Millennials And Love

This is family policy matter whose program is produced by the North Carolina family policy Council of profamily research and education organization dedicated to strengthening and preserving the family and from the studio. Here's John Rustin, president of the North Carolina family policy Council, thank you for joining us this week for family policy matters.

It is our pleasure to have Meg McDonald with us on the program is Executive Director of the TRO scoring Institute and communication director for women speak for themselves. She is also cofounder and Senior editor of I believe in love in 2011 Meg was a recipient of a full-time Robert Novak Fellowship for project titled marriage and young adults, understanding the struggle to get to do her writing has appeared in the Washington Post.

National review online.

The public discourse.

Verily, magazine and other secular and religious news outlets and working be talking today with Maggie about millennial's or young adults under 30 who are getting married, staying married and having children in fewer numbers than ever before will also talk about a very unique and important project. Meg cofounded that is helping to rebuild the marriage culture among this generation.

Meg, welcome to the program. It's great to have you with us much time glad to be right now. Well Meg as we began for the benefit of our listeners appreciate it if you would just take a moment to tell us about the chiaroscuro Institute and your mission.

Currently we have right now three years old and we are mission is to really act. Marriage and children and the mind and behavior of all people of a particularly working-class airport are young adults.

He'll really shut out with its rise as nonmarital pregnancies that non-marriage rate divorce those types of trends until are really using communications and also legal efforts to try and help bolster a stronger marriage culture for working-class and apply demographics well that is great. An extremely important mission. Without a doubt now let's talk about believe in love, which is the website you cofounded, because it really sets up our conversation about millennial's tell us if you would about believe in love. The purpose of the website and who is your target audience is a storytelling line site that for young adult I adults and I timeline as real people, real stories to be allowed or trying to do.

I believe and live and invite young adults, particularly the target audience would be working-class type oriented out who often struggle just to understand what makes love last year of marriage. They have a lot of fear of their ability to sustain a marriage because they've grown up in a lot of turmoil related to marriage and I think you tell their stories about their dating lives about their own relationships maybe about past experiences and their own family.

On the way to give voice to this demographic and also connect them to each other and give them hope. It's great. Now I know you're targeting young adults in the lower middle class.

How would you do from the lower middle class and why are you targeting really this segment of the population in particular middle class is defined on mostly most prominently it does have graduate high school but have not gotten a four-year Baptist race that I might have actually a vocational degree from a community college or trade school or an apprenticeship. They might not have any college experience they might've gone straight into the workforce.

Places like sex parties or nursing homes or retail or service industry and the reason returning with the graphic is that they demographic that's very much falling to the cracks. As far as institutional support and trust that the ports of the ports that are not, but they're not going to college and benefiting from the supports that college affords young adults and so were trying to give them a place they can connect them to institutions places like churches or psychologists. There are different now services that might help fence that is valid connect into each other and have been dealt, friendship and community.

Community development is so important now. Meg you've written previously about. I believe in love and the themes that really get to the heart of the message that you want to give to young adults about love and marriage describe if you would what those things are, and while they are particularly important for millennial's, and those within the time of the target demographic that you're seeking to reach my right hand to meet target demographic is because they are thinking.

The highest rates as nonmarital pregnancies and really struggling to get to marriage that I very much value children and I value parenting, which is something that they see is really meaningful in our life. And I would connecting the importance mom and dad being in the home for their kids even though they do they wish. Many of them didn't have that growing up and wish they would've had that so were trying to help direct them towards healthcare relationships stop 50 well in ways that they can have better relationships to themselves for their children, ideally holding off to have children until they can find marriage but we also want to give them hope that marriage and lasting lot as possible. Whether you have kids outside of marriage. You haven't had kids. Whether you grew up in a divorce home. You grew up not knowing when your parents those sorts of things.

Want to give young adults hope.

We want to give them a sense that they're not alone in this this journey and in the struggle and a sense that while it might seem insurmountable. Some of these things that it's possible and that there's people that want to support them along the way.

While clearly the research shows that millennial's or cohabiting male and also delaying marriage Meg based on your research. What are some of the reasons for this apparent reluctance among millennial's to get married do millennial's generally speaking want to be married and if so what is holding them back in your opinion, so if you look at survey data from multiple companies, has killed the federal government that does Saturday's high scores millennial stealth say 80% on stuff that lifelong marriage is an important goal of their sin. Absolutely still.

Do you want to get married, you know some of that they selected our lack of models and the fear that because their parents got married at our parents marriage wasn't successful, and for some of these young adults.

No one in their communities. Marriages were successful, except for maybe their grandparents. They just don't know if marriage even laugh anymore and if it doesn't laugh. How like while I am trying to act on.

They do have a great reverence for that. If I married I want marriage to be forever, but I don't know how to make marriage forever. There's been any other soulmate. This idea that like love is this feeling and that you know when the feelings, and then maybe enough for us to be together anymore. That has a strong presence among most millennial's, and so they miss out understanding that now. Love, love changes that yes 100 NFL butterflies but feel butterflies still are going to be in love and and that's okay. And then I also think you know, as a society, we've moved from this idea. Marriage is formative and a part of taking a step into adulthood to marriage is a Lot of Researcher Status. I Get It. You Need to First Enough Go to School and Get a Job and Have Money and Maybe Even a Home and Had a Whole Life like Bottled before You Get Married.

There's A Lot at Play, but Those Are Some of the Main Reasons That We've Seen in Our Work on the Website That You Address a Number of Issues, Including Delaying Section 2 Marriage Concerns and Problems about Cohabitation and Issues of Divorce.

