Tag Archive for: nuclear family

8 Policies to Help Young People Marry and Have Babies

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

The number of babies born in the United States falls every year to new lows, imposing costs that experts warn could stretch into “quadrillions of dollars.” Now, analysts from two continents have proposed policies to help families get married and raise children — and help governments reverse the societal impact of the global demographic time bomb.

Governments should analyze how policies impact families, address inflation, lower housing costs, end the marriage penalty, make deadbeat dads support their children, and destigmatize marriage and family, say experts. The recommendations come from two reports, one in the U.S. and the second from an organization comprised of 56 nations stretching from the United States and Europe to central Asia.

“Demographic change is a defining megatrend with far-reaching implications for societies, economies, and governance structures which impact labour markets, pension systems, healthcare services, and social stability,” Gudrun Kugler, a member of Austria’s parliament and author of the transatlantic study, told The Washington Stand. “I am very concerned about the long-term consequences of an aging workforce, population decline, and the increasing burden on healthcare and pension systems, which, if left unaddressed, could undermine social stability, economic growth and even regional security.”

To arrest this trend, Kugler authored an in-depth study largely focused on the cost of depopulation, in her capacity as vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA). Meanwhile, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) produced a detailed series of policy recommendations, edited by Timothy Carney, a columnist at the Washington Examiner and senior fellow at AEI, who was joined by numerous distinguished public intellectuals.

AEI recommended:

1. Require a Family-Formation Review of New Federal Actions. Federal law already requires the government to perform an environmental impact statement analyzing how rules will impact the planet every time it proposes a new rule. The Paperwork Reduction Act tries to address the amount of time each new rule will force business owners to spend in regulatory compliance. Why not treat the American family as well as the delta smelt? “Congress should require federal agencies to examine how their actions affect family formation,” writes Carney. “Does a new regulation create a marriage penalty? Does it make homeownership more difficult? Does it discriminate against larger families?” Good policy begins by minding how government policy impacts the family unit.

2. Remove Roadblocks to Starter Homes. Young families cite the high cost of raising a family, especially the rising cost of housing, as a disincentive to have children. The government should reduce the portion of bloated home costs due to federal regulations.

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Environmental Protection Agency develop national model building codes, which states and localities use to draft their regulations. The Clean Water Act and Occupational Safety and Health Administration directly affect builders. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that the cost of regulatory compliance constitutes nearly a quarter of the cost of a single-family home,” noted Carney.

He advised the federal government to measure which regulations most inflate the cost of housing and find ways to “mitigate the added costs.”

President Donald Trump is already curbing the national regulatory burden through his January 31 executive order “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation,” which forces regulators to cut 10 rules from the federal code for every new federal rule, regulation, or guidance.

3 and 4. Reform the Child Tax Credit for inflation and incentivize work. The report contains two recommendations to improve the impact of the Child Tax Credit (CTC).

First, the government should inflation-proof the CTC. President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doubled the Child Tax Credit to $2,000 beginning in 2018. But rampant inflation under his successor, Joe Biden, reduced the credit’s real value today by $500,” or 25%, wrote Kevin Corinth. “The simple solution is to extend the TCJA while increasing the CTC to $2,500 and indexing it for inflation.”

Second, the CTC should encourage recipients to find gainful employment. The 2021 CTC “made the mistake of offering unconditional cash payments to nonworking families, which can undermine the connections among work, marriage, and family life,” wrote Brad Wilcox. “Congress should pass a CTC that requires a modest income threshold of $20,000 before the full $2,000-per-child credit kicks in.” Wilcox recommends a CTC increase 10-times as large as Corinth’s, writing, “That credit should increase to $5,000 annually for each child under age five and $3,000 for each school-age child under 18.”

5. Use the Child Support Payments to Bring Low-Income Men into the Workforce. Single women find it difficult to raise children if low-income, absentee fathers refuse to pay child support. One in eight (13%) U.S. families lacks a working father: 8% of American homes have no working parents, and mothers support 5% of all families, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Congress could adopt a work requirement for low-income men who owe child support payments” before they can receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — as it currently does for women, wrote Howard Husock. Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services should withhold federal grants to assist states with child support enforcement unless those states implement work requirements for TANF.

Furthermore, there should be penalties for men who choose to remain deadbeat dads: “[N]oncustodial parents who fail to gain employment or participate in a state employment training program should face imprisonment,” advised Hucock.

6. Reform the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rules on Subsidized Housing. HUD policy tends to increase government dependence, particularly for single parents. The average person living in public housing has been there for 10 years, according to HUD statistics. “Two-parent families with children occupy just 3 percent of subsidized housing,” wrote Husock. Congress should impose a five-year time limit for federal housing benefits, similar to that of TANF, which “would incentivize households to increase their earnings and move up and out.”

7. Schools Craft Better Cell Phone Policies. Last December, the outgoing Biden-Harris administration issued a report on cell phone usage in schools, titled “Planning Together: A Playbook for Student Personal Device Policies.” Then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona suggested states explore how cell phones and other smart devices affect learning. Christopher Scalia suggests Congress pass the Focus on Learning Act, which would mandate a national study on the impact of cellphone use on schoolchildren’s education, behavior, and overall mental health. The bill “would still help states and school districts understand, explain, and implement the best policies to overcome the challenges posed by cell phones in school,” wrote Scalia. “It’s a modest but realistic measure that respects federalism.”

8. Re-enchant marriage, motherhood, and religious faith. In her report, Kugler called for a social and religious reformation supporting marriage, child-rearing, and the religious faith that inspires and sustains family formation.

“A broad cultural transformation is needed to create an environment that supports family formation and its stability over time, child-rearing, and work-life balance,” including efforts to “restore societal prestige” for parents including “family and child-friendly TV content” and “family-friendly curricula in schools.” She asked social leaders to raise awareness about the dangers of delaying pregnancy until later in life, including “higher risks of infertility, complicated pregnancies, and increased rates of miscarriage.” Culture should aim to increase marital stability, “avoid stigmatizing stay-at-home parents,” and “facilitating adoption.”

A faith-filled environment benefits families as well, wrote Kugler. “Religion plays a significant role in family values, and research shows that people with faith adherences tend to have higher birth rates. A balanced approach that respects religious beliefs and supports family life can help create a more inclusive society. Governments must recognize the positive impact that religious institutions can have on family stability and uphold freedom of religion,” wrote Kugler.

Everyone agrees the costs of inaction are high. Unless Americans reverse the nation’s low birthrate, “the U.S. will face an existential economic crisis” which “could have an impact measured in the quadrillions of dollars,” wrote Jesús Fernández-Villaverde in The American Enterprise, AEI’s monthly publication.

“Aging populations, declining birth rates, and increasing unplanned childlessness, lead to a concerning worker-retiree dependency ratio that necessitate[s] urgent and coordinated political action. It is therefore crucial, to adopt policies that support families, parents, and having children, and to promote intergenerational solidarity,” Kugler told TWS. “At the same time, we will have to intensify urban and rural development policies that ensure adequate infrastructure and services while undergoing demographic changes.”

The West’s way of life cannot continue “without major adjustments,” her report concluded.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New Trump Admin Policies Promote Marriage, Having Kids

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

In a clear contrast from the previous administration, the Trump administration is signaling that they are working to implement policies that support marriage and families and encourage couples to have children.

This week, Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy issued a memo announcing that the federal agency would “prioritize projects and goals” that “direct funding to local opportunity zones” and that “mitigate the unique impacts of DOT programs, policies, and activities on families and family-specific difficulties, such as the accessibility of transportation to families with young children, and give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

Brad Wilcox, a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and sociology professor at the University of Virginia, called the new policy “a very big deal,” writing that it “represents a creative move by one cabinet secretary in the Trump administration to take family policy in a new administrative direction — to boost the fortunes of the family not just through new laws but also new regulations, in an age when marriage and fertility rates in America have hit record lows.”

Wilcox went on to observe that the move “is likely to reorient transportation dollars to lower-density communities where there are more single-family homes, family life is often more affordable, and family formation is higher. So, more money for highways, and less for subways and light rail. This suggests that suburbs, exurbs, towns and rural communities where families with kids are more common are more likely to benefit from this Trump administration move.”

The DOT policy will likely be just the beginning of the family-focused policies that the Trump administration will attempt to implement. On the campaign trail last year, President Trump signaled that he would pursue the “maximum” for the child tax credit, which his first administration doubled to $2,000.

Vice President J.D. Vance has also emphasized that the Trump administration will prioritize expanding the child tax credit as well as other family-friendly policies, as he described during an interview on the campaign trail last August:

“[W]hat President Trump and I want to do on family policy is make it easier for families to start in the first place. We want to bring down housing costs so that if you have a baby, there’s actually a place to raise that baby. [We] want to increase and expand the child tax credit. We want to make it easier for moms and dads to not be shocked by these surprise medical bills when they go to an out-of-network provider. We’re working on all this stuff, and I think that’s ultimately how we turn down the temperature a little bit, is to make it easier to choose life in the first place. Because when you talk to women, you talk to moms and dads, a lot of times they feel like, if you have a pregnancy, especially an unexpected pregnancy, there just aren’t options. We want to provide more options so that people are raising families in a thriving and happy way in this country.”

Wilcox believes that affordable housing should indeed be high on the new administration’s to-do list. “Legislatively, the new administration should work with leaders in the House and Senate to get some version of Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s HOUSES Act (Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act) passed, which would lead to the construction of more than 2 million homes by turning over existing federal land to development,” he argued.

In addition, he contended that “the Trump team could take regulatory actions at the Department of the Interior, HUD and the Department of Agriculture to eliminate regulations that make building homes more expensive and possibly even turn over public lands to development.”

Compared to Trump’s first administration, “there are growing signs the second Trump administration will move much more aggressively to make America more family friendly,” Wilcox remarked.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Finally! Family-friendly public policy for all Americans on the way

Living in the World, Not of It: The Balance of Finding Unity While Standing Firm in Truth

Reflecting on an NFL Season of Players Boldly Sharing Their Faith

Trump Creates Federal ‘Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

How Do We Lower Crime, Poverty, and Substance Abuse? Bring Back Two-Parent Families.

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

The 2024 election revealed that an increasing number of Americans realize that the woke, DEI, transgender, Marxist policies pushed onto the country by the Biden administration and Democrats over the last four years are destroying our nation. We want to return to common-sense policies that will end illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, lower homelessness and crime, and enable families to afford food, gas, and housing again.

Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm recently talked on the “Outstanding” podcast about how Americans can achieve these goals with founder and president of TakeCharge, Kendall Qualls. TakeCharge is an organization committed to supporting the notion that the promise of America works for everyone regardless of race or social status. They advocate for faith-based education.

Get Back to the Roots of Faith, Family, and Education

Qualls says that the 2024 election results give us a political reprieve, but that the real onus is on us as citizens. Being American citizens requires active participation — especially from the church. He is calling on the church to wake up, saying, “I think for the last 30 to 40 years, we’ve been asleep at the wheel.”

Qualls knows the importance of faith and family first-hand, explaining, “Having grown up in a divorced family, a broken family,” he wanted “something different.” He didn’t know what that was, but, Qualls reiterated, “I just wanted something different. I had to take ownership myself. I had to take charge. And that’s the essence of our organization. And it is helping our … culture, especially in the black community, get back to the roots of faith, family, and education. That’s who the culture was before we had ‘help’ from the government.”

Men and Women, Take Charge

Qualls shared alarming data that “even in the worst of times in the black community in the history of our country … when I was five years old, 80% of the black community’s children were born in two-parent families. … Today, it’s approximately 80% fatherless homes that those kids are born in.” Sadly, fatherlessness is expanding in the Hispanic and white communities as well. These are not children in divorced homes — they never had married parents to begin with.

According to TakeCharge’s website, fatherless kids comprise 75% of children in substance abuse centers, 71% of high school dropouts, 90% of homeless and runaway children, 75% of rapists, and 70% of youth in juvenile detention centers.

In fact, the United States has the highest rate of children living in single-parent households among any country in the world. As Jack Brewer and others are pointing out, almost one out of every four children in the United States live in single-parent homes. This is the highest percentage of any country. The world average is just 7%. In America, nearly 24 million children live without their biological fathers in the home.

Qualls described a study in 2004 that ought to be shared all over the country. He said it “showed that even with economic disparities, when black and Hispanic kids are in two-parent families and there is a faith … component to that family, the academic disparities just disappear. … [T]hey graduate, they perform at parity of their peers as regular Americans because the formula works. … They’ve buried this data for literally years because they don’t want to promote the traditional nuclear family.” He went on to say, “Marriage rates within the black community and Hispanic community lowers poverty literally by 80%.”

Churches, Take Charge

“We don’t have a systemic racism problem, we have the fatherless home problem,” Qualls insisted. Thankfully, black communities and churches are heeding that warning, and more and more are waking up to just how devastating the consequences of fatherlessness is. Qualls explained:

“Look, my parents lived through the Jim Crow South. They would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in. And what I share when I go into the black community … is evidence. … Everything we’ve done [has] to be evidence-based, peer-reviewed journals. … Our prisons are full of young men [who] would love to have had a father growing up.

And when I … talk to women in our community, [I say], ‘God did not intend for you to raise children alone.’ They all nod their head up and down. They don’t know where to go [or] what to do next. Instead of the church embracing the whole social justice narrative, they said, ‘Yes, we do have disparities because we’re not living the way we intended to live. This is not who we are. … We have ignored the strength of the traditional nuclear family.’”

TakeCharge has an army of Christian black men and women who are going into churches across the country to share the message about the necessity of waiting to have children until marriage. They also offer a Fatherhood Impact Award, recognizing fathers in front of their church congregation on Father’s Day with a TakeCharge representative and the senior pastor awarding them certificates, prize money, a copy of their book, “The Man Code,” and featuring them in their local newspaper.

