They Modern World Lied About Motherhood

The Modern World Lied About Motherhood Will 18-year-old male and female missionaries move the needle on marriage? The happiness of married women The Consequences of the Sexual Revolution What Makes a Marriagable Man? Presiding in the home

 Raw Transcript:

A data-driven discussion with BYU professor Janet Ericson on men, women, family, a Harvard study that shows why
marriage matters, why married mothers are the happiest, what makes a man marriageable, and why the sexual
liberation didn't free women. Lots of compelling issues that cut through a lot of the cultural fog that we see today.
This episode is brought to you by Go and Do Travel and the three continents tour where we go to Istanbul, Turkey. We go down to Ephesus and go where John and
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temple of Queen Hacheepsuit, the Luxor temple, and the Carac temple. We kind of go through time as we pass through these three different continents. It's an
incredible trip. We have one this October 2026 with Bruce Porter. And then in 2027 in March, I bring along Jacob
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Go up to trips and events and scroll down to three continents. And in July, you get $250 off on the second guest. A
great time to purchase. Here we go with Janet Ericson.
[music]
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So, we're currently going through a loneliness epidemic. Is this primarily a family crisis?
Yes. Yes. I'll I'll say maybe to respond to that. In the past, we had to have familiar relationships for survival. So
parents needed children for economic security in their end of life. To have children was an economic foundation for
your life. Women needed marriage. They depended on marriage. Men depended on marriage. And I think we in a culture
where you can independently provide for yourself as a woman where access to contraception means you can postpone
delay childbearing and you don't a system that prevents you from depending on children for lifelong security as you
age. There's just no need for children like we might have had in the past. No need essential need for marriage for those material survival kinds of things.
So in a sense, the family is no longer fundamental to one's survival and
well-being as it was in the past. And in a culture of individualism where the individual becomes supreme, the
individual's experience and autonomy and pleasure kind of becomes the supreme quest, then then family seems to get in
3 minutesthe way of that rather than facilitating it. And so I think it is a family crisis. This all goes together, right?
That you lose track of the need for family. You lose track of choosing family and you end up with the loneliness epidemic. [snorts]
So So you say you say need. So you're talking about survival primarily is what we're bringing up. But is there still a need for family in other areas of our
life? Is is marriage still outside of looking at this as a a theological uh um requirement or order even? We'll
get into that later, but why is there a need still for marriage then and for family? Yeah. A practical need.
So, Greg, that's such a powerful question because absent of this essential survival need, right, then the question is what do
these relationships do for human beings then? And I think fascinating that we see it more than ever marriage is linked
to happiness. So Sam Peltzman at Chicago would find out a 30point differential in the United States for those who are
married in terms of happiness versus those who are not. He would see it as the primary distinguisher of happiness in the United States today is whether or
not you're married. If you're in a very happy marriage, the likelihood of being very happy [clears throat] increases by 545%.
So those so hap happiness is very strongly linked to marriage. That doesn't mean all marriages are happy but in general marriage is a really
important predictor of a host of well-being measures. Similarly we see that married mothers and fathers with
children are the happiest. They're the most likely to be very happy in the culture. So while we have this growing
burgeoning right emphasis on the individual you see paralleling [clears throat] it that more than ever
close relationships marriage children are the predictors of happiness and well-being. So, you know that that
Harvard study, the 75-year Harvard grant study that we'll reference, but at the end of that 75-year study, the longest longitudinal study in history and the
primary investigator will say when we when that study set out, nobody was thinking about relationships. The whole the whole mindset was 1938 was the
predictor of well-being is IQ, economic well-being, right? If you come with a high IQ, it was all material kinds of
things. your prowess, your intellect, your money at the end of the 75 years.
And they're tracking these people every variable you can think of, their economic well-being, their happiness measures, their physical well-being. At the end of it all, happiness is love.
Full stop.
Relationships, relationships, relationships is how he ends it. The quality of relationships early in life actually predicted income later in life.
the quality of relationships across well-being including in adulthood after someone had divorced and remarried and a
happy marriage you see a flourishing and what falls out IQ material things they
just fall out of the equation so so it's just so clear in this drive
to autonomy and this sense that we don't need these relationships because we don't need them for survival what's
become more clear than ever is how much we truly need them for our well-being,
for our development, for our sense that life is good and has purpose and meaning. So, we don't have that without those relationships.
That's really interesting. I mean, you saw about the 1938 is when that started because there are so many ideologies that came out at that time that were based off of I if you look at Planned
Parenthood, if you look at Nazism, uh even coming up with An Rand eventually coming in and kind of looking
at these ideas of IQ being yes, so important and and race and and everything else. So that's that's pretty
interesting that there would be I'm trying to put myself back in that time frame and think, okay, yeah, I can see that. I can see where those that's
what they were looking for. That's what they assumed, right? Going in. Yeah. It it shouldn't it's fascinating, right?