What Are Some of the Other Two Uses That You Try to Address and How Do You Approach Them in a Way That Really Relates to Young Adults in the Gym Is Demographic That You Targeting That You Know to the Relates Question Which Then Jump to Another Issue Is the Storytelling Really Helps Because Either Really I Don't Have Real Experiences and so You Know, They Tend to Say Things That Have Their Friends or Their Peers That I Totally Know What You're Saying. I've Been There to or Oh That Helps Me Understand Why My Body over Here Says This All the Time.

He Must Have Someone Experienced Here Was so Great Example of This Is a Young Man Who Writes at Our Site. How Loud Concord and before He Committed till His Now Fiancé and the Mother of His Child. He Was Doing Very Seriously and Very Regularly, and When His Fiancée, Who Is His Girlfriend at the Time Learned That She Kind of Is.

I Can't Smear the Drives I Don't Do That and He Was Feeling That His Love with Her, Had Brought Back a Sense of Meaning That Made Him Not Want to Do Drugs and Sell He Got Clean and He Committed to Her and He's Written in Several Different Articles about Young the Process of Getting Clean the Struggle at Times He's Been Tempted to Go Back at Times That It's Been Hard to Conquer That Habit. And Yes Some Really Fascinating Comments from People Who Are. Thanks Hope to Have a Story Similar to Yours Someday. Thanks for Sharing, or This Really Helps Me in My Situation Now Think You and Billy Now Stories like That Because It's Real and It's Raw and It's Vulnerable on You Know Firsthand Fattest Writer Tyler Young, José. I Made a Difference and That Keeps Me Going, Because I'm Helping Someone until You Get in the Sense of Purpose and a Sense of Mission to Stay Clean but It Also Hopefully Helps Other Young Adults Realized There's Good Reasons to Yell Related to Love and Related to Dating to Stay Away from Drugs. As an Example so Topics like Yell Overcoming Job Topics like How Work Can Help Give You a Stable Life Just Even Basics like Your Some Basic Dating Tips Now Where She Going to Date or What Should You Expect on a First Date on What the Question Should Yes Those Types of Things We Cover As Well. Having Worked in the Public Policy with the Political Arena for Years That Clearly You Can Debate the Merits of Use, and No Such Things. But When You're Telling a Personal Story and We Found It so Effective When Individuals Come to the Legislature. For Example, and Give a Testimony on a Piece of Legislation and Say Look This Is Why This Is so Important Because This Is Much to Worry about This Issue.

Here Is What This Means to Me. You Really Can't Debate the Ottoman Someone Is Expressing Their Life Experience and in Doing so Provides A Lot Of Legitimacy for What They're Saying and I Think the Fact That I Believe in Love. Website Is Really a Storytelling Website Allows People to Develop Community and to Tell Their Stories and Hopefully Impact Other People.

It Would Seem That When Individuals Tell Their Stories.

Not Only Can I Have Impact on Others, but That the Storytelling Emerges, the Role the Exposure of Their Feelings and Their Experiences to Others Can Help Provide an Element of Healing for Them.

Have You Seen That Sort of Thing Happen As Is People Engage in This Community, As We Share Their Stories That It Really Leads to a Sense of Feeling of Their Own Lives.

Absolutely One of the Reasons Why We Have a Writing Therapist. Now We've Seen Writers to Start with Us in Writing. Writing at the Hearing at the Time, but What That Feeling Is Maybe Not Getting at the Depth of Their Fears at a Depth of Their Struggles and More That They Write Them like That. They Identify How It Is I Thinking about Things or How They're Feeling about Things. One Writer Can Think of. Britney Has Been Writing about since the Site Launched.

She Had Several Moments of Revelation Will Also Talk about You Know I Used To Think That Love Was the Essential Site Yelling Old Article or You Know She When We First I Writing She Was Cohabiting and the Rewriting through Thinking More Intentionally about Her Relationship She Got to a Point Where She Recently Was in a Relationship and the Guy Asked Her to Move and and She Said You Know What Now I've Done That before and It Hasn't Worked. And Unless You Mean Marriage. Now That Doesn't Work for Me and I Broke up As a Result of That, but She Turned off and She Said No, That Wasn't Probably the Love and Opportunity That Had to Think about These Things, and the Voice That I Believe in Love Gaze to Consider a Different Way. I Probably Would Have Moved in with Them Because in the past. That's What Dad and Then One More Thing I'll Say Is That You Know No One Would Deny We Live in a Very Noisy Culture Only Take Very Little Time to Stop and Think Really Think and Reflect and Young Adults Especially Who Are Always on Facebook Always on Twitter, Always Texting You Know There's Always Something That They're Communicating with Them. Say Can Spend Some Time Writing an Article about Dating about Your Fear Is Not Marriage, or about How Your Parents Marriage Has Affected Your Understanding of Marriage Know Know Very Few People in Their Life Are Asking Them These Questions and Giving Them a Forum to Really Think about Their Own Lives and Not Have a Healing Effect As Well.

That's Great. Just an Opportunity for Especially Millennial's to Come Together to Share Their Stories As You Talk about and to Have an Impact on Others. So, What an Incredible Ministry.

Meg Unfortunately Were Out-Of-Town for This Week, but I Do Want to Give You an Opportunity to Let Our Listeners Know Where They Can Go to Learn More about Our Believe in Love after Website Is Very Theater.

Remember www.ibelieveinlove.com and there is information. If you want to write fast as links to our Facebook page Knight-Ridder page if you want to follow along and you can even sign up for an email newsletter, articles emailed to you at the end of the week will not be done about like you so much for sharing your insights all millennial's in love with us and for the important work that you're doing that.

I believe in love.com and check out family problem matters. Information and analysis of the North Carolina family policy Council join us weekly discussion on policy issues affecting the family. If you have questions or comments please… 919807081 or visit our website and see family doctor award