Schools, Take Charge

Another way that TakeCharge is helping to lower poverty in communities is by equipping churches to start their own schools through the Washington Academy. Qualls explained, “We have an arm of … generous benefactors … that are helping us to fund this. … We are going to churches and we’re leasing out their space that’s relatively empty or low-occupied during the week for these schools. … Our schools are called ‘Washington Academy.’ We named it after George Washington and Booker T. Washington.”

Washington Academy offers an affordable Christian classical curriculum with high standards. Their mission is to create a learning environment where faith and academics work hand-in-hand, laying a strong foundation for lifelong success. They have their own content and also partner with Hillsdale Academy and PragerU.

Thankfully, the Washington Academy is in high demand. Qualls is happy to report that “more people, more churches … are wanting to open schools than we have the resources for. To be honest with you, all of the praise to the Lord, if I could open them … today, we probably would have 20 churches … if I had the funding for it.” Churches in South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Nebraska, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona have all reached out, wanting to start a Washington Academy.

Pastors and Churches, Your Mission Field Is the Schools in Your Backyard

Qualls closed his discussion with Backholm by calling on pastors to lead their communities, saying, “You know, we need our pastors to step up to the plate. I mean … it’s not going to be solved only by politics. I think we got a reprieve from a political standpoint right now. But we need Christian Bible-centered pastors. This is a calling upon the church from a mission standpoint. … If you think you’ve got missions that are overseas, we’ve got it right here in our country and in our backyards, in our public schools. And that’s what we need to go into. Seminaries need to get on board with this too.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED ARTICLE: As More People Question Progressivism, Christians Should Be Stirred to Greater Evangelism

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Is Most Important to J.D. Vance, According to Usha Vance?

/in , , , , , , , /by

For those who care deeply about faith, family, and freedom, it’s important to know where presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates stand on public policies that particularly impact families — such as the child tax credit, parental rights, school choice, religious freedom, and the sanctity of human life.

Usha Vance, wife of Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), has brought attention in recent weeks to the fact that family is of utmost importance to her husband. In her moving speech before the delegates at the Republican National Convention in July, Vance described her husband as the most determined person she knows “with one overriding ambition: to become a husband and a father and to build the kind of tight-knit family that he had longed for as a child.” She explained, “His goals in this new role are the same that he has pursued for our family — to keep people safe, to create opportunities to build a better life, and to solve problems with an open mind.”

Vance and his wife first gained national attention from his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was released in 2016 and became a New York Times bestseller. In 2020, it became a movie which has received renewed attention on Netflix since former President Trump chose Vance to be his running mate. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance writes about his family’s struggle with poverty, family violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse.

In an interview with Fox & Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt this week, Usha Vance said about her husband, “There is nothing that he cares about more than being there for his kids. He wakes up after a really late night of travel … at 6 a.m. to make sure that they have an elaborate breakfast the next day. He is just determined to be there for them.” Vance went on to say that her husband is thankful for role models such as his grandmother, aunt, and his uncle who currently lives with them now. Usha herself grew up in a loving family with both of her parents and her sister. She said their family means everything to them and keeps them well-grounded.

Usha told Earhardt that what her husband “really really cares about” is “the people he grew up around. There are a lot of people that just haven’t had the opportunity to wake up every day and know that their kids are going to have a better life than they had themselves, and I just think that J.D. is not afraid to push the boundaries and to shake things up in the way that will allow more people to wake up … to know that they’re giving their kids a better life and that it’s possible.”

When Earhardt asked Vance about her husband’s controversial words that he used in a 2021 interview, referring to some liberal policymakers as “childless cat ladies,” Usha said she wished people would go back and take a look at the context in which he used those words. She explained, “What he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder. And we should be asking ourselves, ‘Why is that true? What is it about our leadership and the way that they think about the world that makes it so hard sometimes for parents?’ And that’s the conversation that I really think we should have, and I understand why he was saying that.”

Earhardt asked, “What do you say to the women who were offended or were hurt by that?

Usha replied, “I think I would say, first of all, that J.D. absolutely at the time and today would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family who really was struggling with that. He made that clear at the time. He has made that clear today. And we have lots of friends who have been in that position. It is challenging and never ever anything that anyone would want to mock or make fun of. I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families and many of those reasons are very good. I think what I would say is, let’s try to look at the real conversation he is trying to have and engage with it and understand for those of us who do have families, for the many of us who want to have families and for whom it’s really hard, what can we do to make it better? What can we do to make it easier to live in 2024?”

Earhardt then asked Vance to explain the importance of family and society to her husband. Usha answered, “I think it comes from his background. It comes from the fact that he knows that he would not be anywhere near where he is today if he hadn’t had family members looking out for him every stretch of the way. I think it comes from seeing my family and knowing that the stability and calm that I provide in our family life comes from all of the support that I had, just the faith that things would be okay because I had people behind me. I think that J.D. needs family to thrive.”

