How changing institutions will define relationships

Dan Cox is a senior fellow and director of the Survey Center of American Life at the nonpartisan think tank American Enterprise Institute. He researches cultural shifts in religion and youth culture, as well as loneliness, arguably the flip side of love. He sees ongoing changes in how people meet, how well their relationships work, how they are defined and how they are structured, which feels like a lot of change for something as old as humanity itself.

Matt Carmichael: The dominant institution of love, marriage, has been declining for decades. Why?

Dan Cox: There are a whole bunch of reasons why. Some that people might argue are a good thing, that women have more options in having their own careers and not needing the marriage financially. Others might argue that this decline is negative, that fewer marriages often mean fewer families, smaller families and more out-of-wedlock births. Societally, I think there’s a good reason for us to be concerned about some trends.

Carmichael: What do you see in the data?

Cox: It’s difficult to provide any statistic that captures the multitude of different opinions, feelings and experiences people have regarding relationships and marriage. We’re incredibly diverse in our relationship trajectories, our experiences and backgrounds.

Carmichael: How is the complicated discussion about gender norms playing out?

Cox: It’s complicated. In our survey, we’ve seen significant differences in how satisfied liberal women are in their relationships versus conservative men and women. Conservative men and women are similarly aligned with traditional gender roles, domestic responsibilities and how to raise children.

Carmichael: And liberals?

For liberal men versus liberal women, there are still significant gender divisions and expectations about who’s going to be doing the majority of cooking or cleaning or childcare, and whose job takes priority.

Carmichael: So, what does that mean for love?

Cox: In more conservative households there’s not as much uncertainty to navigate. That’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing lower levels of satisfaction in relationships among more liberal couples. Of course, not all liberals date and marry liberals, but increasingly we are seeing political alignment on that, too.

Carmichael: In our polling, Americans are sharply divided on the role that state or religion should have in defining a relationship.

When you’re dealing with relationships, it’s easier if you are doing it within a community. Churches and places of worship are great sources of community support for couples. So, it’s not surprising that we see that Americans who are more actively involved in their church or place of worship tend to be happier with almost every aspect of their life. 

Carmichael: As the role of the institutions that define our relationships change, will their support functions, like financial and regulatory systems, catch up?

Cox: Culturally, we’ve progressed light years from where things were in the ’50s in expectations and gender roles. But in a lot of how our institutions are functioning, we have not advanced nearly as quickly. For relationships in which both parents are working, it’s incredibly difficult to navigate. Employers are starting to realize we need to provide some flexibility. But it's slow going. Schools are probably going to be the last to change. 

Carmichael: Are the kinds of relationships we have going to change and become more fluid, too?

Cox: There’s already been a revolution around talking about open relationships. You see it among people who identify as gay and lesbian more likely than people who are straight. Yet even among people who are gay and lesbian, the vast majority are not or never have been in an open relationship. We’re culturally exploring these ideas, but they’re not finding a large audience. However, there’s a divergence. We are talking about these things, and people are getting really upset about a lot of these things. But the fact of the matter is they’re just not that widespread. 

Carmichael: Will marriage become less popular?

Cox: We might hear about all the ways that Americans are more open when it comes to sex and sexuality. But particularly for younger Americans, the desire to get married is still really strong.

Carmichael: Will artificial intelligence change our relationships?

Cox: I worry a lot about AI. People are going to find quickly that you can turn it into some kind of social outlet where you can have conversations with your AI and create a platonic relationship with [it], which is not bad in and of itself. But I worry that technology, in its effort to supplement our sociability, actually replaces it.