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W. Bradford Wilcox

University of Virginia
Meetings
Publications
Food for Thought
Making Parenthood Pay: Should Washington Pay Parents to Raise Future Taxpayers? / Family Stability: Priceless Medicine for Childhood Health in the Developing World / Bradford Wilcox: “The World Family Map Gives Us Insights Into the Unique Family Strengths Found in Different Regions of the World” / Wilcox: “The middle and upper classes are divorcing less and less” / No One Way: Dividing Work and Family Around the Globe / What’s Driving Growing Inequality in the United States? / The World Family Map 2015 Report Is Now Available in Spanish / World Family Map Report Highlighted at the United Nations / What Do the “Haves” Have, That the “Have-Not’s” Have Not? / Cohabitation: “Until Life Do Us Part” / Why Are Working-Class Families Comparatively Fragile Today? / Five Myths about Fathers, Debunked / The Wealth of Nations Begins at Home / Cohabitating Couples Less Certain of Union Stability / All Great Minds Think for Themselves / Talking Left, Walking Right / Crises Put Families to the Test / Bursting the Bubble of Affluent Ignorance / Beaurocrats V. Parents: Who Knows Best for Pre-schoolers? / Public Spending Should Shift Priorities: Children First / Teens in Non-intact Families Are More Affected by Media Use

W. Bradford Wilcox is  Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, where he is also Director of the National Marriage Project, and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Professor Wilcox’s research has focused on marriage, fatherhood, and cohabitation, especially on the ways that family structure, civil society, and culture influence the quality and stability of family life in the United States and around the globe. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Slate, National Review Online, NPR, NBC’s The Today Show, and many other media outlets. He has also published articles on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In his latest work with Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage Among African Americans and Latinos (Oxford, 2016), Wilcox shines a much-needed spotlight on the lives of strong and happy minority couples. His first book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, (Chicago, 2004) examines the ways in which the religious beliefs and practices of American Protestant men influence their approach to parenting, household labor, and marriage. He is also the coauthor of Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (Columbia, 2013, with Kathleen Kovner Kline).

Wilcox consults regularly with companies such as Nestle, Procter & Gamble, and Kimberly-Clark on fertility and marriage trends in the United States.

As an undergraduate, Wilcox was a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia (’92) and later earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University, and the Brookings Institution.

Read a summary of Soft Patriarchs.

For more on his academic research, see: