Tocqueville lecture series looks at marriage in America

A good marriage is key to long-term happiness, but marriage rates are on the decline in favor of careers, materialism and “freedom from the incumbrances of family,” according to Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at The University of Virginia.

Wilcox opened this semester’s Tocqueville Lecture Series on the topic “American Family” on Feb. 12. After a presentation, he joined Franklin Ellis, associate dean, director of the Center for Interpersonal Connections and special assistant to the president for diversity and belonging, and David Fleming, professor of politics and international affairs and a senior researcher at The Riley Institute, in discussing issues related to marriage. A video of the night is available here.

The following night Melissa Kearney, the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and Wilcox presented on marriage. Students sat at round tables and engaged in structured conversations as part of the On Discourse Initiative to help build skills for constructive discussion. A video of the second night is available here.

The two-day event was one of the best in the Tocqueville lecture series in recent memory, said Brent Nelsen, director of the Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society and the Jane Fishburne Hipp Professor of Politics and International Affairs.

Students kept streaming into Wilcox’s presentation despite a rainy night, and there was plenty of time for questions from students, Nelsen said.

The topic was relevant for students, which also contributed to the event’s success, he said. “Marriage” signaled a shift in programming for the organization, which promotes conservative perspectives in the vein of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat and philosopher who traveled the United States in the 1830s, writing his observations in “Democracy in America.”

Nelsen, who was named center director in 2023, expanded the speaker program from political theorists to “scholars and public intellectuals to talk about the questions of American society.”

“When Tocqueville was here he wrote about everything: slavery, equality, the frontier. Everything was fair game for him. So much of what he wrote is still relevant today. We’re interested in everything Tocqueville was interested in, which was everything,” Nelsen said.

College students are interested in knowing more about marriage, he said.

According to data Wilcox shared, the marriage rate in America was at 30.5 percent in 2021, down from almost 86 in 1970 and near an all-time low. But other data show “the odds of being ‘very happy’ with life increases by 545% for (people) in a good marriage.”

Wilcox said the mainstream news media has disrespected and undermined marriage with stories about young people devoted to careers or accumulating wealth. A Pew Research Center survey showed that marriage and parenthood are seen as less fulfilling than work. Marriage is for the classes, shunned and criticized by “elites.”

Wilcox wants students to consider the story of King Midas, who sought gold over the love of his family and turned his own daughter into a golden statue.

“Life is not about gold, it’s about love,” he said.

There are two more events this semester in the Tocqueville Lecture Series:

“America’s Role in the World”

• Part 1: March 25, 6:30-8 p.m., Burgiss Theater, with Sergey Radchenko from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Susan Shirk from the University of California, San Diego
• Part 2: March 26, 5-6:30 p.m. in the Watkins Room with Radchenko and Shirk

“Populism in America”

• Part 1: April 8, 6:30-8 p.m. in the Watkins Room, with Eric Kaufmann from The University of Buckingham, Jan-Werner Müller from Princeton University and Pippa Norris from Harvard University
• Part 2: April 9, 5-6:30 p.m. in Burgiss Theater with Kaufmann and Müller