Brad Wilcox on the importance of fathers – Full interview Part 2 | VIEWPOINT — Transcript

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1. 0:00Christina: Well, I guess one thing I wanted to ask you is suppose someone said, "Look,
2. 0:06what's really happening here is that there are people who get married and they have a
3. 0:13stability gene and they pass that along to their kids, so what you're really seeing isn't
4. 0:17the benefit of marriage.
5. 0:18It's the benefit of a certain kind of biological inherit..."
6. 0:24What do you say to that?
7. 0:25Brad: I think that it's certainly the case that some of the findings that we've been
8. 0:28seeing with regards to family structure are really artifacts of some kind of genetic thing.
9. 0:32So if the mom had a risk for depression and then she ended up getting divorced, probably
10. 0:39because she was more likely to be depressed, and her daughter is depressed.
11. 0:43You might think that divorce causes depression when really there was some kind of genetic
12. 0:46risk that was passed from mother to daughter in that sense.
13. 0:49And that seems to be part of the story in the family structure findings.
14. 0:54But there is a lot more work being done today by people like Bob Emery at UVA and his colleagues
15. 0:59with twins.
16. 1:00And so they were able to look at adult twins where both of the twins are getting married
17. 1:05and then they track their kids and see of those adult twins who gets divorced and how
18. 1:10their kids turn out.
19. 1:11And they can figure out from that design that some of the effects that we're talking about
20. 1:15today are related to genes and some of them in fact are a consequence, it looks like based
21. 1:22upon these models, of the environmental effect of divorce on kids.
22. 1:26Christina: If you had to choose one study that you've either done or looked at that
23. 1:33would really show people that this matters and it's not just easily explained away that
24. 1:41stable families with the parents...can you cite one or...
25. 1:44Brad: I think a good paper that reviews a lot of this evidence in a very powerful way
26. 1:47is by Sara McLanahan, my mentor at Princeton and some of her colleagues.
27. 1:52It's a review piece on the causal effects of father absence for children.
28. 1:56So it looks at a variety of studies and tries to assess how much of the impact of having
29. 2:02a father absent from the home is having a causal impact on kids and how much of the
30. 2:08parent outcomes might be related to some other factors that more sophisticated models are
31. 2:14addressing.
32. 2:15So that's a good, I think, article to give to some of those a little bit skeptical about
33. 2:19all this.
34. 2:20Christina: I saw the other day after Prince died, they were doing little bios and he'd
35. 2:26been interviewed, and he told a story that his father had been a musician but he wouldn't
36. 2:34let little three-year-old, four-year-old Prince play the piano.
37. 2:38And then he left, he abandoned them, and the piano was there.
38. 2:41And the mother let him play, and apparently the reason the father wouldn't let him play
39. 2:45was he said, "You're not good enough, you can't do it."
40. 2:47So he wasn't particularly nice to him, then he abandoned him, and Prince became obsessed
41. 2:52with this piano, of course, became one of the great rock musicians of all time.
42. 2:57And I found that story so poignant because it was clear and made me want to cry as a
43. 3:02mother that he had this heartbreak.
44. 3:05He had this, I don't know, people who've been abandoned by their fathers described just
45. 3:08this empty space inside.
46. 3:10You could see that in him, but you could also see what we were talking about, that he's
47. 3:15amazing.
48. 3:16What it did is it just turned him to this superachiever.
49. 3:18That’s not normal, but it was an example of a kid how much hurt he is in his case.
50. 3:27Brad: And how some kids are...obviously Barack Obama is the child of a single mother.
51. 3:30Christina: We have Barack Obama.
52. 3:31We have Bill Clinton.
53. 3:32We have George Washington.
54. 3:33Brad: Right, so I mean, again, the point is...
55. 3:34Christina: I think Aristotle and Plato lost their fathers.
56. 3:36Brad: So it can be a springboard for some to fight harder and do better, but I'm just
57. 3:43saying on average...so we're talking about individuals but also we're talking too about
58. 3:46neighborhoods and communities and how...so the story goes much...
59. 3:50Christina: That's what I say.
60. 3:51Brad: ...much more straightforward.
61. 3:52And so, when you have communities with lots of absent fathers, the work of Raj Chetty
62. 3:59at Stanford, the economist there at Stanford, he's moved from Harvard to Stanford, suggests
63. 4:04that communities that have more single-parent families have less mobility for poor kids.
