HANNIBAL – Men play a significant role in the life and health of their families, and family life changes men for the better, according to W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project.
Wilcox, who serves as associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, is also a keynote speaker at the 2016 Worldview Conference at Hannibal-LaGrange University, April 14.
During an interview with The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler on his Thinking in Public broadcast, Wilcox emphasized the important place that men have in creating stable families and a stable society.
“Men play a crucial role in helping to civilize the next generation when they engage in their church communities and when they engage in their own families,” said Wilcox, who is also the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands.
When men engage in the church communities and in their families, “we see that their kids flower basically,” Wilcox said. “Their boys are better able to control themselves, to avoid trouble with the law, but also just to do well in high school and go onto college. Girls, likewise, are more likely to avoid becoming pregnant as a teenager and to move onto a successful marriage in adulthood.”
On the other hand, family life has a unique impact on the way men behave, Wilcox told Mohler.
“Once men get married, we can see … that men tend to work harder, they work smarter, they attend church more often, they spend more time with their kin and less time with their friends, and less time at the local bar or tavern,” Wilcox said. “So what’s happening … more concretely here is that men have basically realized that once they get married, they have to abide by certain norms of responsibility that we associate – I think rightly so – with marriage and fatherhood and family life. And men respond to these norms particularly when we give status to men for being good husbands and good fathers.
“So just to be concrete here, I have a colleague in my department who’s looked at men’s pattern of job search. And what she finds is that men who are married are much more likely not to quit the job that they currently hold unless they have a new job in hand, whereas men who are unmarried are pretty much more likely to quit their current job willy-nilly regardless of what’s waiting in the wings or not. That’s just one indication of how men who are married are more likely to act in the kind of responsible and prudent fashion that has implications both for themselves, but also for the broader society too.”
Unfortunately, however, marriage fell upon hard times as a result of the sexual revolution and then of the “cohabitation revolution,” Wilcox said. As a result of disillusionment about marriage, many people simply don’t marry. This often leads to less stable families and can put children at a greater risk.
To listen to Wilcox’s interview with Mohler, visit the following link: www.albertmohler.com/2010/11/09/soft-patriarchy-firm-realities-a-conversation-with-brad-wilcox.