In a speech in Atlanta recently, the Ohio senator highlighted some of the family-friendly policies he cares so deeply about — which Democrats in Congress and the White House vehemently oppose. He pointed out, “Barack Obama said we cling to God and guns; remember that Hillary Clinton called us ‘deplorables’; and now Kamala Harris says we’re ‘weird.’ Well, Kamala, I’m glad you brought that up. Let’s talk about some things that are weird. We think it’s weird that Democrats want to put sexually explicit books in toddlers’ libraries. We think it’s weird that the far Left wants to allow biological males to beat the living crap out of women in boxing, and we think it’s weird for a presidential candidate to bail convicted rapists and murderers out of prison, and that’s what Kamala Harris did.”

To learn how the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have hurt families, check out FRC Action’s Biden-Harris Historical Record and Biden Administration Actions Addressing Life, Family, and Religious Freedom and compare them to the previous Trump Administration’s Accomplishments.

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED VIDEO: MUST WATCH: Butler Police officer on Body Cam video before Trump assassination attempt

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: GOP Voters Seek Strong Party Platform on Life, Family, Religious Freedom

/in , , , , , , , , /by

As Republicans converge upon Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week to work out their party platform as part of the lead-up to the GOP’s national convention, it’s clear that the big question for delegates will be the issues. In recent days, some party officials have hinted at “paring down” the GOP platform, causing many to wonder which issues will be left on the table.

A new poll released today shows that the issues of life, the family, and religious liberty are still at the forefront of GOP voters’ minds. The survey, conducted by WPA Opinion Research, showed continued concern about these issues, which have been core to the Republican platforms for decades.

WPA put this question to 1,000 likely voters: “Leading up to 2024 the Republican Party Platform has included strong positions on unborn human life, strengthening the family, and religious freedom. Would these issues impact your vote this fall a lot, just some, not too much, or not at all?”

The poll found 62% of Republican voters said that the party platform positions on these issues would impact their vote (37% said it would impact it “a lot,” and 25% said it would impact it “just some”).

On the issue of life, the survey showed that 66% of GOP voters think that Republicans should keep (32%) or strengthen (34%) the party’s current platform position on the protection of unborn life. The 2016 Republican Platform contains a substantial statement on the life issue, including calling for a constitutional amendment protecting unborn life, and both federal and state protections for the unborn.

Regarding the issue of families and religious freedom, GOP voters likewise were not backing down. Of the likely Republican voters, 74% said that the party should either keep the current positions (23%) or adopt a stronger position (51%).

The polling was commissioned by FRC Action, which earlier this week launched its Platform Integrity Project to influence the platform committee to keep or strengthen its conservative planks. FRC Action Chairman Tony Perkins, who will also be serving as a delegate from Louisiana to the Republican Platform Committee, made these comments about the polling:

“This survey demonstrates a bold, clearly articulated platform that continues to embrace life, promotes the family, and defends religious freedom matters to voters.

“The platform not only gives insight to voters, it gives direction to Republican elected officials. According to research by Dr. Lee Payne, the parties follow their platforms. Between 1980 and 2004, Republican lawmakers followed their platform 82 percent of the time.

“As Ronald Reagan noted, ‘There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read, and it doesn’t very often amount to much.’ But he said ‘a banner of bold unmistakable colors with no pale pastels’ would reveal the difference between Republicans and the other party.

“America is in an unprecedented place of moral and cultural confusion and is in dire need of leadership and moral clarity. The Republican Party must once again communicate a clear and hopeful contrast between the parties by painting a message for voters on the foundational issues — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not in pale pastels but in bright, bold colors.”

The Republican Platform Committee will begin meeting Monday, July 8 in Milwaukee.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Abortion Groups Ramp Up Spending ahead of Elections – But So Do Pro-Life Groups

EDITOS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Black Americans Are Highlighting the Fatherless Epidemic. 2024 Candidates Should Too.

/in , , , , , , , /by

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

“Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL — missing from too many lives and too many homes.” This was a statement by a presidential candidate. Was it former Vice President Mike Pence, who made this declaration? Senator Tim Scott? Vivek Ramaswamy? No, it actually wasn’t said during the recent Republican presidential debate. It was said in 2008 by then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Only 15 years ago, there was wide-held, bipartisan agreement that fathers were important for children to thrive in society. Sadly, you will find no such statement in the Democratic platform today. Instead, it is silent on marriage and family as the foundation of society; it fights for the radical LGBTQ agenda (which often intentionally leaves out fathers through its push for same-sex marriages), and it opposes school choice, including vouchers that enable parents to be able to take their kids out of failing public schools and allow them to attend private schools.