64. 4:08So poor kids growing up in the Atlanta Metro area, for instance, are less likely to get
65. 4:13to the upper class as adults, whereas kids who are being raised in Salt Lake City Metro
66. 4:18are very much more likely to go up in the upper class as adults.
67. 4:23And one reason that's the case is that they're more two-parent families in the mix in the
68. 4:26Salt Lake City Metro area than there are in the Atlanta Metro area.
69. 4:29And so, having...
70. 4:30Christina: And you're controlling for...
71. 4:31Brad: He's controlling for other factors.
72. 4:33It's not the only factor, again, but it's just one factor that he has noticed in his
73. 4:37work on these patterns of mobility for poor kids that is, I think, quite suggestive.
74. 4:43Or we can think of the work of Robert Sampson.
75. 4:47He's a Harvard sociologist and he has shown that one of the best predictors of violence
76. 4:52at the community level is the share of single-parent families in the community.
77. 4:56So again, if you're concerned about public safety, if you're concerned about lack of
78. 4:59mobility for poor kids, and you think about how the village is constituted and...it takes
79. 5:05a village to raise a child and I think that's true.
80. 5:07But the point from this evidence, I think, is that a married village is more likely to
81. 5:13help kids to rise.
82. 5:14Christina: And I worry about young men in my research on boys who may live in a fatherless
83. 5:22home and then goes to school, where all the teachers are women, and boys aren't the favored
84. 5:28gender in most schools.
85. 5:30They're there on sufferance and they like that rough-and-tumble play and that goes on
86. 5:36and the teachers and mothers are not nearly as female teachers and mothers are not nearly
87. 5:41as tolerant and understanding of it as male fathers and teachers.
88. 5:47And I just worry about boys in growing up with, it just seems, very few men.
89. 5:53Then sociologists talk about hypermasculinity, and boys who learn to show their manhood not
90. 6:03in ways which are socially productive, I mean healthy.
91. 6:10Men who evince healthy masculinity, they build things, they protect vulnerable people.
92. 6:16Hypermasculine males do just the opposite.
93. 6:19They destroy things and they prey on weaker people.
94. 6:22It appears that, for young males, having fathers, father figures, male teachers, mentors, that
95. 6:32this is critical.
96. 6:33And a lot of people understand this, and they're trying to bring that resource to boys.
97. 6:38But we live at a time where people want to deny that there are differences between males
98. 6:43and females.
99. 6:44They want to deny these phenomena, that this is going on, that there are boys at risk of
100. 6:51this pathological form of manhood.
101. 6:57And there just seems to be so much politics that prevents us from trying new things.
102. 7:06I happen to think it's going to be very hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
103. 7:11When I talk to gender scholars and they have this vision of men and women becoming interchangeable.
104. 7:18It's not going to happen.
105. 7:19You're not going to get rid of masculinity and femininity, it's here to stay, and I think
106. 7:26it's a fairytale.
107. 7:27But I also feel the way sometimes people talk about marriage, that we live in a society
108. 7:34now where divorce is the norm and a lot of people are living together before marriage
109. 7:39and it's just not clear to me that we will ever, that it's almost a fairytale.
110. 7:45However, having said that, both with the gender scholars, I say, "Okay, then do some reasonable
111. 7:50things and make sure they're not harmful because some of their ideas of making boys and girls
112. 7:56alike seem to me to be...they just go too far and it's almost like trying to reengineer
113. 8:04children, it's not going to work, but it could make them quite unhappy.
114. 8:07I don't think it's going to make people unhappy by looking for ways to strengthen marriage
115. 8:14and tell people to at least be honest about them, the risks that...
116. 8:19Brad: Exactly, right.
117. 8:21So yeah, and I think the idea is that, marriage is not going to look in 2020 like I did in
118. 8:261820, no matter what happens.
119. 8:29But the question is can we build a new marriage culture for the 21st century that acknowledges
120. 8:35the lots of change, that is aware of the fact that in most homes with married dads, dads
121. 8:41are doing much more child care, much more housework than was the case 50 years ago,
122. 8:46and that's great.
123. 8:47So, how do we create...
124. 8:48Christina: Still not enough.
