Brad Wilcox Tries to Sell Men on Marriage at Prager University - UPDATED

On the heels of my most recent post on reasons to get married, there's a new Prager University video trying to fool men into marrying. Prager U is generally a great thing, but Dennis Prager, twice divorced and in his third marriage (but at least he doesn't preach against divorce), is a frequent advocate for marriage and says men aren't really men unless they marry. (That must be news to The Pope.)

Anyway, here's the video featuring Brad Wilcox, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia...

[OK, for the life of me, I can't figure out why Blogger eats embedded YouTube videos so that they disappear. They are both services of Google so I don't know why they can't work together without this happening. I'm getting tired of reposting the same videos to this entry, so I will also include the links to view them at YouTube.]

Here's the link to the Prager University video on YouTube that may or many not still be embedded immediately below. If you follow the link, you can read the comments, which are rightfully trashing the video.



Fortunately, a transcript is provided. So here goes.

Take the case of Doug Taulbee. At age 18, Taulbee worked a minimum wage job operating a press at a factory in Indiana and lived in his parents’ basement. “I didn’t have a care in the world,” Taulbee says. “I didn’t even have any bills.”

But after marrying at 19 and having kids, Taulbee’s perspective changed: “I had to step up and think about others and start taking care of them.” Taulbee quit his factory job and joined the Army, where he made significantly more money and received housing and health care paid for by the military.

Whenever he saw a chance at promotion, he pursued it. It meant more money and benefits for himself and his family. Recently, in a bid to further boost his family’s income, he left the Army to work as a finance manager at a car dealership. He’s now pulling in six figures.

Lovely anecdote. I'd be interested in knowing if Mr. Taulbee stays married, and if not, what the terms of the divorce end up being.

1) How do we know Taulbee wouldn't have developed ambition without being married? We don't.

2) Plenty of men have ambition without being married.

But notice that he "didn't even have any bills" before marrying. So he's young and carefee. Then he got married and had bills to pay. So then he had to work more. What an endorsement!

Men who see no need to marry, or who are reluctant to marry until they make more money, could benefit from Taulbee’s discovery: Marriage has a transformative effect on the behavior, emotional health, and financial well-being of adults, especially men.

Translation: You are forced to stop doing what you want to do and you have to do what your wife says she wants you to do (but she'll probably claim later it wasn't really want she wanted you to do).

I'm certain my emotional health and my financial well-being would  be better if I hadn't married.

Men who get married work harder and more strategically, and earn more money than their single peers from similar backgrounds.

Again, men can do this without being married, and the slight increase in pay, even if attributable to marriage, doesn't make up for the fact that half of everything he earns is hers and the costs of supporting her and children. Wives make 80 percent of the spending decisions, and many of them are ones that the guy never would have had to make if unmarried and child-free.

Marriage also transforms men’s social world; they spend less time with friends and more time with family.

So if you hate your friends and want to hang out with a mother-in-law, get married!

They go to bars less and to church more.

I almost never went to bars and I regularly attended church before I married. Now that I'm married, I wish I could spend more time in bars.

In the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, men “settle down when they get married; if they fail to get married they fail to settle down.”

Plenty of men DO settle down without ever being married. Marriage has actually been very unsettling for me. I frequently am worried about things at home, I get financially stressed, too. I would be far more settled if I'd never married. I could have retired early, in about three years, if I had never married. Now I'll probably work until I die. The problem with statements like these is that they compare all unmarried men to married men, which is ridiculous. Intentionally unmarried men are not the same as losers who wish they could get a woman to marry them.

Married men work about 400 hours more per year than single men with equivalent backgrounds.

I actually work less than I would have if I hadn't married. But those men who work more are either doing it because they have to because of the extra financial burden, or because they don't want to go home because of what is waiting for them there. How appealing is that?!?

A Harvard study also found that married men were much less likely than their single peers to quit their current job unless they had another one lined up.

Yes, unmarried guys can build up a fund to keep them afloat even if they quit their job. It's much harder to do that if you're married. So married men are stuck in jobs they don't like. How appealing!!!

On average, married men earn almost 20% more than their single peers.

Bwaahahahahahahahaha!!! Yes, but how much more do they SPEND on crap that is of no benefit to them???

Why is there such a substantial marriage premium? There are at least four important reasons.

The premium falls far short of the extra expenses.

One: After marrying, men assume a new identity.

Translation: You are now her slave; you are dead to the life you enjoyed.

He found that marriage engenders an ethic of responsibility among men, as well as a newfound sense of meaning and status in the world.

Got that unmarried men? You have no ethic of responsibility and no sense of meaning. Oh, you may think you do, but you don't unless you sign a legal contract with an irrational, entitled creature.

Isn't it actually more irresponsible to make babies when you don't really have the money to raise them or the ability to be a good parent? Very, very, very few people are actually good parents and financially able to provide for a child.

Two: Married men are motivated to maximize their income.

Translation: Your wife and kids will bury you in debt unless you slave away.

This means having a different attitude toward their job.

Actually, when I was unmarried, my job came first. Now it's just to pay the bills. And I have less incentive to work harder or earn more, because I'll get very little benefit out of additional income. It will mostly go to what my wife wants.

Studies find that men increase their work hours after marrying and reduce their hours after divorcing.

And yet men do better financially after a divorce while women do worse. Sounds like an endorsement of divorce.

Three: There is evidence that employers prefer and promote men who are married.

