I guess my perspective is that I don't know if the messages have been the same for me as I think the messages that um Rebecca you're referring to and Megan that you experienced while you were growing up because I um you know marriage was something that stupid women did you know like especially when you're in college or or thinking about graduating like you you that this is not the time to pair pair up and get married and the very few women I knew who did um get married early and start a family early it was kind of we kind of suspected that there was something you know like something wrong with them maybe they were you know not all that smart or maybe they were just like weirdly religious or something like there was there was a There Was an explanation for why that happened and maybe this is a college thing um a low status thing right it was a low status and low ambition thing to get married young right right so I I guess I just um coming into this with a very different understanding of what the discourse sounds like or what it has always sounded like to me up until this point um like even among my friends not too many you know I'm mean my early 30s um women are just starting to get married just now and I think I was a kind of a weirdo among my peer group for being married um you know in my late 20s but that was just like a very odd thing to do um and kind of suspicious maybe you know maybe there's something going on there's some reason or whatever but I I I remember I think it was just a different climate so I think that that's interesting um and I wonder if that has something to do with uh kind of this new trend of Trad people you know very just like trism as something that's growing among the youth almost as a youth movement and it doesn't seem like something that's pressured by parents at all and I wonder Rebecca if you have noticed this also and what do you think about it so I want to go back to something you said where you were like maybe this is just a college thing because I think we're getting at a couple different issues simultaneously right there's marriage and not marriage and then there's later marriage okay and the thing that so so the people most likely to get married so by that just are you gonna get married or not get married and and if that's the Trad filter for like are you gonna get married and possibly have kids within a marriage the population in the United States wildly and this is something that D that and everybody are addressing in in their columns are college graduates so you actually in that when it comes to marriage as the traditional path right you're actually not going to find a population in the United States right now that is more likely to go down that path than people who are at College the thing that you're describing right and and it's actually some of the economic inequality that Melissa Kierney and Ross doat and Nick Kristoff that they're all talking about um I think in ways that aren't beginning to get at the cause and effect here right um is that when marriage ceased to be so so it used to be the reverse in fact because women were dependent and I'm not talking just about when Megan and I were in college I'm talking about like for lots of History preceding this right where the path because there was um a set of conditions economic dependence right in which women were not in a position to get the same kinds of educations earn money at the same scale own property participate civically economically at the same um level as men and in which of course at that point we're talking pretty exclusively about hetero unions being socially sanctioned and certainly you know the kinds of marriages you could enter also in a pre-sexual revolution era in which if you wanted to have a sex life that would that did not put you at risk for social censure um or bearing a child out of wedlock so in this era in in earlier eras marriage was women were much more likely to be economically socially and sexually dependent women were much more likely to be dependent on marriage and on men if they wanted to have those kinds of things in Economic Security um you know living security a place to live being able to have a part of having property having a family that was within social bounds right all of that and so marriage was sort of a marker for adulthood you had to enter it you know whether that meant when you were 18 when you were 20 right marriage ages until the 1990s um the median age for for marriage for women stayed below 22 and it was only in the 1990s that it started to rise right but at that point it wasn't coming right out of second wave feminism like oh no second wave feminism actually wasn't particularly concerned with challenging marriage there was a big divorce boom because it was it was concerned with challenging questions of gender equality that made a lot of marriages that were entered into an earlier suddenly seem unsatisfying in certain way in a lot of different ways so there was a divorce boom and then a lot of the kids who came out of that divorce boom were finding themselves coming into adulthood in the 1990s and a whole bunch of things had changed including that they had lived through the ends of those unhappy marriages and unlike earlier eras if they did want a partner wanted to find one that they thought was going to be stable which can sometimes take longer than whoever you know when you're 21 or 22 um and so they might they started delaying marriage and also there were educational and economic opportunities for them to pursue if they were not just beginning their adulthoods by marrying or starting a family there were lots of other things whether that was school whether it was work whether it was having a a active social life that wasn't based around one romantic or sexual relationship whether it was having an active sex life that was varied um and experimental and but but the people who were still likely to marry just at later Ages were the people who had gone to college and had economic foundations and and educations that gave them the kinds of resources that then they felt were they were in a position to begin a family whether that was at 28 whether it was at 32 whether it was at 40 and at that point then they're joining those resources often with another person who also had those advantages meaning that the people who were most likely to be getting married were the ones who are already economically secure and then they were combining their resources making them exponentially more economically secure and the place where marriage rates was actually falling out where it was where people weren't getting married are people who didn't have that kind of economic Foundation um and and so that's the thing that I would say about your experience is that in a way you viewed it as a rebuke to traditionalism right like that women who were who got mared married early Were Somehow were frowned upon but in fact if you were in college you were in the population where marriage was actually the one of the places in the United States where marriage was still a norm it was just later and it was the the fact that you might have done it earlier that made you feel um like you were at odds with your with your peer group so I'm not you know and I think it's worth noting that there is that difference but I wonder if there's a difference between the extent of the despiration I mean there so there's the the fact that it happens right like with with college age people marriage might actually happen in a way that it's not happening among lower income Americans but I wonder if that necessarily means that the aspirations uh reflect that because I I think that when the in you know both my personal experiences with you know people who are not where I am now but how I grew up which is lower income America um marriage is still a very very much an aspired to State um but it is not happening I think partially because it is like such an aspirational thing and it you have to have this wedding and then you have to stay committed forever and I think part of the reason that it's not happening for them um is because they put so much um into it and it is so meaningful so it's a more