125. 8:49Brad: How do we create a marriage culture...
126. 8:50Christina: That won't happen either.
127. 8:52Brad: ...where that's taken into account and where I think in particular with working class
128. 8:57and poor families, we're able to see men's contribution is not only obviously in terms
129. 9:02of the ability to take and bring money to the table, but also the way in which they
130. 9:07might be great coaches, great playmates, etc., for their kids.
131. 9:12And I think one reason why marriage is so fragile in working class and poor families
132. 9:16is that we haven't yet developed enough of the appreciation for the distinctive role
133. 9:21that dads play in lives of their kids and to recognize that, "Look, just because dad
134. 9:24may have lost his job or is having difficulty finding a job or he's only working 20 hours
135. 9:29a week right now, doesn't mean he can't play an important role in the life of the family
136. 9:33both now and 10 years down the road.
137. 9:35So I talked to an African American father, for instance, in the Atlanta area and he had
138. 9:40lost his job with a telephone company and his wife and daughter left because he was
139. 9:49no longer able to provide for them financially.
140. 9:51But I think we need to understand that he could provide in other ways to his daughter
141. 9:58practically and emotionally and to appreciate that men's role extends beyond just their
142. 10:04financial contributions to the family.
143. 10:06So that's the thing we need to build on and work on, I think for the 21st century marriage
144. 10:13model.
145. 10:14Christina: And I remember reading in, sociologist David Blankenhorn, his book on fatherlessness,
146. 10:20he said a father doesn't have to be perfect.
147. 10:24You can be an okay dad and you can watch too much football and spend Saturday, whatever,
148. 10:34watching the games and drinking beer and roughhousing with your kids.
149. 10:37You don't have to be always in touch with your feelings, and still do that role.
150. 10:44You don't have to be this...sometimes it seems like they set a standard of fatherhood and
151. 10:48most men, it's like, "I'll never do that."
152. 10:51For your kids, just being there...
153. 10:53Brad: Yeah, and being a good enough father is the idea.
154. 10:58That's something to hold onto as well.
155. 11:00Christina: Now, I want to bring up a group of scholars.
156. 11:04You've mentioned several researchers and their important findings on the need to stabilize
157. 11:11families, but there's a group, I think you've called them or others have, the family structure
158. 11:17denialists.
159. 11:19I'm thinking of Stephanie Coons and Philip Cohen at University of Maryland, and I think
160. 11:26even Vox was citing these and other scholars, looked very authoritative on, "Oh, it's silly
161. 11:34to say that single families are unstable."
162. 11:39Brad: [inaudible 00:36:19] for kids, yeah.
163. 11:43Christina: ...bad for kids.
164. 11:45And some of their arguments were interesting.
165. 11:47They pointed out that a lot of...you and your fellow researchers have found that it puts
166. 11:55kids at risk for violence and academic failure when the father is absent.
167. 12:01However, today, if we look at the Millennials, many who come from broken homes, they're allegedly,
168. 12:08as the data that I've seen, there are fewer teenage pregnancies or out of wedlock pregnancy,
169. 12:15there are fewer...well, there are fewer teenage pregnancies.
170. 12:19There are still a lot of out of wedlock pregnancies.
171. 12:22There's less violence and more kids are graduating from high school.
172. 12:27So, where's the evidence of social breakdown when the kids are all right, as the movie
173. 12:37said?
174. 12:38Brad: Right, sure, yeah.
175. 12:39Now, I think it's great point that in some important respects, in some outcomes, we're
176. 12:41doing better now than it were 20 years ago.
177. 12:44So it does show us that fatherhood and that marriage are not the only factors that affect
178. 12:49our kids.
179. 12:50I think we've seen improvements in policing in the last 30 years.
180. 12:53In some important respects, there's obviously still much to be done on that front.
181. 12:56We have seen improvements, I think, in some ways in educational sector, more kids are,
182. 13:04well...
183. 13:05Christina: And people have fewer kids.
184. 13:07Brad: And people have fewer kids, parents are more protective, there are obviously pros
185. 13:11and cons to that, but so all these wider cultural and economic shifts that I think have helped
186. 13:15many kids flourish in important respects.
187. 13:20But it's still the case that when you compare kids, whether they were born in 1970, as I
188. 13:24was, or if they were born in 2000, as other kids obviously have been born, in intact married
189. 13:32versus, say, a single-mother household, there are these gaps.
