The Freakonomics podcast has posted a new two-part series called, "Why Marry?" Part 1 posted last week and Part 2 was scheduled to be released yesterday. That means that both parts should be available today.
It's not surprising that I would be interested in this program. As a pastor, I officiate many weddings and do a lot of premarital counseling. And, as you would expect, do a lot of pastoral marriage counseling. Tomorrow, my wife and I will be leading a two-day marriage retreat with twenty-two couples from our church. If you, like me, are interested in understanding current trends and attitudes toward marriage in America, you should check it out.
This episode is about all the ways that marriage has changed over the last 50 years. We begin by challenging some of the myths of modern marriage. For instance: does marriage make you happier? Is divorce as common as we think? The discussion then moves on to how the institution of marriage is perceived these days, and to what degree it has outlived its original purpose.
We begin by hearing the voices of people all around the country, talking about why they got married or want to. As you might imagine, their reasoning runs from pure romance (love!) to hardcore pragmatic (a visa, a pregnancy, to conform).
Stephen Dubner spends a lot of time talking with Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution. Along with his partner/co-economist Betsey Stevenson, Wolfers has done significant research on marriage, divorce, and family. He explains one dramatic change to marriage over the past half-century — from a factory-style model of “production complementarities,” where the mister went off to work and the missus ran the household, to something very different...
LISTEN OR READ THE PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
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