Can marriage be saved?

Don’t ask me. But is that really what’s at stake as more single young men turn to radical forms of conservatism?

You can’t escape marriage. Or rather you can’t seem to escape renewed cultural anxiety about the health and appeal of the institution itself. Marriage rates have declined globally since the 1970s and it is becoming less popular for a variety of personal, political, and economic reasons.

But while a few have dug into thinking about some of the broader, more complex factors that influence culture and behaviour, others just encourage us to worry that we as a society are harming children by not getting married.

The Washington Post took a swing at making sense of marriage rates within an increasingly fraught political climate this week. The editorial board issued a warning in the form of an op-ed entitled: ‘If attitudes don’t shift, a political mismatch threatens marriage.’

The op-ed flags an increasing ideological divide growing among young, single people. That divide falls along gender and political lines. Since Trump’s election in 2016, single young women have skewed more progressive in their politics while more single young men have shifted right.

The op-ed suggests that this chasm between young men and young women poses a potential problem to the heterosexual marriage market, which affects social stability overall.

“The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate. One example is the collapse of American marriage. A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t find suitable male partners.” 

The editorial cites Trump as a marker for this shift, but it doesn’t spend any time wondering why young women may feel a progressive political identity is pivotal to their wellbeing - if not their survival - in the increasingly anti-democratic political landscape in which they find themselves. They’ve seen a proudly vocal misogynist elected to office, witnessed their reproductive rights be dialled back in sadistic ways, and continue to watch a powerful political bloc rub their hands in glee with plans for more abuses of power.

These young women should be cheered on for standing as a bulwark against misogyny, racism, corruption, and creeping authoritarianism rather than framed as getting love and relationships wrong, don’t you think?

The foundations that may undergird young women’s progressive positions are swiftly passed by, but the piece does, however, flick sympathetically at what young men may be struggling with now:  

“As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives.”

It doesn’t make a direct connection between those struggles and a rightward lean as a psychological phenomenon, but it’s not unfair to wonder if the resurgence of certain conservative ideas among some struggling young men might represent a form of dysfunction – even pathology.

It’s not just how little curiosity the piece shows about the struggles, hearts, and minds of young people in the world they live in now, but the naïve simplicity of the solution it proposes to combat them that feels…. off.

The proposed solution to political polarization, and by extension, marriage market woes, is personal compromise.

According to the piece: “This mismatch means that someone will need to compromise.”

We never get a clear answer about who that someone may be, but as one person on my Twitter feed pointed out, the op-ed makes a point of mentioning that Democrats are significantly more likely to refuse to date a person who doesn’t share their beliefs than Republicans. The implication, therefore, is that saving the stabilizing force of marriage for the world is largely a progressive young woman problem.

What’s the payoff of ‘compromise’ for young progressive women? According to the piece’s internal logic, you might win a vague shot at being less miserable than your single gal-pals.

According to the op-ed: “But, on the whole, while politically mixed couples report somewhat lower levels of satisfaction than same-party couples, they are still likely to be happier than those who remain single.”

That line ‘somewhat lower levels of satisfaction than same-party couples’ doesn’t exactly sell the sizzle of MAGA matrimony for me. Does it work for you?

It’s not a bad idea to stop and consider what this compromise might actually mean for the real lives of individual young progressive women, people who deserve good partners that share their values and go out and make the world a better place overall, and neither is it a bad idea to wonder what that kind of compromise might mean for the health and wellbeing of democracy, too.

What is the meaning of marriage in a political climate where women’s rights are vanishing as part of a conservative political agenda that has the enthusiastic support of some young men? And what does marriage to a guy who thinks your subordination is natural in the grand scheme of things in addition to that structural nightmare feel like, too?

All of the above sounds like the secret ingredients to nervous breakdown sauce for women.

So, stay progressive, ladies. Marriage doesn’t need human sacrifices to survive. You know what’s really at stake when you compromise in this climate.