Because I think they took for granted that these relationships that were so fundamental to life, you just took for granted that you had family at that
time. And then once we go through the divorce revolution, the 1970s and 1980s, once we have widespread access to
contraception, which means a sexual revolution, so people engaging sexually outside of marriage, and then you have a fracturing of marriage itself and a
decrease in the marriage rate. I don't think anyone at that time could have even fathomed life outside of those relationships. But we've had all this
experimentation and now we're seeing the fruits of what what meaning, purpose, well-being, how
it's impacted when we don't have those core relationships of life, the ones we start life with. Cuz an infant can't
actually grow in a healthy way without attaching to caregivers. You you emerge from the womb looking for relationship.
They have to establish a relationship in order to develop in a healthy way. And if that's true from infancy, it's going to be true across the course of our lives.
Yeah, that's that's I was I was speak yesterday with uh Mads Larson. I was interviewing him. He's been on the show a couple times and he is a uh uh well,
he's a philosopher, but he he goes he's a he's a cultural philosopher.
We'll say he focuses a lot on culture and his whole thing is he he looks at this the evolution our evolution culturally
of primarily the liberation of women right coming through the ages and the liberation of women and and says that
that is the change in what we were speaking of previously before this the atomistic
and fragmentation [clears throat] of culture actually is a result of that not but but of course he's championing it, right?
He's championing the the liberation of women, but at the same time saying this goes with it,
[clears throat]
right? The the family structure, the the fertility rate, which is abysmal right now. And it's
uh go goes along with that. And I just wonder I I look at this and I think, okay, well, there are a lot of ideologies that might make these changes
or or that are out to liberate women, etc. But to me, the biggest issues, the biggest changes have been technology.
And there's a change of life through technology, the industrial revolution, where all of a sudden you've got a man and a woman in agrarian society. They're working the land, they're working the
home, they've got their gender roles, so to speak, but they're there based, right, with family and basically and attached to their property, right?
And then men got end up going off to the city for jobs.
Yes. and the women stay home, but the the technology comes in. Yes.
To make the domestic chores that are so difficult and are key to survival, right,
much more easier and much more laborious and and all of a sudden you have more free time and you end up with Leave it to Beaver than in the 50s, right?
Right. and and uh but the pill in the late 50s to early 60s I don't think that there is any piece of
technology in any way that has been had as much impact on what we see in the structure of the
family you know it's not like I'm anti-contraceptive but I just think that that that one thing changed
family fertility rate uh marriage promiscuity right more more than anything else has. Is
that do you go along with that? Would that make sense to you?
Yeah, it's interesting as you were talking I really like Gene Twangi who will talk about transitions change over time and her whole premise is it's
technology if we we we think it's cultural movements but it's technology that makes the dramatic shift it and it
kind of acts on human beings right intervenes.
And I contraception is certainly one of those most powerful. And if we were looking at the dynamic between men and
women, right, the relationship between men and women and the link between marriage and children, then nothing's
been as impactful than that, right? Than contraception.
So I think you're right and and we sometimes don't appreciate, right? I think when President Oaks, is that okay if I reference President Oaks here?
Yeah. um his powerful message in October last general conference about the family and he talked about what you said the
family as an a unit of economic production and just think what happened when this working beside one another she had a different sphere right
pre-industrialization than that that man did he's outside brawn working the land and children are helping mother produce candles and food and all of those things
it's a very productive kind of life and work for survival where there's lot of interdependence Then you have that break between work
and home. And she in a sense confined to that sphere. It was elevated. She was she was the haven in a heartless world.
She was the guardian of the hearth and this man out there in the dog eat dog world of capitalism and economy. And and
yet it created this very powerful division between them. And as time goes on, then she feels confined by that
because the work that she's doing in home is no longer productive. She is now a consumer. She's a buyer.
She's dependent on him. And then she just buys things. And so meaning and productivity have been stripped from the home in a sense. And and so you can
13 minutesimagine why all of that becomes very unappealing to women. and the family loses track of what it does together
interdependently to build and all the unity that comes in that process of creating together. So I think President Oaks is asking us to think about that
not outsourcing everything. How does this home in the current climate in the current economy actually retain its
sense of productivity its creativity its generity together and instead what you saw is you know a fracturing. So women
leave the home to find meaning. Men have already left the home to find meaning.
And children are outsourced to find meaning to in some other place, sports, whatever. And you have this place where
people just are roommates, right? That's what he's commenting on. Instead of all that we depend on is creating together, depending on one another, each giving
their part, and that interdependence that then builds unity, connection, and meaning. It's hard to do today.
that uh yeah, roommates with screens. You're right. Roommates with screens. Yeah.
