Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

This week's special episode features audio from a recent Manhattan Institute event on marriage, family, and societal

expectations. Rob Henderson and Melissa Kearney discuss the benefits for children of two-parent

households and the hypocrisy of elite ideals.

Rob Henderson's weekly Substack Newsletter on Human Nature Social Class and more is a must-read

and reaches tens of thousands of subscribers, and we've been pleased to feature his writing on

artificial intelligence, cancel culture,

and other matters in City Journal. His work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal,

the New York Times, and many other outlets. He's the author of the recent book,

Troubled, a memoir of foster care, family, and social class. Melissa Kearney is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the

University of Maryland. She's the director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, a research

associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings.

She's the author of The Two-Parent Privilege, How America. and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings.

She's the author of The Two-Parent Privilege,

How Americans Stop Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.

Hannah Myers, the director of the Institute's Policing and Public Safety Initiative,

moderates their conversation, and we hope you enjoy. I'm Hannah Myers, Director of our policing and public safety work here at MI, and I am so delighted to moderate tonight's conversation with Rob Henderson and Melissa Kearney, who have both written seminal books that have upended preconceived notions and contemporary attitudes surrounding marriage, family, and child outcomes.

For generations, serious analysis towards the importance of marriage and intact households

has given way to casual attitudes towards family structure and a cultural insistence on the

narratives that marriage is an outdated institution with little bearing on socioeconomic

mobility. Over a 14-year period, Gallup polling revealed a 16-point decline in those who felt

it was important for unmarried parents to marry. Other polls have revealed similar results,

...