difficult step to take in some ways um and I so I wonder if if if you know the aspiration reflects um the reality of whether or not it happens and I'm I'm actually I'm I'm also curious about your reasoning a little bit there with you know it it if you are upper class um or you know well-to-do kind of white col American and you get married then together your incomes increase you know now you have a dual- income household and you're even better off than you were before why is that something that that why would that logic not work in the same way if you are a lower income American like it like in other words like should we be encouraging marriage um among lower inome Americans because it has this benefit of you know now you're living in a dual income household so first of all we definitely have been encouraging marriage you're you're talking about the messages you got socially in college the both the bush and the Obama administrations poured millions and millions of dollars into marriage education um programs like through community centers through church um there's so there's the there was an actual government investment in educating people and especially lowincome communities about marriage there's an incredible piece by kathern Buu about this I can't it's called the marriage project I can't remember what it was called it's it's incredible um these programs were running through two sets of presidential administrations Democratic and Republican then you add onto that like the cultural pressure and I know that what you're describing yourself as having been a college student is is very real and there is the sort of like oh am I at odds with my peers because I'm settling down early and I don't mean to take away from that but more broadly in culture everything Say Yes to the Dress like romantic comedies every like we still have a culture that still treats marriage in almost every conceivable form as a happy ending right and so I think there are all kinds of messages being sent to people as well as the actual like truly economic investment of two presidential administrations and I I should get the actual numbers about how much money they ped into this but it was a massive priority for them none of those PR it work no they did it did not raise marriage rates at all when I was writing my book and I want to say that I this is one of the things where I published my book in 2016 and I don't know how to date this is but I can tell you that when I was writing my book I looked for programs that had worked when it came to increasing marriage rates right and there were two examples that I could find at that time again eight years ago there might be 20 other things we could talk about now that I just am not up to date on but in 2016 there were two programs that had inadvertently it was raised marriage rates but more but also lowered divorce rates and they were welfare programs that had accidentally because it one one was literally a program that had gone on longer than it was supposed to like somebody forgot to turn it off and it was a job training and welfare program that that the population that was getting the benefits wound up divorcing at much lower rates right there is so much research and this is the thing that is that's where I would argue about okay me I don't care about boosting marriage rates but if you did care about boosting marriage rates it seems very clear to me both from America's history and like just logically now that the way you do it would actually to be increase Economic Security when you talk about yearning for marriage as an ideal right in communities where it's not likely to happen part of what we yearn for when we yearn for marriage like lots of us as human beings May yearn or may not but many of us yearn for love companionship connection sex satisfaction some people yearn for family or any kind of community a a unit right families that come in all kinds of shapes and sizes like sure that is a very human thing a specific yearning for marriage marriage or or like permanently committed partnership however you want to describe it right seems to me in part to be a yearning for stability and safety right and we know that part of that we get from our human relationships but that those relationships are themselves more precarious and combustible if you have other kinds of you have other kinds of insecurity around them right like the that the part of what when the a yearning for marriage is also a yearning for solidity for permanence for safety and the fact is you can be married all you want and if you don't have money that marriage isn't going to provide that it may have all kinds of economic it may have I'm sorry it may have all kinds of emotional benefits and I don't like of course but but also part of what you're yearning for is is a level of safety that also comes from Economic Security that is not does marriage provide that you know security not in not inherently if you're talking about communities that are economically precarious themselves in fact like the the kinds of dependence that marriage can create right when there's not if you if you're married and you have kids and one of you doesn't make enough for child care and gives up a job or you're both working multiple shift jobs and you don't have child care and you're not seeing each other because you're working those multiple shift jobs there's the the fantasy of of two incomes but if those incomes neither of which are actually sustainable then no marriage by itself isn't going to create an economic stability in a in in a univers still better than not I mean even in that not necessarily I see your point which is that it's better than it's it's it's it's it's still a bad situation but surely it's still better that you have two combined incomes or even support you know when it comes to child so in the example of like parents who can't you know can't afford child care or at least you have two parents so somebody can stay home with the children but what do you do if you're a single mother or you know you don't have that well any number of things including living with other relatives who might be there to do child support it child care which is what a lot of people of course do right in multigenerational homes including sometimes when you're married right but but in which you're in other kinds of communities the other question is the emotional dimensions of marriage right not all marriages are stable and happy right and that's true no matter what your income level is and but the places where you know those studies I mentioned where the the increased Economic Security led to more marital stability itself in part was because economic stresses themselves cause all kinds of other problems that make marriages more volatile which is not to say I am in no way suggesting that marriages between economically uh challenged people are inherently more volatile but they can within communities where there's volatility and financial anxiety and poverty and struggles over sleep and work and child care I mean I know from my economically secure marriage that the times that we have been most at odds and most stressed are when we have money challenges right and sure no I mean and I agree with that but that still doesn't take away from the I mean it it would still be the case even if it's volatile the the I guess my point is just that it would still be an easier life if you're married even with all the Vol volatility I mean what is the D this seems like the data especially when it comes to child rearing I mean I think we should be clear that most of the data that comes out around this has to do with like the the the effects for the benefits for children I mean and and I don't want I actually want to want to jump ahead to like a little bit more of our current conversation but just to be clear like is it are we agreeing that the data is showing that children do better in households where the parents are actually married I mean is that that's what Melissa Kierney would say if Melissa Kerney were here this is the this is the argument of her book I think that there are a lot of I think there are a lot of questions about where the that data comes from