Yeah. So, moving from that, I mean, I was I brought up the pill that because of the next question I have, which is, you know, that the pill comes out in the
late 50s. You go into the 60s. It's a it's a completely, you know, what what Mads calls a uh uh a
narrative abyss uh that we're all going through again right now. But it's what what did the sexual revolution
change? What did it dismantle for us?
Yeah, it's painful, right? Because I'll just say from the perspective of a woman, the challenge is she's inherently
smaller, less strong, she's less sexually driven than men. I think God could see that at the time of the fall
when he says to Eve, almost forewarning, he will potentially rule over you.
That's not God's way, but it's sort of inherent in the biological realities of men and women. And so, you can imagine,
and I do work with the United Nations sometimes looking at nations, there are many cultures where she's assumed to be owned by him in marriage. Mhm.
Her body is owned and her sexual right capacities are owned by him. In in
contract, she gets protection and provision hopefully, right? But she's owned in a sense and that's problematic.
So, you can see why the sexual revolution comes along and it says women are liberated from [clears throat] becoming pregnant when they engage
sexually with men. And so, they're liberated from the burden of bearing life. and and and you could see why people might see that as freeing, right?
Because in cultures where she she could be in a sense owned and then trapped in that dynamic, it it it can be freeing to
have power over that that she know that she didn't have because that man is exerting power over her. So I think just
appreciating that but then recognizing just in fact sexual liberation did very little to liberate women. we have a higher rate of
all kinds of challenges for women. What essentially it did is it said men no longer have obligations over the children that they help procreate. So
you saw the out of wedlock child birth rate go from 6% to nearly 50% and it's hovering around
there still today. What that means is women then are bearing children and raising children alone. So we saw a dramatic increase in the feminization of
poverty and and so it has been far from liberating for women when we actually see what happened when she now the
likelihood of poverty for her um the effects of engaging sexually outside of committed relationships. So we know we
know there's a difference between men and women in how they experience sexual connection typically. And now what happens is the male orientation to
exuality is the driver. That means women who are oriented towards engaging sexually within committed relationships.
That's how women tend to orient around sexuality just by nature. Because in the past she had to find someone she could trust that would be reliable. If if in
the 1950s a man wanted to have sex with her, he would she would see implicitly she would say, "I'm not having sex with you unless I can trust you that you're
going to provide for me and be someone I can securely trust my children in my life to." And once you break out of that, once
once sex no longer is linked with pregnancy, she no longer is thinking future about this guy and he no longer
is thinking future about her. And so you have a fracturing and women will bear the brunt of it in a sense. They will
have to be the ones to act with contraception or abortion or raise the child alone, feminization of poverty and
18 minutesmen can pursue illicit relationships at will with no responsibility.
So it's just it's been it's been tragic for women. Now has it been tragic for men as well? Yes. Because men have this
beautiful gift of generous sexuality when bound within marriage that binds
her. He will find her attractive, desirable across their lives in any
number of changes. And so within the commitment of marriage, that generous sexual nature that a man has is binding
and protective. It grounds him in that relationship and a security for her. But once you break sex outside of marriage,
he no longer has a reason to grow up. He no longer has a reason to become educated to to develop. So what we see
among the lower class, our less educated is we see a drop in men working. Men of
working age who could work are not working. They've also continued to to fall behind women in the attainment of
bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and and higher education degrees. That started in the early 1980s by a lot. Tremendous gap.
So, I think that it's been devastating for women to take sex outside of marriage and the commitment of marriage.
[clears throat] And it has been devastating for men as well, but but it's manifesting in different ways.
Yeah. And of course, the answer to that again is the law of chastity for both men and women, right? I mean, that's still that was followed
then that would be the answer right to that regardless of of concern for the future regardless of concern for
responsibility etc then that would matter. Now you talk about men that no longer are, you know, have to grow up then.
Yeah.
Uh they're getting sex without commitment, without responsibility.
But there are a lot of women too that are saying, "I don't need a man." Right? I don't need a man. I've got a
20 minutescareer. I I don't know that I want kids or I don't want as many kids.
That's the result of the social studies right now is they're also pushing that off. Yeah, there are for the first time ever more
women in there I think is it above 40 that are having children as compared to under 20. Yeah. Right.
Ever which is probably good but it's still a a change that has never existed before. Right. Yeah. It has its own problems. Right.
It has its own problems. Yeah.
Children growing up with older parents which is a very different dynamic. You have me I got married older and my children grow up with older parents.
Then you have all the fertility questions. All of those challenges. I I don't think that's ideal. Um but and
just the inter the generational gap is less robust in its relational connections for children. So
um that's a good point because because generations now I mean you can drop them down to almost 10 years.
Yes. Because of technology. Yes.
And the way the world has changed so much you know it's there. I mean, I've just noticed in my kids that that I've got I've got millennials and and I've
got Gen Z and there's a there's a distinct difference even though they're only 10 years apart, right? There is a distinct
difference in those kids and their friends, not [snorts] just them. Yes.