Conversely, the Republican platform fully supports natural marriage, nuclear families, and abstinence until marriage, recognizes that “[p]arents,” not the government, “are a child’s first and foremost educators,” and supports homeschooling, private schools, vouchers, and tuition tax credits.

During the Republican presidential debate on August 23, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said:

“The word ‘privilege’ gets used a lot. Well, you know what? I did have the ultimate privilege of two parents in the house with a focus on educational achievement, and I want every kid to enjoy that. So part of the problem is we also have a federal government that pays single women more not to have a man in the house than to have a man in the house — contributing to an epidemic of fatherlessness — and I think that goes hand in glove with the education crisis as well, because we have to remember, education starts with the family, and the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”

Thankfully, as a result of Ramaswamy’s passionate and well-received speech, Fox News featured at least two segments regarding the importance of nuclear families and fatherhood. On the August 29 segment of “Special Report with Bret Baier,” reporter William La Jeunesse interviewed a young mother who talked about how difficult it was for her to not have her father when she was growing up — wishing she had more stability. In contrast, her husband grew up in a traditional family and said that his father gave him and his siblings a lot of confidence. He went on to say that there is a big difference between his friends who were raised by their fathers and those who were not.

The “Special Report” segment revealed that in 1960, 5% of babies in the United States were born out of wedlock, whereas today about 40% of babies are born out-of-wedlock. Additionally, in the United States almost 30% of children are raised by a single parent. Worldwide, only 7% of children are raised by a single parent. Fatherlessness directly increases a child’s likelihood of living in poverty, having a teen pregnancy, abusing drugs or alcohol, dropping out of school, and going to prison.

Tragically, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, fatherlessness affects black children much more than any other race: half of all black children are being raised by a single parent — 46% percent of them by their mom and 4.5% by their dad. On her August 29 show, Laura Ingraham interviewed Madeline Brame, an African American who had been a loyal Democrat for 40 years because she says that was how she was told she was supposed to vote because she is black. But she changed her party affiliation to Republican in 2020 because she has conservative values: God, nuclear family, and country.

Project 21’s Horace Cooper, author of “How Biden’s Policies Harm Blacks,” was the second guest on August 29’s “The Ingraham Angle.” He observed that President Biden’s policies, including Bidenomics, put African Americans back in chains and compares the Big Government to a deadbeat dad. He says the best advice he can give is:

“Don’t partner with a deadbeat dad (Uncle Sam/Big Government/the check). This deadbeat dad does not care about your child. In fact, this deadbeat dad will push you to abort your child. This deadbeat dad is going to see that you live in the most corrupt and dangerous community possible. This deadbeat dad doesn’t put your interests first, it puts the Green Agenda first, the LGBTQ agenda first. Black Americans have found, under Biden, that their issues are going to the back of the political bus, and more and more black Americans realize the deadbeat dad is not the answer for them.”

More and more African Americans disapprove of Biden’s policies. A May ABC News-Washington Post poll found that just 52% of black respondents approved of Biden’s performance as president, down from 82% when he took office in 2021. In addition, “27% of black voters said they would probably or definitely vote for former President Donald Trump or lean toward him, over double his support in 2020. Trump won just 12% of the black vote in the last presidential election.”

As an increasing number of Americans — across racial lines — see the disastrous effects that Big Government/socialist/Marxist policies have on the country — especially families — it is crucial for Republican candidates in the coming year to speak as much as possible about the importance of fathers and the nuclear family which is, as Ramaswamy said, “the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED ARTICLE: A Strange 2024 Election Is Taking Shape

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Democrat Calls Advocacy for Natural Family ‘Dangerous and Un-American’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A Democratic politician has received massive backlash after she called the scientifically attested belief that children suffer less abuse in nuclear families “dangerous and un-American.”

“Extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad. What a dangerous and un-American belief,” tweeted State Representative Erin Healy (D) on Monday.

She had apparently been triggered by testimony offered on behalf of the natural family by the South Dakota family policy council. “In committee we made the claim that the home of a married mother and father is statistically the safest place for a child, and we stand by it 100%. We know that a strong, nuclear family is the safest, most beneficial place for a child to be. Research confirms our claim,” Family Heritage Alliance Director Norman Woods told The Washington Stand.

Enjoying news and commentary from a biblical worldview?

Stand with The Washington Stand by partnering with Family Research Council.

“Children living with two married biological parents had the lowest rate of overall Harm Standard maltreatment,” according to the most recent, congressionally mandated survey of child abuse, conducted in 2010. “This rate differs significantly from the rates for all other family structure and living arrangement circumstances. Children living with one parent who had an unmarried partner in the household had the highest incidence of Harm Standard maltreatment.”

