You Need To Know Brad Wilcox and His New Book: "Get Married"

I have followed the work of Dr. Brad Wilcox for many years.  Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, he is a prolific researcher and writer in the area of marriage and family who can write clearly - that is to say: real people can understand his findings, observations and applications. Don't let the PhD put you off.  Instead, check out any of several short posts on the Institute for Family Studies listed below.

But First: His New Book!

Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization was released this week.  CLICK HERE for Amazon link.  I've not yet read the book, but it is on my stack, and I'll add to this post when I complete it.  

Here are three of his research findings that I have taken from his blog: Six Reasons to Get and Stay Married - CLICK HERE  Let them whet your interest.

• Nothing predicts happiness for Americans better than (a good) marriage.  Not money, education, work, or even sex.
• Boys raised apart from an intact family are more likely to go to jail than graduate from college.  By contrast, young men raised in an intact family are about 4 times more likely to graduate from college than land in jail or prison.  (This insight has PROFOUND insight and motivation for Youth Ministry and discipling/support of single-parent families. - Bill)
• Churchgoing.  Religious couples are happier, less divorce prone, and, surprisingly, even have more sex than secular couples.

Some Reviews of the Book

Christianity Today is a go-to source for me when I want thoughtful, honest and faithfully Christian perspectives on news and culture.  This review by Joseph Holmes - who is himself single - was helpful and would be a good first read.  CLICK HERE for "The Data-Backed Case for Marriage."

TheGospelCoalition.org featured a podcast conversation with Wilcox at the book's release entitled "Why Your Community Needs Healthy Marriages."  CLICK HERE for a link to their website, or search for "Gospel Coalition" wherever you get your podcasts.

Recent Brad Wilcox Posts With The Institute of Family Studies

• Why You Should Get Married - 2/14/24 - CLICK HERE

• 6 Reasons to Get and Stay Married - 2/13/24 - CLICK HERE

• The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on Marriage - 2/13/24 - CLICK HERE

• Don't Buy the Soulmate Myth - 2/12/24 - CLICK HERE

• We Can Make Chicago Safer By Prioritizing Stronger Families - 1/2/24 - CLICK HERE

• How to Make Smartphones and Apps Safer for Kids - 12/21/23 - CLICK HERE

Each one of these has insight of their own worth pondering.  Consider reading one per day and letting them sink in.

Stopping to Breathe the Air of Eternity - An Excerpt From Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

My wife Mary Lynn has been part of a group of pastor's wives meeting and talking through the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero.  She pointed out to me these opening paragraphs to the sixth chapter as a good picture of the need we are addressing in our current sermon series at Celebration-Harderwyk on Spiritual Practices.  I pass them along with recommendation of the book as well.

We live in a blizzard. And few of us have a rope.

In his book a Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer relates a story about farmers in the Midwest who would prepare for blizzards by tying a rope from the back door of their house out to the barn as a guide to ensure they would return safely home. These blizzards came quickly and fiercely and were highly dangerous.  When their full force was blowing, a farmer could not see the end of his or her hand. Many froze to death in those blizzards, disoriented by their inability to see. They wandered in circles, lost sometimes in their own backyards. If they lost their grip on the rope, it became impossible for them to find their way back home. Some froze within feet of their own front door, never realizing how close they were to safety.

To this day, in parts of Canada and the Great Plains, meteorologists counsel people that, to avoid getting lost in the blinding snow when they venture outside, they tie one end of a long rope to their house and grasp the other end firmly.

Many of us have lost our way, spiritually, in the white out of the Blizzard swirling around us. Blizzards begin when we say yes to too many things. Between demands from work and family, our lives fall somewhere between full and overflowing. We multitask, so much so that we are unaware we are doing three things at once. We admire people who are able to accomplish so much in so little time. They are our role models.

At the same time many of us are overscheduled, tense, addicted to hurry, frantic, preoccupied, fatigued, and starved for time. Cramming as much as possible into our to do lists, we battle life to make the best use of every spare minute we have.

Yet not much changes. Our productivity becomes counterproductive. We end our days exhausted from work and raising children. And then our “free time” on weekends becomes filled with more demands in an already overburdened life.

We listen to sermons and read books about slowing down and creating margin in our lives. We read about the need to rest and recharge our batteries. Our workplaces offer seminars on increased productivity through replenishing ourselves.

But we can't stop. And if we aren't busy, we feel guilty that we waste time and are not productive.

We go through the motions of doing so many things as if there is no alternative way of spending our days. It is like being addicted - only it is not to drugs or alcohol but to tasks, to work, to doing. Any sense of rhythm in our daily, weekly, and yearly lives has been swallowed up in the blizzard of our lives.

