Marriages will be more difficult to secure and preserve in a culture that’s blind and rebelling against God’s designs for sexuality, identity, and the meaning of happiness. But in this cultural moment, Christian marriages become more significant, countercultural, and life-giving projects. Men’s need for marriage may never have been universally acknowledged, but way back in Eden, the Creator of the universe did indicate that it is “not good” for man to be alone. 

Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice opens with the memorable words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Over 200 years later, readers still disagree over whether Austen intended the line ironically or sarcastically. But while the politics and pressures of marriage have shifted since her time, the question lingers: Do men need, or benefit from, marriage?

For years, radical feminists have argued that marriage is a prison for women. But, more recently, right-wing online influencers have been arguing that marriage is “objectively a bad deal“ for men—so risky and inconvenient that they’d be better off avoiding it entirely.

But is marriage a bad deal for men? Perhaps the greatest risk to a marriage-minded man is the possibility that the entire marital agreement falls apart in a divorce. Research indicates that women initiate nearly 70 percent of divorces in America and generally do so for superficial and transient reasons.

After the introduction of state no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, divorce rates skyrocketed. As political science professor Scott Yenor notes, the “bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.” Children, women, and men have all suffered. For children of divorce, the fallout manifests in increased poverty, suicide, depression, drug use, and crime. Women, some family law attorneys argue, actually fare worse than men financially in divorce proceedings.

But the disaffected right argues that men get the worst of it all. Indeed, when judges have discretion, they tend to favor women in custodial settlements. U.S. Census data indicates that men are the custodial parent only 20 percent of the time—a reality that poses profound harm and grief to some of the divorced fathers in question.

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