Tag Archive for: Parenthood

Luna, Johnson Strike a Truce on Proxy Voting That Gets the House Back to Business

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After a few unexpected days off, the House is back in D.C. to resolve a family feud that’s grabbed headlines from coast to coast. For Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the spat was an unfortunate return to normal after weeks of surprising unity. And while it was inevitable that the harmonious spell Donald Trump cast over Republicans would break at some point, most people just didn’t expect it to be over something as universally despised as proxy voting.

To the casual observer, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fla.) request to vote from home after childbirth seemed reasonable. After all, employers make plenty of accommodations for new parents in the normal world. But serving in Congress isn’t a normal job — and changing that, conservatives say, would mean opening a Pandora’s box that couldn’t easily be shut.

Luna vehemently disagreed, and she put the entire House agenda on hold last week to prove it. Using a tool called a discharge petition, she tried to force Johnson’s hand on a piece of legislation that would let new parents vote remotely for the first 12 weeks of a baby’s birth or after an adoption. With the help of Democrats and eight other Republicans, the Florida mom ultimately ground the chamber’s business to a halt, prompting the speaker to take the unusual step of canceling the week’s business and sending members home while he worked on a solution.

Congressmen like Nathanial Moran (R-Texas) were frustrated by the power move, pointing out on “Washington Watch,” “In the history of the United States, we have not allowed proxy voting up until Nancy Pelosi did it during the pandemic a few years ago,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “We didn’t allow proxy voting after 9/11, not during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, not during the Civil War or the War of 1812. You can go through the list. We never allowed it. Why? Because the Constitution is firm [on] getting together physically and being present physically with one another to deliberate and decide the important matters of the American people. So, proxy voting is not a … constitutionally permitted avenue to go. And it certainly is not a conservative viewpoint.”

Worse, Moran continued, the House just wasted valuable time working on the president’s priorities to have this intra-party spat. “Frankly, we have shot ourselves in the foot here in the House of Representatives and done ourselves a disservice,” he shook his head, “and done the people of America a disservice.”

In the days that followed, Johnson worked frantically behind the scenes to come up with a compromise, all the while hoping cooler heads would prevail. That effort was complicated by the president, who seemed to come out in support of Luna, questioning why this was even a debate. “It’s a little controversial, I don’t know why it’s controversial,” Trump told reporters Thursday, adding, “I’m going to let the speaker make the decision, but I like the idea of being able to, if you’re having a baby I think you should be able to call in and vote,” he continued. “I’m in favor of that, but I understand some people aren’t.”

But no sooner had Trump given his blessing than the drama took another twist. On Friday, the speaker relayed portions of his private conversation with the president, where Trump seems to have been persuaded about the inherent dangers of such a change. “‘Mike, you have my proxy on proxy voting,’” the speaker relayed from their talk. “America is grateful to have a President who appreciates and understands the complexity of legislative branch issues and governing with a razor-thin House majority. Democrats tried proxy voting before and it was terribly abused. We cannot open that Pandora’s box again.”

As members like Moran had insisted, “We cannot allow our sympathetic propositions to supplant constitutional principles. And that’s what’s going on here.” He wasn’t alone in his frustration. In perhaps one of the most telling statistics, not a single Republican congresswoman joined Luna in the vote to force this on the chamber. In fact, they were outspokenly opposed. “We cannot allow this to happen,” Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) implored before thanking Johnson for “standing firm against proxy voting.” “You have my full support,” she wanted people to know.

Others, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) were even harsher in their criticism. “Serving in Congress is a privilege, not a career choice,” Greene pointed out. “If you need a job with better perks like maternity leave, then step down and allow someone else to serve in your place. … You are being used by the Democrats to bring back proxy voting when you are clearly, in your own words, against people receiving taxpayer funded paychecks working from home.” It was a sharp but accurate takedown of the nine Republicans’ hypocrisy on other remote work.

But as conservatives bickered, valuable time was slipping away, Moran warned. “[N]ow we have a number of really important bills that we cannot vote on this week that were planned. … All over this desire to allow proxy voting,” he told Perkins. “[W]e effectively let emotion trump logic in this debate. And when that happens, we simply become liberal policymakers. That’s how liberals make decisions. Conservatives should make decisions based on logic, principles, and the Constitution, not emotion.”

By the weekend, days after the issue triggered a House shutdown, the ice between the two sides seemed to be thawing. Luna and Johnson talked about narrowing the idea to just mothers before ultimately striking a tentative deal that calls for “vote pairing.” Essentially, experts explain, this would allow a House member who isn’t physically present (like a new mom) to find someone on the opposite side of the issue who would agree to abstain from the vote — effectively offsetting the missing member’s vote.

“Speaker Johnson and I have reached an agreement and are formalizing a procedure called ‘live/dead pairing’ — dating back to the 1800s — for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies,” she wrote. She thanked the president for his guidance “as well as all of those who worked to get this change done, this is becoming the most modern, pro-family Congress we’ve ever seen.”

The speaker confirmed the deal on a conference call with Republican members Sunday afternoon, urging them to get to work in passing the Senate’s budget resolution before these distractions threatened Trump’s entire agenda. “Proxy voting aside,” Johnson had said, “I am actively working on every possible accommodation to make Congressional service simpler for young mothers. As the pro-family party, our aim as Republicans is to support those principles while also defending our constitutional traditions.”

Leaders have a lot of ideas toward that end, he explained. “We need a room for nursing mothers if they need that, that’ll be right off the House floor. We have a family room but there may be ways to improve access and make it even easier. We’re looking at the travel policies, potentially the use of [member representative allowance] to allow travel for mothers with young children to be able to transport them back and forth so they get more time with them. … We want to accommodate mothers who want to serve in Congress … [b]ut we can’t do something that violates the Constitution or destroys the institution we serve in.”

Perkins agreed, recognizing that the dilemma for new parents “tugged at people’s heartstrings.” “Look, we’re the Family Research Council,” he said. “We know how important it is for that bonding of parent and child. But we also know if you signed up to run for Congress, and you were elected to Congress, you have a constitutional obligation to represent the people that you were elected to represent — and to do so in a way that’s consistent with the Constitution. So how do you draw the line at new parents?”

Johnson made that point in their conference, Moran explained. “He said, ‘Where does it stop? Somebody next [is] going to say, ‘Well, I have an illness that’s going to prevent me from being there,’ or ‘I’ve had a car accident,’ or ‘I have something important to do at home under those circumstances.’ … And there is a slippery slope once it begins. There is no end to that.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer 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.

8 Policies to Help Young People Marry and Have Babies

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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.

‘Unsung Hero’ Brings Family Values Back into Hollywood

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Pure and cinematically pleasing movies are hard to find. Thankfully, Christian band For King & Country (Joel and Luke Smallbone) produced an easy pick for Friday family movie nights. Their film, “Unsung Hero,” was released earlier this year and is about their Australian family’s immigration journey to the United States. Alongside other recent Lionsgate releases (“I Still Believe,” “The Jesus Revolution,” “American Underdog”), the film was a box office success. It also has a unique and encouraging message that is scarce in the modern film industry.

What is this lesson? It is worth being a family under God. This message repeats throughout as viewers are reminded that being a family takes hard, faithful work, but it is worth persevering together in the pain and placing trust in the Lord.

Here are just a few of the truths Christian families can gather from this countercultural film.

Warning, spoilers up ahead!

1. Marriage can be difficult, but it is worth remaining faithful.

In the movie, we see the parents, David and Helen Smallbone, process differently about what is happening in their new life. The mom is a godly example of submission to her husband, even when he is not making the best decisions and struggling in his grief. When she finds out that they need to stay longer in Tennessee due to her husband being rejected a promised job, she breaks down and cries in her room. She realizes she needs a break instead of taking out her anger on her children and husband. Helen is also willing to love David amid his cynicism and emotional struggles, especially as life continues to get harder for their family. Helen does stand up when needed, but knows when to do so and makes sure their children know their dad does love them, even when he shows his flaws.

Concerning David, he wants to provide more for his family. But he is trying to understand how to make it through, reacting in pride and frustration. However, he respects his wife and is not willing to give up working for his family. It is clear as the story unfolds that Helen and David know marriage is a sacred covenant before God by continuing to honor, love, and stay in all the brokenness together. They picture what it means to remain in marriage “for better or worse” through their personal conflicts.

2. Parents must be intentional and present with their children.

One of the most inspiring and convicting themes throughout the film is Helen Smallbone’s parenting and biblical leadership. She continues to shepherd her children’s hearts during each circumstance and multi-tasks working, comforting her husband, and experiencing pregnancy. One way her biblical parenting stands out amid other films is her willingness to lovingly teach her kids in a way that each will understand.

In one scene, she is playing pretend pirates with them on a playground. At one point, they must “abandon” their ship to be safe. The kids are wondering what to do next on their pirate adventure, and Helen sees this as an opportunity to speak into her children’s hearts while continuing their story.

Helen: We burn the ships. All of them.

Joel: Even ours?

Luke: How do we get back?

Helen: We don’t. It’s gonna be dangerous and scary, and it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be so hard that you’ll want to go back. But if you know that you can go back, you will. And giving up, giving in, is not an option. We’ve gotta fight our way forward. We have to win. Do you understand?