Add to this the storms and trials of life that blow into our lives unexpectedly and catch us off guard, and we wonder why so many of us are disoriented and confused.

We need a rope to lead us home.

God is offering us a rope to keep us from getting lost. This rope consistently leads us back home to him, to a place that is centered and rooted. This rope can be found in two ancient disciplines going back thousands of years - the Daily Office and Sabbath. When placed inside present-day Christianity, the Daily Office and Sabbath are groundbreaking, countercultural acts against western culture. They are powerful declarations about God, ourselves, our relationships, our beliefs, and our values.

Stopping for the Daily Office and Sabbath is not meant to add another to-do to our already busy schedules. It is the resetting of our entire lives toward a new destination- God. It is an entirely new way of being in the world.

The Daily Office and Sabbath are ropes that lead us back to God in the blizzards of life. They are anchors for living in the hurricane of demands. When done as a “want to” rather than a “have to,” they offer us a rhythm for our lives that binds us to the living God.

They are nothing short of revolutionary disciplines for Christians today.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero - Chapter 6 – pp. 139-141

CLICK HERE for Amazon Link.

Dr Leonard Sax Reviews NY Times Article on Gender Transition

I have followed pediatrician and researcher Dr. Leonard Sax for years now, and always find him informative, well resourced and helpful, often recommending him to others.  I'll do that again, as I reproduce below a major section from his email newsletter received a few days ago

The New York Times - surprise!

The New York Times has just published a major article profoundly critical of the transgender movement and of transgenderism. Pamela Paul, the journalist, builds the article around the story of young people who transitioned from female to male or from male to female as teenagers, only to realize a few years down the road that they had made a terrible mistake: “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.” But the hormones and the surgery did irreversible damage.

Ms. Paul casts a devastating light on how American doctors now push children and teens into transition, even when the children and teens themselves have reservations. She also interviews leaders in the transgender movement who are uneasy with what's happening now.

Ms. Paul debunks the notion that the failure to quickly transition a child to the other gender increases the risk of suicide. "Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?" - she correctly recognizes as emotional blackmail, with no support in the published research. (Her lengthy article includes more than 80 links to outside sources, including many scholarly peer-reviewed papers.)

Ms. Paul also interviews gay and lesbian individuals who illustrate how the transgender movement now promotes homophobia. One of the interviewees, Kasey Emerick, is a lesbian woman who was ashamed of her sexual orientation as a teenager. She met with a counselor who encouraged her to transition to the male role. At the counselor's recommendation, she began taking testosterone. Although her depression only worsened, she was encouraged to undergo bilateral mastectomy, which she did undergo at age 17. She has since detransitioned and resumed the female role, but her voice is permanently altered. People ask her when she is going to stop taking testosterone. She stopped more than one year ago.

Ms. Paul includes many links to European research showing that the United States is now an outlier. Many European countries now limit or prohibit male-to-female or female-to-male medications or surgery for children under 18. Only in the United States are such medications and surgery for children still endorsed and encouraged by all our leading professional groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association.

None of this would be unusual if it were published in The Wall Street Journal or First Things or The New Atlantis. What's remarkable is that this piece was published in The New York Times. The article has already received more than 2,100 comments and the Times has shut down further comments. Scrolling through the 100 most popular comments, I found that every comment was supportive of the article, with most expressing a sentiment of "at last! somebody sees that the emperor has no clothes."

Back in 2019, I wrote an essay criticizing the American Academy of Pediatrics for their new guidelines in which they asserted that a 5-year-old boy knows better than the boy's parents what is best for the boy. If a 5-year-old boy says that he is a girl, then the parents' duty is to transition the boy to the female role immediately, regardless. "Watchful waiting" is bigotry. If the parents hesitate, then the pediatrician should make a referral to Child Protective Services to remove the child from the parents' custody. I noted that the AAP guidelines are psychotic, utterly detached from reality, and contradict the available evidence, which I link to.

Links to posts mentioned

• Politicizing Pediatrics: How the AAP’s Transgender Guidelines Undermine Trust in Medical Authority by Leonard Sax, March 2019 - CLICK HERE

• As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. - NY Times, Pamela Paul, Feb 2, 2024  CLICK HERE

• LeonardSax.com - CLICK HERE for Dr Sax's personal website and to sign up for his email newsletter.

My Own Posts on Gender Transition

• What's A Pastor To Do?  Pastoral Care for Those Considering Gender Transition - CLICK HERE

• More Than A Question of Pronouns: Considering a Recent Lawsuit Against Rockford School District - CLICK HERE