Than than from, you know, the kids 10 years later.
Yeah. That's interesting. So you're just saying the rapidity of the changes Yes.
means that the gaps become wider between generations and that has its own there. To me I I would say that there
the generations that that we've usually gone through you know the greatest generation the boomers gen X etc. Gen X
that's me that's the lost generation. Uh those I don't what are we looking at about a 20 25 year period that they
usually put in place for that. It just seems to me like those are more like 10 years apart now. That's it.
o yeah, so if you have kids when you are 40, right?
You're to me you're further apart than you would have been 40 years older, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I know.
It's a it's a I think to that comment of women um Claudia Golden, the Nobel Prize winner on this very issue of what women
need, flexib flexibility, all of that kind of issue around work and family.
She was really remarkable in thinking through this what she calls a quiet revolution. So this is not Latter-day Saints, but we're going through our own
quiet revolution um in the early '9s, late '80s where women are rethinking their lives. So with access to
contraception and it's going to happen before this um 80 early 80s right access to contraception and now work can be accessed by women that's not dependent
on Braraw it's brain work and she can do it just as well if not better in some ways with some social skills and so
women see that an investment in education then leads to career opportunities and they just start rethinking their lives kind of quietly
delay marriage invest in education or get married and delay childbearing and you're thinking about yourself in terms
of not just children and family. You're thinking about yourself in terms of career and you know what that meaning has for your life and how you're going
to invest in the broader world and I think that has been going on for some time and it's also reflected in how we think about religion and institutions.
So women, marriage and religion, both institutions. So women are thinking differently about themselves like you're
saying they're thinking about what is the good life? What do I really want? I can make all those decisions sort of
freely and delay this, delay that, invest here, invest in that, think very differently about my life than my
grandmothers did. Now that now that remains that question. So is what they're thinking going to lead to the good life?
And so when we collected data last summer looking specifically at that question of are single women happier
than married women with children because that would be the message out there. It would be this is a high-risk thing.
You don't know what this is going to be like with this guy. It's better to have control over your life without the fear of children taking from you or spouse
taking from you. And so we would expect to see single women flourishing happier, right? But in fact, we found out that I
think given what we know about the human need for deeply connected relationships, what we found out is our married women
with children are two times more likely to say they are very happy. Mhm.
And when we looked at every measure, whether it was like connection to your community, um loneliness, stress,
friendships, all of every like variable that we could think of, you find out that married women with children are
thriving, and that those at greatest risk are actually our single, childless women. Greatest risk for stress, greatest risk for loneliness, greatest
risk for feeling disconnected, greatest risk for not feeling meaning and purpose. But that's not going to be what's messaged right to us
in many ways either for women or men, right?
Madison Avenue didn't get the memo on that.
Yeah, you're right. I just read an article two days ago and it was saying, "Oh, people are, you know, living life outside of marriage and they're
flourishing in all these ways." And I was like, that is so inconsistent with the data. It like nothing could be further from what the data is showing.
And yet, you just get that message all the time. all the time, right?
Uh, you know, you talk about complimentarity between men and women in a relationship in marriage. Is does that
still require order? I mean, what what is the order of God when it comes to the family? How does that work?
Yeah. Well, I think um when we look at the and I'll just talk about children for just a minute. We can see that men
and women offer something distinct to children that creates a wholeness that is really important for their
development. So, for example, both men and women experience a flood of oxytocin when they have a baby. She gets a ton of oxytocin. It's the hormone that's
bonding, connects her to that baby. It elicits behaviors like cooing and cuddling from her that literally she
will build the right brain of that baby for the first year and a half through her connection.
Fathers also experience oxytocin lower levels but they also have prolactin oxytocin and it's eliciting tickling and tossing kind of behaviors.
Love tickling.
So when you're seeing men toss babies in the air or toss their children or be playful with them or engage in that kind of behavior where women are like get them on the ground. What are you doing?
It's actually really important. We can see that father's relationship is characterized by stimulatory thinking
outside relating to the outside world where she's building core sense of identity and it's manifest in a
host of ways. He tends to push independence. He tends to push risk-taking. She he tends to intervene and correct less but when he does the
line holds. She tends to intervene and correct and guide more but is flexible with how she carry outs carries out consequences. uh he gives a sense of
order actually his presence his body his muscles his tone communicates this sense
of order and predictability and it's not unlike yang and yin energies actually there's this structure order and there's
a fluidity order that's coming from her and from him and together it creates a wholeness so I think by design children
need both they need and one parent can't do both because they actually benefit from the relationship that they have to
this one and to that one and experiencing their differences in embodied people who are different from
them. And what it does is it just manifests that this child, they are the expression of a mother and father.
That's their body is the manifestation of the union of a man and woman. We can't create life outside of that today.