Translation: Even where the law or company policy says that employers can't discriminate based on marital status, they do anyway. So we're supposed to play to people who are illegally or unethically discriminating? And anyone who marries thinking it will help them with their job is being idiotic - unless they're marrying the child of the owner.

Married men are often seen as more responsible and dedicated workers and are rewarded with more opportunities to advance.

Yeah, this is malarkey.

Fourth and finally, married men benefit from the advice and encouragement of their wives, who have an obvious interest in their success.

Bwaahahahahhahahahahhaha! Right, like "I don't want to have to move!" is just so encouraging, right? Wives don't want their husbands networking with mixed-genders, which is EVERYWHERE now. Wives know that if their husband earns more, then younger, hotter women will be throwing themselves at him.

The tragedy is that despite all the good news we keep learning about the benefits of marriage, the institution is in retreat. In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married. Today, it’s 49%. In 1960, the average age at which men married was 23. Today it’s 29.

What's wrong with that? People who marry in their late 20s have better odds of the marriage lasting.

The consequences of this are negative across the income spectrum, but they are especially so for those in the lower and middle classes.

Too bad those consequences aren't listed. Prager U videos are conveniently short. So let me guess what one of them is... "Men get to enjoy sex without paying for it."

Marriage is a clear path to a better life.

Not for men.

It always has been.

Things are very, very different today than most of the last 6,000 years.

And now we have plenty of data to confirm it.

Not really.

But if still you don’t believe me, just ask Doug Taulbee and millions like him.

"Hey Mr. Taulbee, can you describe your weekends and vacations?" Somehow I doubt they are as fun for him as they are for intentionally unmarried, childless men.

"Jacob Antwone" commented at YouTube:

I will get married when:

1. The draconian laws against men that exists in the family courts are removed.

2. Women stop chanting " They are strong independent people who do everything by        themselves". (then why do you need marriage?)

3. Women stop supporting an ever growing welfare state to be their sugar daddy in the guise of being "strong independent women who needs no man"

4. Women actually embrace femininity instead of treating it as some sort of disease to be avoided.

5. Men and masculinity is once again valued by society.

6. Feminism is generally recognized for what it is: A hate movement that desperately seeks to destroy the family and, create a war between men and women.

Well said.

So basically this attempt to get men to marry boils down to: 1) You'll no longer be able to do what you want to do; and 2) You might earn 20 percent more at work (but that will be far surpassed by your additional living expenses, and that's if you stay married - it doesn't even count divorce). "Be a Man. Get Married" is an especially laughable title considering how emasculating what we now call marriage is. Hell, two women can get married, so how manly can it be? And how many men get married for the very "unmanly" reasons of letting others control their lives, fearing the loss of a relationship, desperation, or being unable to manage their own lives?


See these:

Men Should Protect Themselves

Men Should Ask These Questions If They're Considering Marriage

Men: When Someone Tells You That You Should Get Married

Challenge: Give Just One Good Reason For a Man to Marry

Quiz For Men: Should You Get Married?

You also might want to do a web search on "marriage strike" and "Men Going Their Own Way" or "MGTOW".

UPDATE: Here are several response videos, some of which have some "strong language". I don't think the first one does, and it is excellent. So if you'll watch one or are wary of "language", watch this first one.

Prager U: About that marriage video....



Turd Flinging Monkey

You deserve this video : Prager U



Grizzly MGTOW

F!@#Guilt


MGTOW: Be a Service Animal. Get Married

MGTOW Response: Patrice O'Neal Responds to Prager U.'s Man-Up and Marry Argument

 "Be a Man. Get Married"? FU, PragerU!



Here's the response from "An Ear For Men".

UPDATE 2: Prager spent the first hour of his Tuesday (May 10, 2016) show reading (and mocking) Reddit comments responding to the original video, and taking calls about the subject. Although Prager has previously expressed some awareness that the family laws and courts are terrible to husbands and fathers, his stated mindset is that guys are not "real men" unless they marry, provide for a wife, and provide for and raise children. So, he focused on what he saw as a lack or work ethic among some of those commenting, those who used what I'm calling "strong language", and mocked the whole idea of MGTOW, calling the commenters lazy and self-centered, asserting they probably want government to take care of them, and said they probably aren't studying Shakespeare in their free time, implying they're wasting the time they have free.

Considering almost none of his radio show, speeches and appearances, books, or columns have anything to do with his wife or kids, Prager could just as easily do all the good he's doing through those things as an unmarried, child-free man. So why mock unmarried, child-free men?

There are many marriage-strikers who don't use vulgarities in public discourse, do work hard, are churchgoers, shun government assistance, and are quite cultured.

From the way Dennis Prager generally talks about marriage, it seems like he must be enjoying his, and, hey, good for him. I sincerely hope he is. But when he mocks men who choose to be unmarried (and child-free) and tries to convince them it is more important that they marry than do the things they want to do, it's almost as though just bubbling below the surface is a hidden bitterness or regret that can't dare be expressed, and so the adage of "misery loves company" might be at play. I hope not, but that's the vibe that sometimes comes across when some married men try to shame unmarried men into getting married.

Between the marriages that divorce and the marriages that don't but are largely miserable, happy, lasting marriages are literally in the minority these days, so saying we have to take some risks to enjoy life is like saying it's more likely than not if you go skydiving today, you'll shatter your femur, but hey, skydiving can be such a positive experience! No thanks, say more and more men. "I'm doing just fine here on the ground."

UPDATE 3: Prager had Wilcox on his "Male/Female Hour".