190. 13:37And these gaps continue, and the scholars that you mentioned tend to be pretty concerned
191. 13:42with inequality.
192. 13:44And I think we have to appreciate the fact that for kids who are being raised in single-parent
193. 13:49homes, they are getting unequal parental attention, unequal parental resources economically, and
194. 13:55the outcomes are unequal.
195. 13:56Christina: Yeah, this is a precious resource and it's not there for them.
196. 13:59Brad: Right.
197. 14:00The point that I would make is that kids would be doing that much better if there was more
198. 14:08stability in our families and if it wasn't so stratified.
199. 14:10So when it comes to inequality, one of the most striking things that I have seen is work
200. 14:15of political scientist, Robert Putnam's new book, Our Kids, and he has a graph basically
201. 14:19showing that the share of kids being raised in single-parent homes among less educated
202. 14:25moms is growing, growing, growing, and growing, and the share of kids in single-mother households
203. 14:30when mom was college-educated is actually declining since the mid-1990s.
204. 14:36So the point I'm making here is that what's happening in our families, vis-à-vis marriage,
205. 14:41and fatherhood, and family stability is I think playing an important role in fueling
206. 14:46this growing social and economic divide in America.
207. 14:48So again, if we're concerned about equality and reducing social and economic inequality,
208. 14:55we need to be thinking about ways to bridge this marriage divide and bridge this family
209. 14:59divide that's emerging.
210. 15:00Christina: I have to agree with you because even in my work about boys in school, what
211. 15:08I saw continuously is that there's a cohort of boys who probably would've been okay in
212. 15:18previous decades because there was a time where you could graduate from high school,
213. 15:23get a job at the local factory or something and make it into the middle class.
214. 15:28That is increasingly difficult.
215. 15:31Researchers at Harvard Graduate School of Education that said that the new passport
216. 15:36to the American Dream is education beyond high school.
217. 15:41And increasingly girls are getting it and boys are not.
218. 15:44And especially boys from poor families and especially single-parent families, they are
219. 15:51less likely than their sisters to find a place in the economy.
220. 15:56Now, in England, in Australia, and Canada, they're very worried about this cohort of
221. 16:01young men who are...they're worried about their labor force, plus the personal lives
222. 16:07of these kids.
223. 16:08And so, they're looking for ways to, I don't know that they're talking about family stability
224. 16:13but they are certainly paying attention to the education of those kids.
225. 16:16I look at them and think that it's going to influence their ability to form families.
226. 16:22It's not just that they're not going to find jobs, which is terrible, but there are going
227. 16:26to find it very hard to get married and to form families.
228. 16:31And so it seems to be we should be putting...one thing I recommend is putting more resources
229. 16:36into educating disaffected, academically disengaged young boys.
230. 16:41Brad: Right, right.
231. 16:42That's a great point.
232. 16:43I think David Autor has made this point as well.
233. 16:44He's talked with the way in which...when you make the argument that we need dads, we need
234. 16:49marriage to be stronger in working class and poor communities, many scholars in many journals
235. 16:52said, "Well, look, we may not have really great options with these guys, and what can
236. 16:57they do?"
237. 16:58And my point is, well, look, if that's where you leave things, you're basically consigning
238. 17:03a large share of the male population to this vicious cycle where the dads are never married
239. 17:08to their mothers.
240. 17:09The boy is never raised in-home with their father, and it just continues, this pattern,
241. 17:12this cycle.
242. 17:13Christina: It just amazes me that people think that was okay, "Oh, it's all right.
243. 17:16The men just aren't worth marrying."
244. 17:17Brad: So I think the challenge for us is how do we help working class and poor boys and
245. 17:25men who are not on the college track find their identities in terms of educational work?
246. 17:35And I think we could do a lot better when it comes to vocational education, for instance,
247. 17:38[inaudible 00:42:38] training.
248. 17:40Christina: That's exactly right.
249. 17:41In Australia, they did a major study of adolescents and they asked boys of all social classes,
250. 17:46but they were especially interested in disaffected, lower middle class poor boys.
251. 17:51And almost without exception, these kids said they were bored with their classes in high
252. 17:56school.
253. 17:57They just couldn't take it anymore.
