Stop Blaming Men For The Marriage Crisis

Social changes and female choice are bigger factors than guys playing video games

Charlie Kirk upset a lot of women last week. In a discussion on unmarried women preferring Democrats, he said that ladies in their 30s are past their prime and struggle to find a husband. 

This is obviously true, but impolite to say. Kirk’s statement naturally inspired outrage among liberals, as well as among conservatives. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Kirk’s opinion runs counter to the prevailing conservative narrative about the decline of marriage. Conservatives say it’s all men’s fault and we need to do more to shame males into stepping up. 

But this male-focused answer isn’t correct. It’s true that men are falling behind in society and leaving college-educated women with fewer options. But that’s not because men are refusing to put down the video games and go to trade school. Rather, it’s because of social transformations that deprioritize men and traditional masculinity. Our economy is now centered around the service and information sectors, both of which are female dominated. More women go to college and graduate school than men. Male wages are in decline and more men than women report zero dating prospects. Women, in contrast, are the big winners of our new society. Many of them now think they have infinite choice when it comes to their life and relationships. This better explains the marriage crisis than men’s love of video games.

The marriage crisis is ultimately rooted in modern America’s hyperindividualism. Young people, particularly women, get to experience an array of choices and opportunities their grandparents couldn’t dream of. This freedom proves to be hard to handle. Women aren’t known for their decision-making abilities, and thus they struggle in picking a suitable husband. But don’t expect them to give up this freedom. Many women get to live a dream life in their 20s and fulfill the promise offered by Sex and the City. This only becomes a problem when biology hits and the dates dry up. 

The backlash toward Charlie Kirk demonstrates why conservatives don’t want to offer tough advice to women. So they direct all the lectures toward men and pretend that this will solve the marriage crisis. It won’t.

That’s why we need to dismantle the preferred conservative narrative about marriage decline.

People who read my tweets should be familiar with my frequent jokes about GOOD MEN scarcity, but it is no laughing matter for conservatives. They are dead serious when they claim this as the root of America’s relationship woes. Josh Hawley and University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox are some of the leading advocates of this position.

Hawley has made several speeches and even written a book demanding young males man up. He believes we need to shame men to put down the video games and wife up all these angelic women waiting for suitors. Women are blameless here. Hawley urges men to “sacrifice” themselves and their interests for the sake of women. This is hardly an appealing message, especially when there is no expectation women give up anything to find a partner. It should be noted that the vast majority of divorces in this country are initiated by women. No conservative is telling the ladies to suck it up for the sake of family formation.

Wilcox offers a less ridiculous version of this argument. He just published a book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, that’s primarily directed to men. His columns are more focused on countering “red pill” influencers who tell young men that marriage is a trap. Wilcox, in contrast, argues marriage is great for men and they need to embrace it. The underlying assumption is that men are responsible for the decline of marriage. Guys need to stop listening to Andrew Tate, get on one knee, and propose to the beautiful young woman waiting for them to man up.

If only it were so simple. 

All of this ignores the other side in straight relationships. Conservative commentary on this issue is driven in large part by women in the conservative movement. Society encourages women to complain about their relationship troubles, and conservative females happily take advantage of this. For instance, in response to Kirk’s comments, several conservative young women complained that they and their friends aren’t getting proposals and this is all the men’s fault. Older men in Con Inc. listen to these stories like they’re hearing gut-wrenching stories from warzone refugees. It breaks their hearts what these young ladies have to go through. 

The experience of young men has zero impact on this discourse. Most guys realize that no one wants to hear about their dating complaints. To proclaim your troubles in this area makes you sound like an angry incel. The blame is assigned to the individual, not to young women. It’s completely different for women. When married dads in the conservative movement hear their sob stories, they assume the problem lies entirely with the men and there’s nothing wrong with the individual woman. This is why so many of them believe in GOOD MEN scarcity.