And that need for the influence, the distinct influence of mother and the distinct influence of father on this child who represents both of them
together is very real. And so and we see that across development. So when I when I think about the divine order
that seems to be very real immortality, I don't know what it looks like in eternity.
But if this is a shadow of how things are there, and our understanding that that gender is eternal, that clothed in
a spirit body meant that intelligence took on another level of privilege and
responsibility. that's linked to our eternal natures as man and woman then that tells us there is something divine
in that design and that it's the oneness that a man and woman bring creates something in the words of Elder Bednar
right that that neither one can do alone they are intended to progress together
toward eternal life she is completed in him and he is completed in her does that
mean single people are not whole people I was single a really long time. My husband and I, both of us, and I think we would both say this disciple of
Christ, this identity that President Nelson laid out for us is absolutely real and true. I become one in Christ.
But that next layer that is the divine order is a oneness in Christ as man and
woman united, the lifegiving power. And Elder Suarez would say, "It's from that
equal partnership that eternity flows." Quoting section 121. This is the way that this flows
forever and ever in that equal partnership of man and woman. So when we think about what is eternity? Well, it is man and woman united. That is the
divine order. There is no life without her. There is no life without them together.
Uh so this is your hardest question of the interview. Yeah.
Um the family proclamation does speak about that equal partnership.
It also talks about men being given the responsibility to preside, provide,
protect and women their primary role is to nurture children. We don't talk about
those two things very much because it's a culturally difficult topic.
What does that mean? And why is it in there?
Yeah. Okay. Well, I think if we just unpack why it's difficult, I think what happens to us is we just all we can draw
on is our past, right, to understand things. And so we collapse those meanings into roles quite quickly. Well,
that means he's the one earning the money. And the way people might think and she's confined to home. I Right. So
you're telling me he he provides well that means she's got to be confined to home and he has got to be right outside
in the workforce. And the way we characterize the meaning of life today that can feel like that's a trap and a loss for her, right?
So I think just appreciating we have to think bigger, right? And and I love there's a woman
who will talk about she did work with mothers who have five or more children, high fertility women, she calls them, uh Hannah's children. And it's pretty
remarkable these interviews in a culture that would say what woman on earth would have five or more children. um to look what happens to these highly educated
women who choose to have more than five children and you see identity, meaning purpose in a whole new framing is so
powerful. So, we've lost we've lost an appreciation for what life does to us.
All we can think about in our current culture is children strip us of access
to opportunity to autonomy to expression to meaning to purpose because we're very careerist in our mindset we're workst in
our mindset and so I think what the data we've talked through is when we lose track of the core meaning of relationships we lose track of happiness
and we can't do that right but then I think when you look so so I think when we look at those roles
what what we can see with men is men matter as providers.
The rate of child poverty increases from 11% for children with married parents to 49%
for children growing up outside of the relationship of their their married mother and father. Now why would poverty for children be so tightly linked to
marriage? Because men are very important providers and a world in which men are not providing is a world in which children and women are unprotected.
So that role as a provider is very important. Does it mean women can't also contribute and in our current world women will they will contribute
economically? They'll they'll want to be engaged in the broader world. Is that does it say that women can't also
provide? No. But it's saying him taking primary responsibility for that is a very powerful source of protection. It's
freeing for women because women don't actually tend to want to be the primary provider. They want to be able to
choose. They want to be able to orient their lives to their children without the burden of providing and also participate in economically productive
work without the burden of having to be the primary provider. And so I think when when men are primary providers,
when they take that seriously, it's powerful for their families. It's a benefit for their children and it's a benefit for their wives, the mothers of those children. What about presiding?
Well, this word can be tricky because we think of pre presiding as president who makes all the decisions and someone
else has to just abide by those. But that clearly can't be the meaning in the proclamation because equal partnership is right there. So that means we have to
really unpack well then what does preside mean? And one of the things I love is we can see for children that
fathers are very important in giving children a sense of boundary. They really help children understand there's
a boundary you cannot cross. There's an order to the way one should live their life. And what happens in a home, the church used to have a video where they
would show um this years ago, but they'd show a family with a dad coming in to help with family prayer. And the
analysis is how are children responding to the presence of a father or not having his presence? Do you know what
dads do? They give this beautiful sense of authority and safety. They walk in and it communicates there's going to be
order here and stability here. I am here to provide and protect and to watch over
the processes of this family. So a bishop sitting up in the front, he doesn't sit up in the front because he talks the whole time and directs
everything that goes on. He sits up in the front to ensure that what happens in that ward is safe, is helpful, is
appropriate for everyone. And in a sense, that's what dads are doing. He in presiding he's watching over to ensure
that what happens there is protected and safe and that all are able to fulfill their capacities including women. So
presiding is not obviously if this is equal partnership it's obviously not he makes the decisions and she's you know
underneath this president. That clearly can't be the case. It's something different. And that's why the church could easily have said, you know, this
is a triggering word. Why don't we just get rid of this word and not use the word preside? And I I imagine there have been those conversations, right? Like we don't want to communicate a sense that
one is over, you know, women. But they haven't taken out the word because there's something there that matters.