In the next scene, they pretend to surrender or “burn” their ship by each throwing make-believe torches. The acting, the sound effects, visuals, and dramatic music tie everything together to show it is about each of them courageously surrendering this new season of life to the Lord. Such a scene is rare to witness in the film industry today, because it includes a healthy parenting moment about reflecting God’s glory with eloquent, cinematic creativity. This scene and others can encourage Christian parents they can be the loving, biblical teachers their children need because the Lord will be their strength.

3. Christian fathers can make it right with their kids.

What makes the end amazing is that the father is willing to listen to his wife, get up after grieving the loss of his dad, and apologize to his children. These actions are right and chivalrous, but the last one is especially poignant: The father apologizes to his kids. It does not show him making excuses or overthinking it. It did not matter if the kids remembered his sins — he went to them and apologized. This is marks a turning point in the film because God’s love and forgiveness meet to change their family.

After apologizing, he calls a music producer for his daughter to have a record audition when he rejected her and his wife’s idea beforehand. Throughout these ending scenes, David Smallbone is defining biblical fatherhood and headship by owning his mistakes and assuring his children they have a present, loving dad.

It is particularly significant for a child when his or her dad looks at them lovingly in the eyes and admits his shortcomings. Whether the child realizes it or not, it teaches the son or daughter that this is what it means to be a man of God.

In Genesis 1-3, God points out that man is made to have biblical headship of his household. The opposite of this is a husband being domineering over his wife and provoking his children in anger (Genesis 3:16-19, Ephesians 6:4). Children only have one biological mom and dad. In a Christian home, the kids are watching how their mom and dad steward their special, biblical roles to love God, them, and their marriage well.

So, what we witness at the film’s ending is the biblical truth that fathers can be willing to be the specific example Christ has chosen for them. It is never too late for godly dads to look at their families and say assuredly, “I love you. I want to make it right. And I understand my role in your life.” It is so encouraging and convicting for fathers to know they can correct their mistakes for their family through repentance and be the biblical leader of the household under God.

Overall, “Unsung Hero” exemplifies on the big screen how to glorify God in Christian families and what it truly means to be a hero.

AUTHOR

 

Annabelle Pechmann serves as a Communications intern at Family Research Council.

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.

The Hidden Hurt behind Pride Month and Sexual Rebellion

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While parents and everyday Americans scramble to put out the wildfire of LGBT activism that’s hurting our kids, what if the solution was right here, in plain sight? Yes, homeschooling, voting for good people, running for school board, and going to church matters, but so does what happens inside every family’s front door. Despite how desperately society has tried to convince us, the culture of “acceptable divorce” that exploded during Gen X isn’t okay. And neither are the children who lived through it.

Like a lot of adults her age, The Federalist’s Joy Pullman grew up as a child of separated parents. It’s an experience that she’s carried with her into her research and writing about the LGBT movement. In her new book, “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Means the End of America,” she talks about how this instability at home is creating entire generations of hurting kids. And it’s that family chaos and dysfunction, she insists, that makes it more likely that someone will identify as homosexual or transgender.

Rosaria Butterfield, who lived as a practicing lesbian for 10 years before finding Jesus, is adamant that most people who adopt this kind of lifestyle have been traumatized or abused in some way. That hidden hurt is exactly what Pullman zeroed in on when she talked with “Outstanding” podcast host Joseph Backholm.

“I think people don’t talk enough about the consequences that easy divorce [has] had on young people,” she said. “I think a lot of the move for people in this current generation — and generations going forward — away from marriage and family is partly because of family traumas that [they’ve] experienced and haven’t healed. [When you have family separation], when you have divorce … if that’s not addressed,” Joy warns, “if you don’t have a way of healing and reconciling that, then people are scared of being in those intimate relationships because they’ve been hurt in intimate relationships before.”

Sometimes that shows up in the millennial and Gen Z reluctance to marry and have families, she points out. “Many young people’s home lives have not been happy. … They’ve been a source of pain, alienation, and conflict. And so I think there’s a lot of unaddressed [anguish]. … And if people aren’t going to church as much anymore, they don’t have kind of a second institution there to help catch them and teach them what a family looks like when their own nuclear families fail.”

The reality, Pullman explains, is that “people who have unstable families where children are not growing up in the homes with their two biological married parents [are] much more likely to identify as queer. And then on the flip side,” she continues, that kind of family trauma can also express itself in “a lack of natural identity [that] God has given each of us as man and woman…” She goes on to say that these young people grow up to be much more likely to engage in “every sign of personal distress,” including crime, teen pregnancy, and LGBT identification.

