Emma Watson just can’t seem to stay out of the news. Not only is the Harry Potter star in a public feud with J.K. Rowling, but now she’s waded into marriage culture commentary. On a recent podcast, she said:
I think it’s such a violence, and it’s such a cruelty on people — especially young people, I think, and especially women — to make them feel like they have no worth or like they haven’t succeeded yet in life because they haven’t forced to its culmination something that I just don’t think can or should ever be forced.
Of course, we can all agree that no one should be made to feel like a failure because of their marital status. Married people and unmarried people have equal dignity and worth. I’m sorry if anyone has made Emma Watson (or any other unmarried person) feel this way. That stinks.
But it’s not helpful for Watson to compare this social pressure to “violence.” As she should know—after serving as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador–social pressure to marry isn’t the same as force, and indeed some women are forced to marry, in cultures that don’t value women’s autonomy or basic rights.
Furthermore, a big problem in our civil discourse right now is the confusion of speech with violence. Watson shouldn’t fuel that. Social pressure might be uncomfortable or even offensive, but not violent.
Watson also commented that if she had gotten married earlier in life, “it would have been carnage” because she didn’t know herself well enough yet. She emphasized that building a lasting relationship takes time, work, maturity, and self-awareness. We can also all agree that it’s not healthy to pressure people into getting married too soon.
But advocacy for marriage in general is different from social pressure on singles. The former is needed, more now than ever. (And the latter has always been around. If anything, as American family life has become more tolerant and diverse, the pressure to marry has been decreasing.)
In any case, we should be honest with young people—most of whom say they want to get married—about the benefits of marriage and the best ways to prepare for it.
Emma Watson’s perspective that young marriage is risky or brash may sometimes be right, but research shows that in some cases (religious, non-cohabitating couples), young marriages have a lower risk of divorce. Perhaps this is because the hard work of building a lasting relationship (and growing into a mature adult) can also be done after the vows in partnership with a spouse, not just before marriage.
Marriage is a stabilizing force in society and the best way to organize mothers, fathers, and children all together in households. Kids in married households enjoy more stability, do better in school, and are much less likely to live in poverty than kids in unmarried households. Marriage has been—at least until very recently—a social norm because it confers benefits to society as a whole. It encourages pro-social behavior while facilitating the building of social capital (and wealth).
And marriage also confers benefits to individuals. Married people are happier, healthier, and—get this—less likely to be victims of violent crime, including intimate partner violence. So, the real violence is (more often) happening to people who are not married.
Acknowledging these facts isn’t meant to pressure anyone to get married. But, given that so many people have had positive experiences with marriage, they are likely to recommend it to single friends and family members. Perhaps this sometimes comes off as pressure to get married, but often it’s just well-intended encouragement toward something good.
In reality, many single people recognize the value of marriage and may even deeply desire to get married themselves. They don’t need to be sold on the concept. “It just hasn’t happened to me yet,” said Watson, in the same podcast interview. In this, she represents a large share of Millennial and Gen-Z Americans who are marrying later in life or not at all, and not necessarily as a conscious choice, but just as a result of social and cultural forces that make mating, dating, and family formation harder than they used to be. Only one in seven never-married people says they don’t want to get married. Most cite “haven’t found the right person” as the major reason.
We can work toward a pro-marriage culture without shaming single people. And I hope that single people, like Watson, can appreciate that this work isn’t “violent” or malevolent, but on the contrary, it’s done out of a desire for the greatest good for individuals and society as a whole.