There's a presence, there's an authority, there's an order, there's his bringing stability to that family. And a
generation or two into the divorce revolution tells us the effect when you don't have men, caring men present in children's lives on an on ongoing basis.
And the effect really is chaos in many ways, right? less stability for those children because what a man does in
presiding is he brings ideally if he's not shrieking and yelling and out of control, right? Which is terrifying. But
a good man who's presiding is bringing a sense of order and stability, predictability, safety, and that's very important for children's development and well-being.
Yeah, presiding is sometimes or it used to be anyway, it used to be a a priesthood word also, right? It was associated with priesthood. Um, I've
always looked at it as as lead. And what I mean by that is, you know, Mormon uh juxtaposes
in Mosiah, the Book of Mosiah, he juxtaposes King Noah with with King Benjamin. Yes. It's a very powerful Yes.
They're both leaders, right? Right. But but one of them is a tyrant. Yes. And one of them is a servant.
Yes. And so that's the way I look at it, right? It's it's like, okay, yeah, I think that that men should lead. In fact, I would say that's what I usually
say about this word is that my experience and I've been around for a while in the church is that most women
actually wish Yeah. that their husband would lead more.
Yeah. [laughter] And what are they saying? That he's going to be authoritarian? That he's going to be a tyrant? That he's going to
rule over them? No, they're saying be involved. Be present. Yeah. Serve. Yes.
Provide for the family. Not just temporally, but emotionally, spiritually. Kind of like you're saying. Yes.
Um that's how I would look at it is I I think that there is a void. And that one of the problems I think in our culture right now with men is that they're getting the exact opposite message.
Yeah.
Right. which is telling them no, you can't preside or or lead because of XYZ.
Our our culture doesn't allow that. It's patriarchy. It's whatever else. And it's like, yeah, no, there is a righteous way to define this and to implement it.
Yes. And and women like you're saying desire it actually.
Yes. Yes. So I have this student um who got engaged to a woman at a a very elite school and in that elite school it was
there was very clear messaging right these women had internalized you wouldn't want a guy to open the door for you right it's it's suggesting you're
inferior all of these things okay understandable kind of wrestling there and he came this roommate of theirs he proposed to her it was an incredible
night he watched over everything he
[snorts]
provided for everything He made it as beautiful and safe and fulfilling and enriching an experience as he possibly could for her. All these women who had
once felt threatened by chivalous expression for man as a provider who would care for were
just melting. Right. It was the most beautiful thing to them. And so I think what you're saying is exactly right that that women actually
yearn for the the leadership of a man in the sense that he takes the lead in ensuring this
is safe, protected, watched over, provided for. You don't have to carry that burden. I am here and so you can
live out the beautiful expression of yourself and I am here right in our family heart of the home all of those
things right and I am here to ensure that you are cared for and that is leadership I mean it's why my my son when I asked him once so what do you
think Peter about a guy not paying for the first date and we have never talked about dating ever we've never talked about like who p I just you know I
didn't it didn't come up right and his first question was and I'm a professional mom like he he he doesn't like my husband and I both work, right?
All of that. He said, "What kind of a guy would not pay for the first date?" And he used the word provide and lead.
Those were the two words that he used, which was so interesting. And he that he intertwined them and somewhere inside of him, he felt like that's what I'd want to do.
That's what a man would want to do. He'd want to make sure she knew she was provided for, she was protected, that this was safe, that she could rely and
trust him. Right? So, there's a lot to be said for that.
That's that's a great example. Speaking of the proposal, what what what makes a man marriageable?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great that's a great question, right? Um I So, we have this issue right now. I
think when we think about it, we think she's got to have a place where she can be provided for, right? and they're
probably both working, but that she knows she can trust when I have a baby and I can't do all of those things
physically because this incredibly dependent life is dependent on me, you will be able to care for us. We can
trust that you'll be able to care for us, right?
So I think marriageable means I can trust that you will be there that you will give everything that you can to
ensure we have what we need to survive and to thrive that you will be emotionally safe meaning you won't be
threatening physically or emotionally in some way and and that's what it means right that's what marriageable means
it's a trustworthy person someone to whom I can entrust my life So what's what we've grappled with right
now is well does that mean men shouldn't get married until they can provide everything right a house and a car and
we have this very clear image through social media of what a good life looks like and does that mean he should you know he should he's not marriageable
until he has all those things and I think just the truth is we've lost track of the power of those two coming together and marriage being a
cornerstone in their lives where they build upon it where they work through poverty together and they learn how to
sacrifice and what the gifts are that come into that relationship through that process.