and what what does doing better mean does it mean doing better in school does it mean um does it mean more Economic Security what does it mean to live in a house so so one of the questions that I frequently want to get at and Melissa Kerney in her book writes um very early on she says I'm an economist everybody has a different story this is not my area of expertise is different stories of you know what it's like to be in these in marriages right I'm looking at just the numbers I think that when it comes to questions of marriage like Sarah your your view of a marriage in fact the marriage that we all aspire to right if we were to think of marriage if we were to say yes sure I would like to be married which not everybody does have that thought but if you did have that thought you're imagining we're all imagining a happy marriage in which you're known in which you're supported in which you offer support in which there's a mutuality in which there's cooperation but any of us who've been in any relationships marriage or not that have been unsatisfying know that that is that's actually really hard right it's it's very rare to come across a a partnership that is so satisfying and so what does it mean to be good for kids too is a whole other question that I think um opens up uh you know what does it mean to if you have two incomes right the the scenario you propose and yes there's tons of data that says married people get better health care right they get if they're sick right having a spouse who can obviously because if so if one all you need is one person with insurance so yes Insurance absolutely which is another example of how our economic policies like shift even what the terms of partnership mean but but even the fact of like if there I wrote about this in my book like there's a lot of studies that say people who have sick who are sick with cancer or something live longer if they're married absolutely true right um there's so many benefits and so many savings Bella doollo who writes about singlehood all the time is really good on like the taxes on being single which means like down to things like if you get a hotel room right as a single person you're basically paying double than if you get that same hotel room and you're staying in it with your spouse right which it's the same price it's still a $250 hotel room but are you sleeping there by yourself for $250 or you sleeping there with a partner for15 s better sleep better if you're staying in that room by yourself so I don't want to suggest that there's not obviously sure having more hands having more income absolutely but if it's if we're talking about those hands and that income and the resources only by describing them as through coming through marriage I think we're in a very tricky place because the quality of those marriages what is you know is it better for kids to be raised by two parents who are unhappy you know who might have an whose parents might have an abusive relationship an angry relationship yelling tension anxiety stress and have the two incomes of those married parents or is it better for them to be with as one of those parents and a you know and a grandparent or aunts and uncles or what you know like I I think that these kinds of qualities I mean and I and I I would agree with you that it's but you know in that case with an an abusive situation it is it might be better for for the family to not be a family really like for that to be like a single parent situation but there's so many marriages that are just somewhere in between you know like there there's the this perfect romantic happiness thing I don't think that happens with anyone or even with really really healthy couples there are times where this is you know it's an unsatisfying place maybe you just want to go away from a little while um and have a break away from the family I think that happens so I I think that if we're not addressing this whole gray area where there's you know you're not perfectly happy you're not in an abusive marriage either um what do you do then like you know and in that scenario in this moderate kind of average marriage scenario you're not that's the most satisfying relationship you've ever had in your life however they're a nice person they're good you know they're a good parent whatever in that scenario is it still um a kind of partnership that is valuable particularly for I guess lower income Americans I get I I think that's where I my my intuitions run very differently and I think part of it is because I come from you know my parents are immigrants I'm an immigrant um uh and and I grew up with lower inome Americans we were lower inome Americans for a very long time and I saw around me many many people who did not have you know a two parent household um and I saw you know directly you know how that impacted the children I mean not not not as if that they were Hollow and broken or anything like that but they were like literally unsupervised sometimes and engaging in some harmful thing my neighbor um I remember got hurt very badly one time but there was no parent around his dad was at work um and his mom in the 70s that happened even with way at some point you could find a parent though right I mean you could find a parent at some point like there was a an adult around but in in the in his case nobody was around and nobody was going to be around but my parents were there and so we drove him to the hospital because he needed he needed uh to get stitched up but it was it it's it's like little things like that and I couldn't you know I can't help but think that of course that adds up and that adds up I thought even then as a child that I'm privileged in a way that these you know my neighbors are not privileged I have some I have a kind of support that is far it is far stronger than what they have and it's not as if my parents marriage was like you know I mean they like each other a lot they respect each other a lot there's a lot of love there but it's an arranged marriage it's not you know it's not arrang a big romance a range marriage that's a whole other marriage but you know it's not a big romance rea respond to this and then I want to shift shift a little bit um cuz uh I know we have limited time with her but Rebecca do you have a immediate response I mean my response is look I'm not anti- marriage I'm marriaged I'm I'm marriaged I'm married I am heteroring married okay I am like a white middle class and I'm very conscious of that right I am in no way anti-marriage my push back is not against marriage for everybody like I would like all the people that you're talking about who are yearning for marriage Mar but not getting it I would like everybody to be able to find more I don't personally I don't care whether anybody's married I want people to be able to live the lives that they want to live to the best of their ability understanding that nothing's perfect and nobody gets everything they want right I would like people who yearn for partnership to find partnership I would like for people who want to have children with a partner to have those children with a partner I the part I don't I don't I just don't agree with and I think it winds up having terrible detrimental effects is privileging marriage as the path or the solution and the the example you just gave of like the neighbors around who got into things I can tell you that growing up in a predominantly white um middle class but bluecollar middle class suburb in the early 80s that was TR like there were those kids all over my neighborhood and it was in some cases my family and in some cases another family and they were the children of married people too right I don't think marriage is the determining factor I think economic stability is a determining factor and I think that if you look at the history of populations where marriage rates have skyrocketed besides that welfare thing I was talking about if you look at where the United States government has made investments in housing in education in jobs in infrastructure that is the story of the development of the white middle class in the United States in the middle of the 20th century where the United States government got into the business of providing economic stability and housing for white a white middle class and that is when marriage rates hit their highest Mark in this country's history it was in the 1950s and 60s after World War II and and so personally I don't care if there are more people who are married or not I don't think marriage is its own special category of magic but for people who want marriage the best way to get it would be to invest in their Economic Security and stability first I want to ask you Rebecca what you think about this because I think Sarah and I are both really fascinated by this kind of discourse around hypergamy okay there's that term The Mating crisis so now what we've had in the last 10 years I mean arguably 20 years because now we're we're 20 years into hookup culture runch culture you know the kinds of things that I think you and I as observers were talking about in the early as the kind of Girls Gone Wild sex positivity that kind of culture a lot of the sort of critics the Ross doit even the Jordan Petersons of the world are talking about how the combination of that kind of social culture and women's um Rising economic status the fact that you have more women graduating from college now you have I mean I think some like some statistics like the the ma the majority of men under 30 are actually living in their parents' house I think that that is actually there is data on that so you have all these conditions that is making it very hard for people to pair up um and so you have a lot of discussion about women not being able to find Partners you have men complaining that women say they're not good enough women they have El you know now that they have this higher economic status they want to marry either somebody of their own status or higher that's the hypergamy concept and so there's an argument that this these Dynamics are resulting in a marriage crisis in that nobody can even like go on dates let alone get married so I wonder what your thoughts are about that whole gal uh well I have many thoughts no particularly cogent answers I mean I think that the thing about runch culture and hookup culture is so weird because there was this panic when we were in our 20s about a kind of post sexual Revolution brunch ladies whatever but meanwhile if you look at the statistics for the past 20 years like teenagers are having less sex than they were in the 1980s like people aren't right this isn't um the notion of sort of a hypersexualized youth that is dragging people away from traditional models of coupling I don't think that that I don't think that that has borne out but are they sexting instead okay but wait hang on sorry interrupt you but like I think you're right think that there there is this like hypersexualized culture and you know this kind of cartoonish hyper feminine kind of you know cartoonish versions of sexuality but yeah I think you're right we maybe like people are doing only fans but that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually having sex right so I think that there's a whole lot of stuff happening that I am I don't feel particularly equipped to weigh in on you know as any kind of expert around online pornography access to sexual satisfaction without actually being with another person that is probably true for for everybody of all genders right like that there is there's there's such massive social changes because of our phones and our technology and I neither want to be a booster for that technology nor like a leite about it right I I just don't like it's be that is beyond my realm of expertise but I can say as a casual Observer and a person in the world that I think that an entire um the generations are growing up with just a very different relationship to sex than how I did and c and of course my relationship to sex was incredibly different from how my mother was raised you know when she came of age in the 1960s so um and and I don't know enough to be able to read that um effectively I do think that what you're observing about the move away from um traditional hetero pairing or just pairing in general um is something that you see globally right like you've you Japan for instance there is a crisis not only around marriage but around dating right where and there are a lot of different readings of why that is whether it's the a work culture in Japan that whether it's the um whether it is sort of gender roles that have been much more resistant to change and therefore Japanese women not wanting to enter into relationships in which they're not going to be able to exercise degrees of autonomy um there's a lot of speculation about that but the United States is not alone in its total changing relationship to how we live how we live our adulthoods um and again like I don't know that I have answers to this I will say that the changing the the world for women and for gender non-conforming people is entirely remade right there are just the and and I think that the degree to which the shifts of you know the past Century the past half century in terms of what is available to women and the span of what's available to women and I'm not saying that this is like everybody's thrilled about it but like there's just so many there's the the ability for sexual Liberty for professional um and educational and economic lives that were not possible for my mother's gen you know that were just beginning to be conceived of for my mother's Generation Um means that there's like entirely new terrain that's also new terrain for men and there is no question that that the terms that we were raised with understanding about how adult life was supposed to proceed are are radically shifted and that there are certainly um frustrations resentments loneliness all of that stuff and it's tied I don't think it's possible to take out one single strand um but I also think that there are still a lot of people coupling I think that there's a lot of panic over the move away from coupling as we have known it in earlier periods and that right sure we are moving away from that but I also think that there's this world that makes it seem like nobody's having sex nobody's hooking up nobody's dating nobody's getting married and actually and nobody's living together you know nobody's forming families and I actually don't think that's the case I think I think it's I think things are changed and they're not like if you compare I and one of the arguments I made in 2016 is that in fact it was an ability to evolve with changing gender like for marriage itself to evolve to become a more egalitarian institution to marriage equality right to expand to take on lots of different cultural economic political changes around gender that have permitted it to persist in the United States as an institution that is still relevant um in a way that is much is is has been harder in places that have been more resistant to those kinds of changes in evolution well but we do know that there is a rep population replacement crisis I mean look as recently as 2015 I published a book about choosing not to have kids and I was running all over the place talking about overpopulation and how we didn't need to have kids and people needed to think twice about that I mean even at the time I was making a very big point of saying most people do want to have kids the people who don't are outliers and that should be respected however um I think that I I along with a lot of other people have had to really reckon with the fact that there's not a population bomb there never was and I mean there is I don't know if you want to use the word crisis but there is a problem of people not having bigger big enough families I mean my thing is like people who want to have family should be helped in having as many kids as they want the people who don't want kids should be left alone if you don't want kids you shouldn't have them it's probably a good sign that you shouldn't have them but people should be helped to have bigger families but it seems like just because of all these factors it's really really hard for people to to pair up and have families I mean we do know that they're not having sex I mean the data is there they are not having sex as much as they used to right no no no that's part of what right so they're not having sex as much as they used to but I also think that I mean I'm panicked about a lot of things I'm panicked about a lot well you're on our show Welcome to our world yeah what do you I am among the things I am not panicked about and maybe I I mean and here is where I am and that's not to say that I am not anxious like the stuff we were talking about before about Rel ship porn you know phones how we interact socially all that changing stuff which I is obviously tied to everything about and this is this is not about marriage this is about like alienation climate crisis gun violence like all the the Democracy on the edge all these things are interconnected in ways that I think are above all of our paygrades and in fact above the human right like you can't just pull out one strand and so if we're talking about one strand which is is people having sex in different ways than they used to and coupling in different ways than they used to this is not among my top 10 panics I think that in part it's resp I think I think in part our ideas of what's normal are have often been manufactured by um economic and political forces right so frequently when I talk about marriage I get all of these like images of a sort of sort of Norman Rockwell mid 20th century Norm of what a nuclear family is supposed to look like right that was entirely man manufactured and it was manufactured for white people um you go back to the early part of the 20th century and you look at Teddy Roosevelt talking about race suicide because he was incredibly anxious about how many children immigrant families were having and yet white people at that period were marrying at a much lower rate and not reproducing as often for a variety of of reasons that were also tied to westro expansion to the economy to New Opportunities For Education all this kind of stuff um to Wars like so many of these our mating patterns have changed radically again and again and again and again so while I am not discounting conversations about how those changes are currently manifesting themselves and what kind of power imbalances they're revealing what kind of power adjustments are creating resentments frustrations and loneliness I'm not saying it's not like but it's it's not in my I don't think a shift in how people are mating is a out of line historically with repeated shifts in how people meet in response to socioeconomic realities and and and Global realities um and B it's like it's not in my I'm not worried about the population replacement crisis as one of my top 10 worries at the moment yeah I I feel like I I little bit of the last bit was cut out but I you know I I am one of those people who's concerned about the population crisis mostly because I see it as tied to to the economy of I think technology can potentially solve this for us but it would have to be a truly um and it would have to be something truly revolutionary um and I am I am thinking that so much of uh what we have been able to build um and so many freedoms that we have as individuals rest on this kind of economic Prosperity we have um I think we're taking for granted and that a having of the population would impact severely and then we go back to the place in which you know children are now no longer just like this experience that you want to have because it's fulfilling or whatever but an economic necessity because who's going to take care of you um when you're older and your Investments don't mean anything so from that perspective I am a little bit of a Dober about it um and I hope that I'm entirely wrong and some magical technology comes that that that that solves all this problem and I'm perfectly happy to have the government give me more money to have uh children I don't I wouldn't mind that at all um so if somebody wants to take that up that's what we have our paid subscribers for though we don't need the government here's my qu here's my question is if that so hearing you and hearing that you also say that you think more people should be being married should be getting married because again I think that I think where I'm with you is I want a more stable economy and I believe that if we invested more in social safety nets and increased and Megan what you were saying I unlike you I'm not interested in the government supporting big families I'm interested in government support of families in any shape that they are made that people want them I want I want to see people in all varieties of families choosing and not you know and on their own to have the kind of economic and social security um that would that would create more stability and less of a Chasm between the wealthy and everybody else and it is my hypothesis that if that security if if we got to that place of security you actually probably would see more kids though that would not and more probably more more marriages or more like committed Partnerships though that is not my end goal in wanting that level of security so my question for you is what Sarah what would you want to see happen to encourage more marriage to encourage more marriage that's interesting um I think to some degree um the function of marriage has change so radically in our society so there's this is a long way of saying I don't have an answer um because I don't think marriage marriage today is what it was 50 years ago it doesn't serve the same purpose and it wouldn't even make sense to serve the same purpose um but I wonder if it if some kind of cultural messaging shift could be could be beneficial um I don't think that marriage is a Capstone uh you know achievement at the top of this long you know journey of of finding yourself is necessarily the best model for much of America I think it is maybe the the right model for some of Americans I think it might be it might have been the right model for me it it it is the right model for people who can you know afford IVF but if if you can't afford to do that you want to have a certain kind of um family life I think that encouraging families uh family formation and like marriage really at kind of an early stage might be uh something we should be doing um and might be beneficial part of that might be just like taking it down a notch in terms of oh is this incredible achievement that you get at the end um of this you know when you're stable when you can afford a big wedding when you can afford to invite your entire family um I I know that there are downsides to that as well I know that that means that some young people will have a different kind of uh you know they won't be able to go to Africa they won't be able to go to graduate school maybe or maybe they will but later um I know that that's going to change people's life trajectories I'm not sure if this is something young if this is a message young people are willing to um accept you know when I talk to younger women they they they want to go to Africa you know they want to do they want to live life in their 20s they want to go you know far and wide they want to read they want to you know uh they want to have experiences and that's wonderful and I think it's it's great that they have all these aspirations I also see many of those same kind of women I'm in the DC area I see women in their late 30s having a very different kind of of experience and some sometimes looking back you know at at their 20s and early 30s and thinking that maybe they should have approached things a little bit differently um I'm not I'm not sure I have an answer because I'm not sure if anyone's going to listen you know you know what I just want to also just jump in I mean Rebecca one of the um interesting things that's come up in our conversations is like this idea of being made aware that there's a biological clock and that your fertility is limited like I feel like I grew up constantly with that message like every time you up into women's magazine it was like you know it's tick talk ladies it was you remember s yeah Vanessa gregoriis like cover story on in New York mag I mean I remember I was it was constant talk tick tock tick tock tick tock yes yeah but you know it's funny because so Sarah talks about how this really didn't come up and I do think in some Corners there was a shift at some point where there was an idea that bringing this up was a right sort of unfeminist or right-wing me I mean it was funny because when I was out um talking about my um book about choosing not to have children I remember I was in this I was in this podcast interview and it was two podcast hosts and they were very friendly to the subject and they said something like well you know everybody's always telling women there's a biological clock and I said well actually is a biological clock like there actually is and that's something that needs to be um addressed in in a realistic way and people need information and they like cut that part out of the interview because it somehow wasn't on brand with the way we were talking about this kind of freedom and and you know women having choices and all of that and so you know I don't I don't know how pervasive that is and I mean maybe Sarah you were just absent that day but it does sound like a lot of women your age either either had the idea that they can freeze their eggs and that I think it's a perfect solution that and and that it's much more affordable and it's much more viable than it actually is um and I I assumed this you know I just assumed it was this because you hear it on this you know the these kind of gross places online where you know oh you you know yeah Tik Tock your eggs are you know disappear these gross guys with the empty egg carton meme right right they're the ones we're talking about it they're the ones we're talking about and that's an easy person for me to dismiss and I didn't hear about it from anyone anyone else so that was okay well well let me just set that aside that's probably not true a lot of what they say is not true so I'm not going to think about it anymore and I did not have uh any other source that I did trust really bring this up as a legitimate issue and and approach it as something that might be cause for women to choose differently you usually it's just like oh let's have better investments in in IVF and like like let's make that more possible for more people and I think that is one approach but the other approach also is to just you know make different life choices at different places and you know in at different times in your life I was impacted a lot by moving to the DC area when I did um about you know 12 years ago I moved here and I and I fell into a group of of women who were older um and I saw saw again and again the same sort of struggle at their late 30s um this recognition for the first time that there's a biological clock that there's a biological limit and it seemed as if you know to me that they were more surprised than they should have been um and I was actually surprised on their behalf as well I thought they had more time um but but it it it turns out to be kind of a nasty experience one that I wanted to avoid and so I you know keeping that in mind I made different choices so I wonder if this is just you I don't I don't feel as if that that there's enough open discussion about this so my my reporting so I was in college years before you were and like Megan I came of age in the 20 in my 20s in New York in the like the 2000s when it was very I mean all I heard was your your I mean the thing about like every you you lose eggs every second after whatever age I mean God things that haunted me through the THS right and I also we were going to all die of AIDS that was the other thing but yeah other thing that was more my time yeah that that might be just our few years difference because that was a um I I think it is yeah uh but you missed out but well no I remember AIDS but I was and safe saxs and condoms but it was the the the the peak of it when I was in college there was a cocktail and that made it that changed so much about AIDS yeah no I think those F make a huge differ anyway good so but I did I was raised on Terror of like your fertility is waning and it's a tick tick tick clock and everything um and then when I so my perspective on what you're describing I don't know what you I'm trying to do the math on what years you were in college Sarah but when I was doing my reporting for all the single ladies I was talking to college students and to women in their 20s and uh they were also what what I was told by them and this would have been in again between 2012 and 2015 when I was doing this reporting was that it was a constant balance in their minds that they were doing a whole lot of math in their head at all times and it was it's like it's hard I don't I don't like these kinds of decisions are like they're really hard to make the choices we make in our lives like we most of us aren't dumb we know that the things that we're CH choosing have consequences right and um what I remember hearing and being really struck by was that there was this constant math equation in a lot of their heads which was like okay so do I want to and and some of them had boyfriends in college who wanted to get married one of the things I found in the reporting I was doing with college students in those years was that a lot of them had had male Partners who wanted to settle down and they didn't want to because they were afraid of sort of the inverse of what you're describing which of course was true for a lot of history which is um choosing to marry and have kids young right um and then then the inverse of the kind of regret and surprise that you describe in the women in their 30 in their later 30s who are like oh God I didn't realize what I might have sacrificed here the inverse of that which was more the the long-term historical model was women having children in their 20s and their early 20s and then getting getting to their late 30s and the children are grown and they're like oh God I don't have whatever fill in the blank you know I didn't actually know anybody whose dream was to travel around the world but um but maybe that you know I didn't or I didn't I don't have an I don't have a career I'm not economically stable I'm dependent on a a partner I didn't get the degree I didn't get the education I wanted to get I don't have the money to do it now like those kind so I think that that the notion of getting halfway through your life and realizing that whatever the set of choices you made whether it was around partnership whether it was around children whether it was around education and career that there in like there are inherent trade-offs in that is sobering for people who take all kinds of paths right and the thing that I would advocate for more than anything and I think that the young women I interviewed were doing this like okay but if I do this then this and if I do this and then this and that's a burden it's a burden but like that's also what life is right is these trying to figure out how the choices we make and when we're talking about college people we're talking about people who have more resources to make more choices more freely um anyway the the young people who I spoke to were aware of it but it wasn't the only looming threat in their head that is what I would say it was there was an awareness of waning fertility there was an awareness of like oh my God you know IVF and including from people where I was saying like you're 23 what are you talking about don't worry you know where I was sort of doing the reverse like ah you this doesn't your your eggs are not bad you're 24 years old right um but but there were also like okay but what if I do wind up right now starting a family and I don't pursue this thing I'm passionate about intellectually or professionally what if I don't build a solid economic base for myself so you know there there were those concerns too and it was more of a balancing act than um than what I remember going through and the other thing is that I think gets left out of this a lot and a lot of these conversations which come down to marriage or not marriage or early children or not children is who are you with or not with who have you met or not met you know and when and like the the person who might be a great partner for rearing children might not show up in your life until you're 50 what does that mean what does that mean about the choices you make do you want children do you not want children the thing that I like would would wish as far as messages sent to women I wish for the economic supports and this and the economic support of all these different paths right that's the top thing and that's something that I think is controllable by policy and therefore something to advocate for the messaging that I would want to send to women is actually maybe the inverse of what you're talking about which is is to think about the things that you most want to pursue and most think you and it'll change over time but what do you most want in your life and is it children to think about that independent of marriage unless there's one particular marriage you're considering at that point in which case definitely think about that marriage but like do you want to have children do you want to work as an ex do you you know like whatever your profession that you're passionate about do you want to travel do you want to live in a particular like think about those Place those choices for what your desires passions drive and impulses are and start from from there and that's one thing that I I mean I have had those conversations with a lot of my friends who are unmarried but who were wondering whether or not they were going to have children on their own very few of them were sitting around being like I should have married that guy at 23 fre it was I haven't met somebody with whom I want to start a family and I need to decide do I want to have children or not have children because there's not somebody who's shown up who's a good match for me and that's the reality that I've seen having moved through my 30s and 40s it's very rarely somebody who's like wow I should have married Joe when I was 22 that most most of my peers do not have that they may indeed have questions about fertility and children and whether or not they want that or wanted them um and some of them have chosen to have them on their own and some have not but it's very rarely actually even about marriage because they just hadn't met anybody who was the right match for them yeah I mean I think that's true that resonates with with my experience at the same time I think a lot of the conversation around unrealistic standards and people just having like you know Mary Harrington who I'm assuming you're not a big fan of but you know she has this concept big romance um and just this idea that you know basic facts and realities of our own biological limitations have been eclipsed by pretty un pretty Fantastical ideas about what's possible um and that manifests in a lot of different ways yeah who was the woman Megan you would remember this who was it Lori gotle the good enough guy L Gotti is the one I was in the debate with um Brad Wilcox with so this was uh yeah Lori gley wrote uh the book marry him the case for settling I think that was in 2012 around then and then there was the Princeton mom remember that oh Mary Mary yes oh gosh do I remember the okay but but and and the Princeton Mom though so Sarah you don't remember this but this was what like maybe 2014 or something it was definitely it was my book era whenever it was I think yeah so the Princeton mom was this woman who was a um graduate of Princeton and she also had a son or maybe two sons who were enrolled in Princeton at this time and this is like the biggest nightmare if this person is your mother so she wrote a piece was it like in the New York Post or something about or maybe it was in the Jour Wall Street Journal I'm Google it because it's amazing you can Google as I'm talking so basically it she was saying you know ladies if you want to have a and you want to get married you should find your husband while you're in college because NE never there's no other time in your life where you're GNA have this high quality of a dating pool and you would be foolish not to find somebody now and she was a very UNP palatable person overall like I mean talk about mortification of her own son everybody made fun of her um she was not getting her message across in a very appealing way to say the least but you know I have to say I I had a conversation with Christine emba a Washington Post columnist who is writes about these issues a lot um on my other podcast a few months ago and there was a kernel of Truth in what the Princeton mom was saying if you especially if you go to a place like Princeton it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to or certainly you have a more accessible pool of potential mates on your Princeton campus than you might when you go out into the Working World depending on what your career is so I feel like that kind of messaging it's just unfortunate that it got packaged in such a sort of negative School marish way because I think that there are ways to have this conversation that um are more uh effective and and fruitful perhaps yeah and also did anything come up well and the other thing is that you know we have to also you we cannot take away from this the historic reality about marriage which is that historically it has been an institution that has organized power along gender lines in its hetero form in which it has been in which labor and resources have been divided between men and women in ways that have been um suffocating for women right and that one of the so so there's the there are these questions that you're bringing up if you are somebody who wants to marry right that's sort of what I was talking about earlier about thinking about what do you want is finding a partnership a one of your top priorities is having children one of your top priorities is having like and it's and it's not choose one it's a constant balance but yeah it's sure it's true when we're younger in our in in you know for that matter in high school like we are around people our age and our peers um you know at at greater rates than and and it shifts but it doesn't you know I mean I just I I can't stand the prinstant mom and I can't stand the just marry him and just find a mate but that's because I think I think that there are so many different varieties of people and so many different impulses and desires and that there is just no there's no making rules that that are around marriage and partnership than that can Poss or giving advice that can possibly account for the sheer diversity of human desire and and chemistry and I the the got Le thing that I that is terrible I don't think Lori gotley married a person and had like no and actually she's written she she had a child no she had a child with a sperm donor she's a single mother and she's actually written quite movingly about how she regrets not quote unquote settling she said my St you know she said my standards were were ridiculous and now um here I am and it's a good life in a lot of ways but it's perhaps not not what she would have chosen right but also I I would argue that there are a lot of people who marry following her advice who a lot I think that's true of a lot of marriages is you marry the person like that's something I've observed um is that there are a lot of marriages with like people who get married because they want the partnership right and they want the marriage and it's a moment where they're anxious about having kids and they choose the person they're with at that moment and they have a marriage and I think some of those marriages last some of them don't some of them are great some of them aren't but they're also huge numbers of those people who would probably say it's a good life it's a happy life in certain ways but I sort of regret some of the paths not taken I think part of this is that we don't look at some of the very same regrets and second thoughts and and and sacrifices we we tend to see them around when women haven't married or had children and those glare out at us because they actually are different from historic norms and we don't look at the same like those we don't look at those same a similar variety of regrets and about the people who had the normative paths right the people who did marry the just good enough guy the people who did have the kids because that's what you know they they were told that they should want and that they looked for the security and they got it and it was good and they love their kids and they have a fine marriage or whatever but they're also still thinking about the things that they didn't do and the relationships they they're not writing op ads about it well they're also not writing op-eds and books about it I mean the people that we hear from a lot are the people who are single and sort of in this ideas space and thinking about these things all the time so I think that's a good point I mean I definitely I can tell you that as yeah right go ahead well some of them do like I think isn't that what Leslie Bennetts partly the feminine mistake like the there are sort of feminist pmics that are like about having married and gotten into a situation that created degrees of economic dependence and then being left in your 40s or your 50s without that's out of fashion that's out of that was like I right but that's I think that's that's out of I mean I do think and we'll wrap this up in a minute but I I do think that uh I mean having been very much involved in that discourse over those years I do think that something has happened where people have lost the plot a little bit and for some reason are not armed with basic facts of of biology and that when you know when when you combine that with the fact that men are falling behind in this way and that they're not appealing to a lot of women as mates you've just got like a whole bunch of things like I said at the beginning there's like a whole bunch of things going on and it's really hard to tease them out and the the the inclination is to make a bunch of generalizations about them which is my favorite thing to do so you know don't knock our Hobbies around here but yeah I mean it's I do think that something is different now yeah um sure I I don't disagree I think my I think my argument would be that there's always there's and things are different now in ways that we can't quite wrap our head around because they're about changing Technologies changing ideas of power and who has it changing social status all this kind of stuff and we don't we don't have the full picture in part because we're all in it at one age or another right even you and me who are older and theoretically made our choices our stories aren't over I mean you know I hope and um mine is and Sarah yours isn't either right so like once you get a podcast your story is over but once you resort to doing this yeah but we are all like I truly truly think that if this conver if podcast had existed in 1995 and your guests would have been Katie royi and what like you know there there would have been also like things are Chang like things are changing and it's a desperate situation and I think that if this podcast had existed in 1965 there would have been and I think certainly had this podcast existed in 1945 right like there're all and definitely a 1910 man like and in 1895 all of these times God I love this idea podcast podcast of the late 19th century I I like that idea you would have heard people on those historical podcasts being like everything's changing and we're losing like X and and there's a real risk that the people who are making these choices in accordance with these changing Technologies and social mores are sacrificing a crucial part of their Humanity like that's basically things that people were saying in popular discourse in 1920 and in 1890 that is like that's that was literally in the in the journals of the time so I simultaneously agree with what you're saying which is that we are in a time of social tumult around partnership sex love family formation all of that and I also think that that doesn't and our tumult is specific to our era and our technology and our changing social moras but that that does not set us apart more broadly from literally centuries of people who have come before us who have also found themselves in the midst of Shifting social political technological ground and felt that things were at real risk and and sometimes those things have been at real risk and they've been lost and at other you know like that so that all these things are true simultaneously all right Sarah I'll let you get in the last question if you have one um it's going to be like a trolly question if a trolly I don't want question so you so okay so here's here's what it is um totally um not related directly to these convers to to the conversation we just had but um I'm interested in the ways in which you know all this stuff affects men you know the lack of partnership and then um you know further down the line when women decide not to partner up with men um and not to have a family not to have a marriage not to have um you know that whole structure they also take away the uh role of fatherhood from men right which they don't have a choice they don't have really much of a choice in so um would you be supportive of uh you know Public Funding and then uh you know and then sponsor sponsoring of artificial wombs I if that were to be something that becomes that was going to be my question too I was going to ask about artificial woms you ever becomes do you know that you're giving voice to a radical feminist idea do you know that that is do you know who shulamith Firestone is i' I've told her about shul I have read schulas Smith Firestone i' I've read I've read this um and I think she's very she's very interesting she's very smart crazy but smart woman um but but but would you are you Pro artificial wombs or do do you want us to slow down on that but I think it's reproductive equality for men uh I'll tell you what when we get to this future of which you speak in which women are reproducing on their own and men are cut off um by Fiat from the experience of fatherhood and reproduction and in which their like economic and social standing is um profoundly inhibited by the changed gender power dynamics that that we have created moving into this future future and then I think it is a very rational um moment to talk about artificial wombs and I think that today Monday November 27th unless you want to like go to schulam my firestone's idea which was liberating women from like from childbearing I like which I don't think that too has come up right right no it no it's it's it's been in it's been in conversation from a number of angles and perspectives for decades but I do not think that at this moment I I would much rather see all that Public Funding for for getting men those artificial wombs I would much rather see it directed to affordable housing and increased welfare benefits that would put men women and people of every gender um on more equal and stable economic footing from which they could then make a series of better and healthier choices about everything including partnership IND individual paths and family formation okay well considering that they have these same problems in Scandinavia that's I don't know how we're gonna how we're going to achieve that but yes so okay so we're not going to get an artificial womb sponsor anytime soon is that what you're saying not me I'm not putting I'm not putting my face on come on Rebecca help us I think we you know we could just stop and do a host read for artificial womb every mid roll every show and uh Sarah's life would be made all right well this was an amazing conversation thank you so much it's great to see you is there anything you want us to uh know about where to find you um anything like that no I these days I try not to be found I would like to not be found but you're writing regularly for New York Magazine that that is your that sure no I don't mean literally yeah what but I also but I also even mean on social media which I'm like I can't anymore you know yes I write for New York Magazine uh as as a staffer there and my work is there and you can find my work there and you can read my books that are already published and maybe one day I will publish another book but know hard to think about writing books anymore isn't it there's something about it that is like overwhelming in unfortunate way well anyway okay thank you so much Rebecca we really than to both of you I appreciate it bye bye bye [Music] he