How long have you been working at the University?\nI got here in the fall of 2002, so it's been about eight years, give or take.
I saw you went here for undergraduate school. Tell me a little about that. Was it odd to start working at a place where you went?\nNo, not at all. You know I think I had a very good experience as an undergraduate here at the University, and I think the prospect of coming back to U.Va. [appealed] both to me and to my wife, who also graduated from U.Va. You know, we were both Wahoos, and you know we were eager to jump at the chance of coming back to U.Va.
What would you classify your main focus in research and work to be?\nI would say the health of marriage is kind of my key concern. A lot of things come from that - how is marriage as an institution sort of doing in this country, how do individual couples do, how do we strengthen marriage as an institution in terms of cultural, economic and public policy changes, what predicts marital success and then how does family structure affect the well-being of children. And then I've done work before on the impact that religion has on family life. So the abiding concern is really thinking about the sources of marital success understood in terms of quality and in terms of stability.\n\nHow did you become interested in that? Was there a specific experience or event? A class that you took?\nI was raised in a single-parent home ... As I became an adolescent, and a student at the University of Virginia, I came to think more about the nature of family life and the role fathers can play in the lives of their kids and how marriage as an institution is an institution that can help men remain involved in the lives of their children. I think that was sort of the original genesis for my interest in the topic.
I know that you have written some books. What is that experience like for you? Are there any challenges you face when writing?\nIt's funny. I think, for me, every time I start a new book chapter or article, there is always writer's block. And you just have to kind of keep at it and keep, you know, hitting a particular topic from a different angle, and after a couple of paragraphs - you may scrap things and start again - but after you get, in my experience, about two pages into an op-ed or book chapter, it tends to go a bit more smoothly ... I'd say [writing is] about 80 percent persistence. I find writing to be difficult but also rewarding.\n\nWhat is the most exciting project you've ever worked on?\nThat's a good question. I think the one that I'm working on this summer is probably the most exciting. What I'm doing this summer is looking at the growing marriage gap in American life where college-educated Americans are still marrying in large numbers [and] tend to have low rates of divorce, low rates of non-marital child bearing, [while] Americans who don't have college degrees are divorcing in higher numbers ... This presents a real challenge to the kids in those families, in working-class and poor families, and it presents a challenge to our Republic because what it means is that those kids are doubly disadvantaged - both by their parents' material situation [and] by the fact that their parents haven't gotten married and often will end up breaking up, and the kids will often end up not only in a single-parent home, but also experiencing a lot of family instability, which is not good for kids.
How did you get involved in the National Marriage Project?\nThe previous directors were David Popenoe and Barbara Whitehead. David was a professor of sociology at Rutgers Universtiy, and he retired last year, so when he retired, I basically asked him if he'd be willing to have the project move from Rutgers to U.Va., and he said he'd be pleased to have that happen ... Also, I went to Princeton for my graduate training, and David lives in Princeton, and in fact, he lived around the corner from me when I was in graduate school for a good portion of my time there ... The sort of aim here is to integrate both faculty and students into the life of the National Marriage Project. Starting next year, we'll have probably four lectures at the University, and they'll be looking at things ranging from dating to this marital divide I was just talking about, to family structure and its impact on children. So the idea is to offer things and lectures that will be of interest to the broader University at that point.
What is the most exciting part about the project for you as director?\nIt allows me to do work that is directed more to a larger public audience. The reports that we do sort of speak to a broader audience, and as an academic, oftentimes you're writing for a parochial group of scholars ... We spend a lot of time in this culture focusing on education and on professional work, particularly for young adults your age, devoting many hours and courses and internships, and yet the irony is that we don't devote anything near that level of attention toward people's future family lives and their marriages. College and income are not nearly as important for predicting happiness as marital status is. Being college-educated and having above mean income, both predict happiness in life, but nearly as much as having a "very happy" marriage. The point that I'm making is simply that people don't necessarily realize that the success that they achieve in their marriage will on average be much more consequential for them and for their kids than the success that they achieve when it comes to their studies and their work.\n\nYou mentioned your wife also went to University of Virginia. With all this work and study about marriage, have you found it affecting your personal life at all?\nSure. I think the joke about the doctor who stands outside the hospital smoking a cigarette, it's certainly the case that whether you're an M.D. or a Ph.D., you may know things that you should do, but you don't always do [them] - and that's certainly true for me as a husband. But I have learned things about communication styles, conflict, the importance of commitment that have helped me in my own marriage and have given me perspective too on married life. Things for instance like - there is a big literature on the impact that stress has on a marriage and a family - and certainly if you're working on a difficult project at work you know that can be stressful ... and I can bring that into my family life in ways which aren't good.\n\nHow do you juggle being a professor, the director of the National Marriage Project and having seven kids under 10?\nI think it's about trying to keep things compartmentalized, so I try to reserve my work for 9-5 and then 8-10 during the week and dinner hour and kids' homework and get to bed is [between] them. My wife and I adopted five kids, and then my wife got pregnant with twins ... So we have seven kids and things are certainly busy in our house. Our twins are about 5-and-half months now, and our oldest son is Alexander and he is 10. Then weekends is basically the kids, too, and obviously my wife and family. So it's trying to keep everything fairly compartmentalized in terms of not letting my work bleed over into my family time.
I'm going to ask you a question that students my age get on every application - where do you see yourself in 10 years?\nI would like to do one big book on successful marriages and what are the social and cultural sources of successful marriages in America ... There hasn't been as much work done on education, income, religion, race, work-family strategies, all that kind of stuff and how it impacts marriage. I'm also doing a book on basically the international impact of increases of cohabitation on family stability. I'd like to do probably two books in the next 10 years - one of them on marital success and one on the impact that cohabitation is having on family stability around the globe.
-compiled by Jessie Wright
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