254. 17:59And they said, "What will keep you in school?"
255. 18:00And they said, "Something that would help me get a job."
256. 18:03And so we now have models of excellence in vocational education.
257. 18:09It's not what voc-ed was in the '60s.
258. 18:12It was a place to place kids that people thought were academically hopeless.
259. 18:19But now these schools combined academics.
260. 18:21I visited a high school called Aviation High School in Queens, New York.
261. 18:26It's one of the most inspiring places in New York City, and it's in this gritty kind of
262. 18:30section of Queens.
263. 18:31You go in there, and the kids, they have to do well in their academic classes in order
264. 18:37to tinker with...I think they have an Cessna 411 or something out in the parking lot.
265. 18:44And to tinker with that, you have do to do well in your classes, to take these other
266. 18:47courses.
267. 18:48So they work hard and they can have academic careers, but they can have jobs in an airplane
268. 18:54mechanics and some of them go on to become pilots.
269. 18:57They draw poor and working class kids from all backgrounds across New York City, and
270. 19:04it's just such an obvious solution.
271. 19:07I just want to go back because I have a couple of more questions from these critics, the
272. 19:15family structure denialists and they say, "Well, look at Europe.
273. 19:21In Europe...here you are encouraging marriage because you say there will be all of these
274. 19:28unfortunate consequences, but in Europe, marriage, all over the world, it's increasingly less
275. 19:34popular than it once was or less common than it was once.
276. 19:37But especially in Western Europe, it's becoming the norm in France, I think, to have children
277. 19:43out of wedlock.
278. 19:44They don't appear to be suffering the social consequences.
279. 19:48So maybe you're looking in the wrong place.
280. 19:50Maybe we should be getting the same social programs they have, and that would solve the
281. 19:57problem."
282. 19:58Brad: Well, it's really the case that a general safety net can be helpful in minimizing any
283. 20:03kind of economic impacts of single parenthood, but it's important to note that even in Europe,
284. 20:08kids who are born to cohabitating parents, is often the case, particularly in Northwestern
285. 20:15Europe, are still more likely to see their parents part ways by the time they turn 12
286. 20:21compared to kids who are born to married parents.
287. 20:23This is France and Sweden and elsewhere.
288. 20:25So, what's interesting about marriage is that it's an institution and it's not a Christian
289. 20:30thing, it's a human thing.
290. 20:32So we see obviously marriage in China, in India, in Egypt, in Europe.
291. 20:38It's this thing that we've used across time and space to stabilize adult relationships,
292. 20:44then integrate typically dads in the picture on a longer-term basis.
293. 20:47And to do so with some rituals and some vows and some involvement of friends and family
294. 20:54members and entry into this new state in your life.
295. 20:57And so not surprising, whether you're in Sweden or in Saudi Arabia or in China or in Columbia
296. 21:02or in the United States or in Uruguay, you would tend to see more stability in families
297. 21:09that are formed around marriage than families that are formed around other arrangements.
298. 21:13I think that's an important.
299. 21:15Christina: Just the way you described it, so you see it as essential or a critical part
300. 21:21of the human ecosystem and throughout the...and just as we learned that we have to certainly
301. 21:29hesitate and ask questions before we just happily take all the rivers and, "Oh, we don't
302. 21:35need this system.
303. 21:36Let's change the course of rivers and..."
304. 21:38And then there's unexpected ecological destruction.
305. 21:45This can happen when human beings are too casual about dispensing with a tradition,
306. 21:52an institution.
307. 21:53And so that's how you see...
308. 21:54Brad: Yeah, it's obviously kind of a Burkean view to some extent, but then the bigger point
309. 21:58here is simply is that, yeah, there's a human ecology out there, and that when that human
310. 22:03ecology breaks down, either at the family or at the neighborhood level, as we've seen
311. 22:06in many low income communities here in United States for instance, kids pay a big price
312. 22:12for that.
313. 22:13And looks like particularly boys pay a big price when the neighborhood is dysfunctional,
314. 22:17when the families aren't being formed around two parents, etc.
315. 22:20So, there's, I think, an environmental piece to this that's important to be attentive to.
316. 22:25Christina: I have a final question that goes back to my experience at Stanford.
317. 22:29They were so unhappy when I talked about the need for fathers and family stability.