This can be discerned in Wilcox’s article entitled: “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?” The article correctly notes that college-educated women technically have fewer options because a smaller number of men obtain university degrees. However, none of the women profiled in the article find the men at college up to their expectations. Rather than investigating whether these women have unrealistic expectations, Wilcox determines that the core problem is that young men are raised poorly. 

It’s not like the University of Virginia sociologist is unaware of unrealistic expectations. He talks about how the “soul-mate myth”—which imagines the perfect partner is waiting out there—hinders people’s ability to commit. But he doesn’t feel like it applies to the young women on his college campus. Go figure.

Conservatives offer conflicting messages to young men and young women. Young men are told to go to trade school instead of college, stay far away from cities, wife up the first possible option, immediately start a family, give up their hobbies and dreams, and accept that their sole pursuit in life is to be a family man. This is all delivered in a hectoring tone. 

If men actually followed this terrible advice, it wouldn’t increase the marriage rate. It would just take them out of the dating pool for the women complaining about GOOD MEN scarcity. Women with college degrees prefer men from their class and area. They’re not going to venture to the hinterlands to marry a plumber. They want a guy who makes more than them. The men who follow this advice will be left competing for single moms in rural America. 

Conservatives deliver a very different message to young women. They are told to go to college, pursue their career and dreams, never settle for a less-than-perfect man, and give up nothing to become a married woman. This is not delivered in a hectoring tone. This is the same message mainstream society tells young women. That makes sense. Women in the conservative movement share the same lifestyles and aspirations as their liberal peers. They’re just more likely to be religious and desire marriage at an earlier age.

Older conservatives who believe dating can be resolved by young men getting off the apps and asking a woman on a date in person—like Josh Hawley demands—have no clue what modern courting is like. Young people have smaller social circles than in the past and don’t belong to any associations, like churches, where they could meet potential partners. The one place where they can meet single people their age is at work, and approaching a woman there can cost you your job thanks to HR rules. Many marriages in the past were the result of workplace romance. That’s now largely a thing of the past in the MeToo era. 

So men and women are stuck with dating apps. Dating apps are a double-edged sword. They’re the only way people can meet, but they also contribute to relationship chaos.

While most women will get plenty of likes and matches, only top-tier men will get this level of engagement. A large percentage of women will match with the cream of the crop because men will swipe on everything. That small fraction of men will respond to this abundance with a refusal to settle down. Due to occasional matches, a majority of women believe they can obtain a guy from this small demographic. Society tells them to not settle for anything less, and they stay single in the hopes of one day getting chad to propose. 

Attractive women in their prime (early-to-mid 20s) also have a similar level of abundance and don’t want to settle down either. Family would get in the way of their lifestyle. Their mind changes as soon as they hit 30, yet they’re now less capable of getting the man they think they deserve. The 30-something chads will eventually want to settle down, but they want a girl in her early-to-mid 20s (this reality motivates women’s rage over age gap relationships). But they’re less likely to obtain that dream girl, so they string along 30-something women who they will never propose to. 

This situation doesn’t apply to all, but it does explain why a lot of millennial women complain about the dating market. The sense of infinite choice experienced by top-tier men and a large percentage of women diminishes the willingness to commit. 

It’s unlikely you can solve the “Tinder conundrum” through government policy, even though women would like the state to force chads to marry them. But there are not enough chads to go around.

The only way America will ever push people to marry is if social norms change. In modern America, marriage and family are more about individual fulfillment than serving a higher purpose. You do this because you want to, not because it’s your duty to do so. As long as hyperindividualism reigns supreme, we will continue to have women complain about dating online. 

The Right should encourage young men to improve themselves, but conservatives engage in browbeating. There’s a reason young men prefer Andrew Tate’s message over Josh Hawley’s: the former is—for better or for worse—giving advice that is at least consistent with the real world, while the latter is shaming men for failing to live up to a delusional fantasy. The marriage discourse shouldn’t be animated by the assumption that men are the problem. It’s just a politically correct answer that satisfies the aggrieved women of the conservative movement.