Tariffs bring back manufacturing, jobs, and marriage and family prospects. So goes the reasoning, at least — and whatever the ultimate reality, one aspect is that it springs from a recognition of a few social trends on which the Left normally relies.
The strict marriage narrative from the Left, when the decline is admitted as a bad thing, follows along these lines: Marriage rates are down because men, who should be a courteous and personable subset, are themselves in decline. They’re “not in the labor force,” caught in the political fringe, or they’re awkward or noncommittal. All of these things combine into “the brutality of the dating market,” in the words of New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, as part of a recent panel on marriage and motherhood at the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project.
Most would argue that the brutality certainly goes both ways — women these days don’t reflect the best values, either, and are encouraged institutionally and culturally to seek happiness elsewhere. Abortion and in vitro fertilization are prime examples, as is the popularity of feminisms that have inspired social liberalism and entitlement. The sexual revolution has influenced both genders, but no one could argue that it was not primarily aimed at women’s power to assert and determine themselves. For her part, the modern woman has adopted this mindset.
Still, the fact of the matter is that women do not think that men are marriageable. Many women do, and a good number of young people marry in their early twenties. But, the anti-marriage mindset is more than societal branding: Hard as they try, even the most devoted left-wing women have the inclination for marriage. That’s part of where their justice-coated indignation comes from — these women, like some of their conservative counterparts, just cannot seem to make marriage happen. Maybe these women have made themselves blatantly unattractive, physically or philosophically, or maybe it is the product of men’s shortcomings. Maybe each of those explanations is a response to the other. Either way, women’s discontents lie with men’s marriageability more than with the institution. And so perhaps, in further expounding from Goldberg, “it is not a problem that will be solved by telling women that marriage and motherhood will make them happy.”
MIKE BRAUN SEEKS TO ROOT OUT MARRIAGE PENALTIES
All this speaks to another truth: Women aren’t going to lead the battle for an explicitly man-led institution. There’s a reason that they prefer men shape up instead of women giving in and doing it for them. And dating discourse among young people will tell you that women still aren’t going to be the ones to make the first real move. Women, as the age proves, are perfectly capable of living without marriage. Some would argue that’s a downfall of a modernized culture, and in some ways, it is. But economic disincentive makes the happiness question even more salient. To prioritize marriage in this society would be a choice towards a perceived source of happiness. Young women nowadays might be willing but ultimately are uncompelled by the option.
Then again, so are young men — it just looks more like the languishing that gives women the impression that they are unmarriageable. It is good for conservative institutions to be able to cut through normative statements about whether or not these women are correct in their assessments and act on the observable trends. In the most optimistic sense, tariffs have that at heart. Meanwhile, if the left-wing narrative says to put the marriage burden back on men, it might be the right advice for them to hear.