318. 22:38It occurred to me that maybe...one thing is maybe they thought I was being judgmental.
319. 22:45Maybe they heard me, although I didn't say it, but maybe they heard me saying that you
320. 22:50should have two parents and you're damaged goods if you don't.
321. 22:54Of course, I don't even believe that, but my question to you is when you teach your
322. 22:59classes and you bring up the topic of the divorce revolution and single families, single-parent
323. 23:10families, what do you do about this?
324. 23:14I'm sure you do worry about it, but how do you handle the fact that some kids are going
325. 23:16to...many of your students, these days, more than half may come from broken families, and
326. 23:24they may feel like the message is they're damage in some way or shortchanged, and people
327. 23:30don't really want to hear that.
328. 23:33It may not even be true, maybe it is in some cases and it might not be.
329. 23:36So how do we convey this information without appearing to be telling people that there's
330. 23:48something wrong with them?
331. 23:50Brad: That's a great question.
332. 23:51I think there are three things that I have experienced in the classroom that are helpful
333. 23:55in this regard.
334. 23:56The first thing is just...I've been raised by a single mother and I'm very clear about
335. 24:00sort of saying, "I'm not judging people in that context.
336. 24:05I've experienced this myself."
337. 24:08So that's helpful I think in terms of just clearing the air to some extent.
338. 24:12A second thing is to actually point out...I quiz my kids anonymously with these little
339. 24:17electronic clickers we can use in the classroom.
340. 24:19I have large classes for some of the classes that I teach at UVA, about 200 students per
341. 24:23class.
342. 24:24And so in those classes, what we find is about 66% of those students are coming from intact
343. 24:31married families.
344. 24:32Christina: Yeah, University of Virginia.
345. 24:33Brad: And so I point out to them, "Look, most kids your age in America are not coming from
346. 24:38an intact married family.
347. 24:39So you're exceptional."
348. 24:41Usually both in terms of family income but also in terms of family structure and why
349. 24:45that matters, why it is that their families structure may be one reason why they're actually
350. 24:48sitting in the classroom there at UVA.
351. 24:51I think they get that point when they think about it.
352. 24:55And then the third thing that I would stress too is this idea that, "Look, adults, we make
353. 25:00a range of decisions.
354. 25:03We can get divorced.
355. 25:05We can have a child out of the wedlock.
356. 25:06A number of things can happen, but we think about what we want for our own children.
357. 25:13Most parents don't want their kid to end up as a single parent or to end up divorced.
358. 25:19And so I think we can generally agree that most parents want the best for their kids
359. 25:26when it comes to marriage and family life.
360. 25:28And so given that, what are some things that we can do in the economic arena, in the policy
361. 25:34arena, in the cultural sphere to increase the odds that the generation coming up now
362. 25:40will be more successful in forging strong and stable marriages than was the generation
363. 25:45that came up in the '60s and '70s?
364. 25:47Christina: Wouldn't it help if the media was simply a little more positive about marriage
365. 25:51and about dads?
366. 25:52I see dads...it used to be, "Father knows best," and now it's like, "Dads are buffoons."
367. 25:57Brad: Although it's nice, some of the audiences have...
368. 25:59Christina: They're changing rules.
369. 26:00Brad: Yeah, so Dove has a great series of ads about dads I think that's both warm and
370. 26:05positive.
371. 26:06Cheerios has a great peanut butter Cheerios, which is incredible and great ad about a contemporary
372. 26:13father doing his thing and it's just really, really positive.
373. 26:15So I think that's changing a little bit, but I also think too the media could be a lot
374. 26:18more realistic about departures from the intact married family.
375. 26:24We've done this section on teen pregnancy with MTV's program, 16 and Pregnant, but then
376. 26:29to extend that insight and to layer on into the life course and how the breakdown of the
377. 26:35family...
378. 26:36Christina: Just to be honest with you.
379. 26:37Brad: Yeah, look...
380. 26:38Christina: It's not judging anybody but this is the landscape.
381. 26:40This is what we know.
382. 26:41Brad: It's more challenging.
383. 26:42Yeah, right, and that's, I think, [inaudible 00:51:42] oftentimes in the pop culture.
384. 26:46Christina: Right.
385. 26:47Well, this has been very enlightening, and thank you.
386. 26:49Brad: Thank you, Christina.