Yeah. You've both been through that together. You've been through it together. Yeah.
And so I think we have to be careful when we say who's marriageable, right? Mhm.
And what we're talking about is the capacity to devote one's life, to commit one's life to something higher than myself, to
sacrifice for that because I've given my life to that. And that's what we're struggling with, right? We're struggling
with the desire to commit one's life to something higher than oneself, including other people. And what we're left with
is a crisis in meaning, identity, and purpose. That's the Tyler Vanderwill out of Harvard University. Our crisis today
is one of meaning, identity, and purpose. That is born of the commitment to sacrifice one life, one's life for something higher, for something greater.
And relationships being the core of that, people who are yours to whom you've given your life. And if we don't
have that, we don't have meaning, purpose, and identity.
The fertility rate is dropping all around the world. Yes.
To me, and I've studied this for a while, I it is the biggest temporal threat in the world, I believe. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh for several reasons, but you know, first of all is just the building of people, the development of children, for example,
right? the the ability to sacrifice for an individual and give of themselves and dedicate themselves to their family. But beyond that,
45 minutesI think we we could possibly look at economic crisis. We could look at war.
We can look at calamities that the family proclamation talks about coming from the fertility rate. I think in the US we're at 1.6 right now if I if I remember correctly. Yeah.
Some places are I mean South Korea is the lowest in the world. Uh and what the tightest correlation and this
is the difficult thing in our culture right now. The tightest correlation to the fertility rate is women working.
Right. You can run a lot of different things and there are a lot of different reasons for it. Right.
Right. But the the tightest one is women working. What message are women receiving about career, motherhood, the total success of their life? Mhm.
And how does expressive individualism fit into this?
Right. Yeah. I think we've talked about this, right? What's happened is a rethinking of what what the purpose of
life is for women, right? Um and so it's a world in which we think a lot about career. It's very clear we have a what
we call a workist orientation versus a familist orientation. Derek Thompson from the Atlantic writes about that. And
the workstrioration says that meaning and purpose is derived from what I do in my career. My dad, he worked to provide.
He had 11 children. He went to work to provide for us. He didn't think about right like what does this mean for my
identity and who I am, right? We we that's dramatically shifted. Now career is very much like this is tied to my purpose and meaning as a human being.
And it's re the challenge is it's replaced relationships as the core defining feature of of purpose and meaning
identity. And so we're seeing the fallout from that which is all the challenges with loneliness and lack of meaning, lack of purpose, right? So but
47 minutesthis is the challenge Greg is around the world. So if I'm if I'm getting United Nations reports about how to improve
women's lives, right, violence against women, etc., things that we're very concerned about especially in some parts of the world. One of the primary things
we find out is her economic dependence makes it challenging can make it challenging to establish equality. So if
you're in rural India where the expectation is that he abuses you on a regular basis because that's a man how how he exhibits you know his authority
as a man as a father as a husband it's hard for her to get out of that situation when she is fully economically independent or dependent on him.
Mhm. So there can be this there's a it's sort of a two-edged sword because you
could see how economic independence helps especially in cultures where
equality is not understood to be the norm. It helps rupture those norms so
that she can establish her equality and hence expect to be treated as an equal, not to be harmed. All of that, right?
Mhm. But you can also see how what it does, right? Like you said, the two go right together. You you encourage her education and her employment and
fertility drops inherently. It seems inherent in the modern world and modern is defined by women educated working
professionally. Essentially, that's the definition. So I think it's just this very big wrestle because somehow we have to create a world where she is an equal.
She is she is protected and provided for and still an equal, not a dependent inferior.
And where both men and women are clear that their ability to raise life, to build a family together is the single greatest privilege that they can have.
It's the most meaningful, deeply connecting, purposeful life experience.
So we no one has to do that today in the modern world. And now we're really in like a free floating what will we choose? What will we choose in this
world? So isn't there a different messaging though than should that should that would go to the west as compared to other parts of the world?
Yeah. Well, we we've got to because we're falling off precipitously, right?
I mean, we're worse off than anybody in the West. It's you know, again, because those go together. I mean, like it or not, that the fertility rate goes with
right careerism for women. It's just it it's right there with it. And so my question is then what do we do? Because Yeah.
First of all, the cat's out of the bag, so to speak. We we don't go backwards on things like this. Right. Right.
Right. There there's too much of a sense of liberation. There's too much of a sense of equality. Right.
50 minutesUm and and opportunity. And you know, I want my wife I want my daughters to have all of the opportunity in the world, all
the choice that they have to make their own choices.
But if we don't do something about the fertility rate, we're all in trouble, right? Yeah.
Right. We are going to, you know, what is it? Three generations in South Korea. In three generations, they're gone. They're done.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. It's why Louise Perry, that very gifted, thoughtful, she's fantastic feminist, right?
She'll say, "This is the challenge for feminism.
Can we create a fertilityoriented feminism?" Like, and if we don't, we won't survive,
right? We don't survive. and what you have as religious people will inherit the earth because they're the ones having the children. That's what she'll
say, right? So, so we've got to find a way to and for me, Greg, I feel like this just happens in the world, right?
We shift in these directions. We swing here where children are nothing. And then you hope there's this swinging back
as we as we as we taste the meaninglessness of a life oriented entirely around the self. And and the
beautiful thing is in the church we have like a countercultural movement. We have people marrying young. We have them building their lives on marriage. We
have them having children. And so there's clearly a way to counter that culture. And I think unpackaging
unpacking what is motivating them, what is what is carrying them through this abyss right um of of no marriage and no
children world where they are holding on to that prizing that and experiencing the meaning and joy that comes from that that really can't be found anywhere
else. You can't replace that. There isn't a replacement for it.
Uh Mads Lararsson also connects the fertility rate with what he calls pair bonding
right with pair bonding saying that you know the bottom line is that people are not getting married as much that's being put off
and that's the primary reason for the decreased fertility rate you know which also has the careerism with women going right in there with that right but it's
right uh [clears throat] what does our dating scene look like and how does it improve Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the applications of, you know, whether it's Tinder or mutual or or anything else. I mean, great. There's some great success stories off of things like this and using technology as well.
But, right.
Wow. I would I would not like to be back in that market. That's for sure. It is so much tougher. I know.
And there's so much more isolation, right, between individuals.
uh going through an app is just seems like a nightmare to me. I know.
Swipe left, swipe right, and right, you know, and then you get the results of hypergamy. And so you've got a lot of men that are completely left out of the dating pool, right?
Um in fact, women are more promiscuous than men now because they will get chosen more and and men are not being chosen, right?
But it's the same group of men that are that are the ones that are, you know, dating the women, right?
Um what [clears throat] what is the answer to this? Because we it's it's we don't have the issue is bad and that's the great thing. You say we're
counterrevolutionaries here, but it's yeah, it's still an issue with Latter Day Saints, right?
In in in dating and and finding individuals, there's less of a need, as you said, right? And there's more isolation.
Right. Right.
Oh, it's so it's so interesting and hard because I'll talk to students, right? I teach a class where we talk about this and they I'll allow them to just express
what's going on with dating and why they think it's this way.
And the worst thing for me is for them to leave discouraged, right? Like it's hopeless.
Um in fact, it looks to us like one in three will never marry. I I could not imagine if someone had told me that as a
young woman like just that would have been really really hard, right?
Um and so I think what I tell them is it's a miracle to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
You have this here's an example. We see that age the development of individuals just takes longer. We age slower in a
sense today. So youth aren't getting their licenses at 16. They're not working, right? all this like elongation
of the process of development this extended adolescence and that's just very real and here come prophets of God
and they keep decreasing the age of missionary service so rather than you would think oh they'd be like oh yeah which is different time
people are growing up later let's make that a later age oh no it comes earlier and so it amaz it's just an indication
that God is fully aware of all of these issues and he is guiding
prophets of God to help us find ways to thread this needle, including the very complex dynamics around dating, around
marriage, around children, if we will listen, if we will follow, if we can heed. And so, I don't know what's going
to happen with 18-year-old girls and 18-year-old boys serving missions together with our marriage, right? I you know but that's a beautiful example of
of how prophets are countering cultural movements in very inspired ways and and so I'll tell those young people in that
class you will be given the power to sort this out what do we do with dating
we older generation didn't live it you will you will know by having lived it what do we do how do we teach this
differently how do we respond differently how do we create something different here. And so more of a feeling of empowerment instead of being victims
because the truth is we create the culture that we live in. We all participate in creating and recreating it. We're the creators of it. And so
what can we do together, right, to foster something different? And how is God guiding us in that? I think
covenants, temple, all of those things, missions, he's he's helping us figure this out as the world winds down. I
mean, I think we should expect, as President Kimell would say, like when there's no more spirits coming to Earth, the purposes of this earth are being
fulfilled. Like, we can trust he's watching over this.
Yeah, appreciate that. Well, Janet, appreciate your time on this uh and your wisdom and your research. These are such
important issues that I think we should I think we should be discussing them more often out in the open and I think we need to be preparing
you know, our kids, especially teenagers, and an awareness of these things. I'm the kind of person I I want I don't want my head in the sand on it,
this type of thing. I think that I think that the opposite is true also with the elongation of of adulthood or or the postponement of adulthood.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we should be going in the opposite direction also with in terms of making our kids aware of of situations and [music] what do you
need to look for and how do you prepare for this culture that you're moving into and what are the messages that you you need to be giving? Um, [music] anyway, I
really appreciate your time. Great stuff and I' I'd love to do this again sometime. So good to talk, Greg. Thank you.