Studies as far back as 1985 found toddlers living with a stepparent were 40 times more likely to be abused than those living with “two natural parents.” Children living with an unrelated parent were 50 times more likely to be killed than those living with their biological parents, according to a 2005 study by University of Missouri researchers Patricia Schitzman and Bernard Ewigman published in the journal Pediatrics. Four years later, Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that “families in which the mother was living with a man who was not the biological father of all children … were significantly more likely to be contacted by [Child Protective Services] than those in which she was living with the biological father of all resident children.”

Children from fatherless homes are more likely to do poorly in school, join a gang, commit crimes, and be imprisoned, multiple studies show. In addition, “boys who came from a home without a father were more likely to use drugs than boys who came from a home where a father was present,” according to the Minnesota Psychological Association.

The science attesting to the success of the natural family “is well established, uncontroversial, and obviously not un-American to believe. How sealed does one’s echo chamber have to be to tweet something like this?” replied Jay Richards of the Heritage Foundation.

Yet Healy had lobbed multiple epithets at the defenders of the natural family. Three hours earlier, she complained, “The grip from fundamentalist groups who only believe in nuclear families is strong at our state legislature today. I am disgusted by the extremist opposition we heard today,” she said, adding she was “disappointed” a House committee voted down a “simple, important bill” (H.B. 1092) that would redefine marriage as any union “between two persons.”

Live-in boyfriends are not the only threat to children’s safety. The tweet came the same day South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) signed the Help Not Harm Bill (H.B. 1080), which bars the transgender industry from administering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or committing surgeries “for the purpose of attempting to alter” the child’s gender identity in a way that is “inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” It allows children affected to sue the doctors and medical establishment involved.

“This bill is extremism at its finest,” Healy said, adding, “We know that kids are going to die because of this bill. We know that most Republicans realize that this bill and its testimony is full of lies and misinformation.”

The assertion that children suffering gender dysphoria will commit suicide without lifelong hormone injections or permanently life-altering surgeries is itself misinformation. Multiple surveys show that individuals who go through with gender-reassignment procedures have the same, or higher, risk of suicide as those who do not. Whistleblower Jamie Reed, who identifies as a lesbian supporter of “trans rights,” explained that employees of gender reassignment surgeries regularly use high-pressure tactics to convince parents to go forward with the controversial, and highly profitable, transgender procedures. Reed’s former clinic is now under multiple investigations for prescribing experimental cancer drugs to children and disregarding parental consent.

“Denying the truth that we are either male or female hurts real people, especially vulnerable children. By enacting this legislation, South Dakota has taken critical steps to protect children from radical activists that peddle gender ideology and pressure children into life-altering, experimental procedures and drugs,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Sharp. “Science and common sense tell us that children aren’t mature enough to properly evaluate the serious ramifications of making certain decisions; the decision to undergo dangerous and likely sterilizing gender transition procedures is no exception.”

Ironically, Woods’s organization — and Woods personally — has also taken heat from Kristi Noem after Woods wrote a letter asking her to take action against a “kid-friendly” drag show sponsored by South Dakota State University. Noem responded by instructing the organization to “find an executive director” who does not “attack the most conservative governor in the country.”

Sanford Health, Noem’s top career donor, furnishes minors with puberty blockers and commits transgender surgeries, has received accreditation on the “Healthcare Equality Index.” The industry successfully killed a similar bill, the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, in the 2020-2021 legislative session.

Woods says his organization will continue advocating for nature and the natural family. “Any child who grows up without a mother has lost something. Any child who grows up without a father has lost something,” Woods told TWS. “We will not ignore this loss, no matter the political consequences.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Social Science and the Nuclear Family by Steven Horwitz

/in , , , , , /by

The question of the importance of family structure, specifically marriage, is back in the limelight. Conservatives are promoting three papers that provide some strong evidence that children raised by married parents do better along a number of dimensions than those raised in other household forms.

For many commentators, this makes for a strong case against those who appear to claim that family structure has either a minimal effect or doesn’t matter at all. As someone who might well fall into that group, or at least appear to, I think there are several responses to these new studies, all of which can acknowledge the empirical evidence that being raised by two loving parents is better for kids than alternative family structures.

One side note: conservatives might wish to not use the term “family structure denialists” as Wilcox does in the link above.

Comparing a legitimate disagreement over empirical evidence and public policy to those who would deny the overwhelming evidence of the Holocaust is an unacceptable rhetorical move whether it comes from leftists speaking of “climate change deniers” or conservatives speaking of “family structure deniers.” The disagreements in both case are legitimate objects of intellectual discussion and the language of “denier” indicates a refusal to engage in good faith debate.

On the substance of this issue, the conservatives cheering these recent studies don’t always note that there are differences among single-parent households formed through: 1) the choice to have and raise a child by oneself; 2) death of a spouse; and 3) divorce. Each of these presents a different set of circumstances and tradeoffs that we might wish to consider when we think about the role of family structure.

The conservative defenders of the superiority of the two-parent family (and it’s presumably not just “two parents” but two parents of the opposite sex, which raises a whole other set of questions), might wish to disentangle the multiple reasons such a family structure might not be present. For example, the children of widows do better than those of women who choose not to marry the fathers of their children, and the children of widows have outcomes that look more like those of kids from two-parent families.

The empirical evidence under discussion has to be understood with an “all else equal” condition. A healthy marriage will indeed produce better outcomes than, say, single motherhood. But there is equally strong social scientific evidence about the harm done to children who are raised in high-conflict households. Those children may well be better off if their parents get divorced and they are raised in two single-parent households with less conflict.

When parents in high-conflict marriages split up, the reduction in their stress levels, especially for women, leads to improved relationships with their children and better outcomes for the kids. In general, comparisons of different types of family structures must avoid the “Nirvana Fallacy” by not comparing an idealized vision of married parenthood with a more realistic perspective on single parenthood. The choices facing couples in the real world are always about comparing imperfect alternatives.

In addition, to say that married parents create “better” outcomes for kids does not mean that other family forms don’t produce “acceptable” outcomes for kids. It’s not as if every child raised by a single mother, whether through divorce, widowhood, or simply not marrying the father, is condemned to poverty or a life of crime.

Averages are averages. Though these three recent studies do continue to confirm the existing literature’s consensus that marriage is “better” for kids, there is still much debate over how much better those outcomes are, and especially whether other family structures are or are not sufficient to raise functional adults.

And this leads to the next point, which is that parents matter too.

The focus of the “family structure matters” crowd is almost exclusively on the outcomes for kids. That parents matter too is most obvious with divorce, where leaving a bad marriage may be extremely valuable for mom and/or dad, even if it leads to worse outcomes for the kids. The evidence from Stevenson and Wolfers that no-fault divorce has led to a decline in intimate partner violence, as well as suicides of married women, makes the importance of this point clear.

We can acknowledge that higher divorce rates have not been good for kids, but we can’t do single-entry moral bookkeeping. We have to include the effects of divorce on the married couple, because adults matter too. When we add this to the idea that conflict in marriage is bad for kids, the increased ease with which adults can get out of marriages, and the resulting single parenthood, is not so clearly a net problem when we consider the well-being of both children and adults.

These calculations are complicated and idiosyncratic, which seems to suggest that they should be left to those with the best knowledge of the situation and not artificially encouraged or discouraged by public policy.

This last point raises the final question, which is what do these studies mean for public policy?

If two-parent families are better than the alternatives, what does this imply? Are conservatives suggesting that we subsidize couples who have kids? Should that apply to only biological parents and not adoptive ones? Isn’t this a case for same-sex marriage? Should we make divorce more difficult, and if so, what about the probable result that doing so would reduce the number of marriages by increasing the cost of exit?

I would certainly agree that we should stop subsidizing single-parenthood through various government programs, but I’d make the same argument about two-parent families as well. In any case, what’s not clear is what the conservatives trumpeting these studies think they mean for public policy.

Perhaps, though, they think the solutions are cultural. If conservatives wish to argue that these studies mean that we should use moral suasion and intermediary institutions such as houses of worship to encourage people to marry and stay married if they wish to have kids, or that we should encourage young people to use contraception and think more carefully about when and with whom they have sex, that’s fine. And in fact, teen pregnancies are down.

But if intermediary institutions can do all of that, then they can also play a key role in helping single parents who make the difficult decision to divorce or continue a pregnancy in the complicated circumstances of their lives. Such institutions will also likely do that more effectively than can the state.

So if we are genuinely concerned about single parenthood, we should be asking what are the best ways to deal with it. Libertarians like me might well agree with such conservatives if they think the solutions are cultural or should rest in the hands of such intermediate institutions. But if they think there are public policy solutions, particularly ones that limit or penalize the choices facing couples, I wish they would spell them out explicitly in the context of their discussions of these studies.

One last thought: It ill-serves libertarians to deny the results of good science and social science, whether it’s climate change from the left or family structure from the right. We should, of course, critically interrogate that work to make sure that it is, in fact, good. But if it is good, we should welcome it as we should first be concerned with the truth and not our ideological priors.

The next questions we should ask, however, are about the implications. In the case of these recent studies on family structure, it is incumbent upon us to assess both the quality of the work and its implications, and we should pay particular attention to what is not being seen and what questions are not being asked.

Just because one family structure is better for children all else equal means neither that other family structures aren’t good enough for kids, nor that all else is always equal, nor that we shouldn’t consider the well-being of adults when we discuss the consequences of alternative family structures.

This post first appeared at the excellent philosophy blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Steven Horwitz
Steven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback.