The urgency of turning around this destructive trend.
The Beatles told us: “All you need is love.”
They were right, but along with love must come marriage.
But marriage rates have plummeted, especially among young men.
A Pulitzer Prize-worthy story by Sean Salai of The Washington Times crunches all the numbers. To say they are worrisome would be a vast understatement.
— In 2025, nearly twice as many men ages 18 to 39 were unmarried as were married.
— There were 30.4 million unmarried men ages 18 to 39 in 2025, up 47% from 20.7 million in 2000.
— In the same period, married men in this age range dropped by 15%, from 18.1 million to 15.4 million. “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy,” according to Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist.
— Forty-two percent of working-class men are unmarried, according to educational psychologist Donna R. Turner. In 1980, 73% of working-class men were married.
I could go on and with these depressing statistics. But I believe the decline in marriage and children is a threat to the American future much more dangerous than even the national debt, climate change, cancer or foreign aggression.
Family is the essential organizing unit in America. We’re not to live in Soviet-style communes where the authority figure is “Big Brother.”
Every study shows that the decline in marriage among young men is tied to alcoholism, violent crime, drug abuse, pornography, depression, isolation, less economic success and suicide.
Are women to blame? Certainly. Study shows that as women have become more career oriented, they are having a harder time “marrying up.” --->READ MORE HERE
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| Cody Black/UNSPLASH |
Young men look at dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.
There are now roughly 30.4 million unmarried American men between the ages of 20 and 39, nearly twice the number of married men in the same cohort. The predictable explanation is that men are to blame. Pornography, gaming, delayed adulthood, declining ambition, fear of commitment, social awkwardness, the manosphere, and economic stagnation all make the list of reasons. But after years of dissecting so-called “toxic masculinity,” perhaps it is time to ask what has toxic femininity done to the modern woman? Have women today become poor prospects for marriage?
That honest question may sound inflammatory because our culture has spent decades teaching women to evaluate men while treating reciprocal scrutiny as sexism. Women are encouraged to identify red flags, examine a man’s income, ambition, temperament, sexual habits, emotional intelligence, politics, attachment style, relationship with his mother, willingness to provide, and potential as a father. This is considered discernment, rightly so. Men, however, are increasingly discovering that asking similarly consequential questions about women’s character invites accusations of insecurity, misogyny, or an inability to “handle” independent women.
The frustration becomes easier to understand when you look at the culture young men are actually encountering. Social media tells women to know their worth, never settle, protect their peace, trust the ick, establish another boundary, identify the narcissist, and treat independence as a prerequisite for emotional health. Cosmopolitan recently described the practice of “decentering men” as a rejection of organizing women’s lives around male approval and the so-called patriarchy, while Psychology Today has promoted a model of “decentering men” built around preserving autonomy and identity while dating.
Of course, no woman should build her identity entirely around whether a man chooses her, and no one should remain in an abusive relationship for the sake of saying she has one. But the cumulative message is more radical than its internet virality. A culture built around protecting the self from imposition will eventually produce people who regard the obligation of duty itself with suspicion. Marriage, however, is almost entirely made of obligations. A husband will interfere with your preferences. Children will obliterate your schedule. Family will demand money, time, patience, forgiveness, dependence, and sacrifice precisely when self-actualization would be easier.
This is one reason so many young men look at today’s dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.
The Lindsay Clancy trial let the cat out of the bag. What disturbed many young men was the intensity of identification with the woman who killed three children. They watched social media turn the case into another story about systems failing women; they watched TikTok conspiracy theories baselessly implicate Patrick Clancy in the children’s deaths; and some users went so far as to invoke zodiac signs while attempting to redirect suspicion toward Patrick. Some men began looking at their own girlfriends and asking an uncomfortable question: Can this woman become the mother of my future children?
The Clancy response exposed what years of discussion about “toxic masculinity” have conspicuously avoided: femininity can become toxic too. We have no difficulty admitting that masculine virtues require discipline. Yet feminine instincts are routinely treated differently. Empathy can become indulgence. Vulnerability can become a mechanism for escaping accountability. Emotional sensitivity can become manipulation. Social intelligence can become reputational warfare and exclusion. Female solidarity can become the instinct to identify with another woman before asking whether she is right. Compassion can become so detached from judgment that the person presenting the greatest emotional suffering becomes the presumed victim even when actual victims are lying dead.
Feminist ideology adds another layer. For decades, women have been trained to interpret their lives through systems of so-called oppression: patriarchy, unequal emotional labor, reproductive burdens, workplace discrimination, male violence, and expectations surrounding motherhood. The woman is increasingly understood first as someone acted upon rather than someone who acts, which means her failures are explained environmentally while male failures remain evidence of character. --->READ MORE HERE
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