So, the “sexual chaos that children are experiencing,” Joy says, is what she sees “as kind of a second-, third-generation consequence of our culture’s acceptance of feminism, no-fault divorce, and those other things. … And so all of these decisions that people are making absolutely affect each other.”

One of the most horrifying pieces of evidence that America has lost its sense of moral direction when it comes to the family is that very few people seem to prioritize it. In a shocking poll published this month by Pew Research, only 19% of Biden voters and 59% of Trump voters agreed with the statement that “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.”

While the number suggests a huge chasm between the two parties, Backholm was just as shocked by the “tragically [low]” number of conservatives who value the cornerstone of society. Every poll needs to be taken with “a grain of salt,” Pullman cautioned. But, she conceded, “It’s absolutely true that we have a decline in acknowledgment of the important and crucial role that family plays in a happy civic society. … You can’t even have a society if you don’t have children.” It’s in the difficult work of parenthood, she insists, that we really develop “productive and loving and self-sacrificing behavior.”

But of course in our culture, Joy shook her head, “a horrible culture that hates children, it’s cast as the opposite. Children are supposed to be somehow an obstacle to your self-improvement, when in truth, they are maybe the greatest catalyst that I’ve ever had in my whole entire life towards self-improvement.” Let’s face it, “spouses and children do not allow self-indulgence,” Pullman said bluntly. And “that is the reality of marriage and family. And you and I would both agree it’s totally worth it. But when you contrast that to the value system of the Sexual Revolution, which is live authentically, satisfy your urges as quickly as you can, and don’t ever deny what your heart is trying to do, those values are just not consistent [with raising a family].”

As for the gap between the value of children and marriage in Biden voters versus Trump voters, Joy thinks partisanship “is just the tip of the iceberg.” “What’s really under there are people’s … deepest beliefs about the world, their worldview, if you will. And the worldview manifests in people’s political affiliation.”

She believes a lot of people “turn to leftist politics as a substitute for religion, as a kind of psychotherapy.” But in the end, all that really does is encourage a victim mentality that never brings a person closer to healing in their life. “You have to be an overcomer. You have to decide to take responsibility for your life and make your own decisions about how to move ahead and get maturity — even if other people are at least partly at fault for the situation you find yourself in.”

Sure, people have pain and loneliness that “nobody really wants to talk about,” because of things in their past that may not be resolved or a dysfunctional childhood. And they need empathy, Joy agrees, “but not just the empathy that enables and says, ‘It’s okay for you to sit and wallow in your trauma’ but a compassionate ear that says, ‘You know, if you wanted to address that, I’ve got some solutions for you, starting with, for example, going to church, maybe repenting of your own sins and hearing the message [of positivity].”

And unfortunately, the church hasn’t always been the example the world needs of strong, lifelong marriages and healthy families. As Family Research Council’s David Closson pointed out, social conservatives have spent the last 20 years focused on issues that “a generation ago were unimaginable” — things like same-sex marriage and transgenderism. But none of these things originated in a vacuum, he insisted to The Washington Stand. They are the “natural progression of a moral revolution that started decades ago.” “In fact,” he told TWS, “we can trace some of the confusion about marriage back to 1969 when then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law. Ever since then, the broader culture has increasingly seen marriage as a contract rather than a covenant. Over the last several decades, no-fault divorce has contributed to the weakening of America’s marriage culture, to the point where today the divorce rate in the church is approximately 30%.”

If American Christians “want to see a return of sanity and morality in our culture, rebuilding a marriage culture in our churches is an important place to begin,” Closson urged. “We need to regain a vision for what marriage is really about, namely, the bringing together of one man and one woman into a lifelong covenant that is open to any children their union produces. Before we can fix society at large, we must re-double our efforts in inculcating and discipling those in our churches to have a comprehensive biblical worldview.”

At the end of the day, Joy points out, “If you obey God,” staying married, for instance, and valuing children, “in the long run will be happy — whether it’s on life or in eternity. And that’s just a fact. [But for many people] it’s difficult for them to accept, because they want to be their own God. So I do think that that spiritual kind of struggle is underlying these cultural and political struggles that we’re talking about. And that’s really what’s underneath.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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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.

Married People More Likely to Be ‘Thriving’: Gallup Survey

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A new Gallup survey has found that, over more than a decade, one variable has consistently predicted whether people described themselves as “thriving”: marriage. Married couples are more likely to be happy today, anticipate future happiness, and have a “strong and loving” relationship with their children than cohabiting partners.

Gallup classified respondents into one of three groups — “thriving,” “struggling” or “suffering” — based on how they rated their home lives. Surveying data over 14 years, Gallup found that married couples consistently rated their current lives, and their likelihood of future happiness, better than those who lived together outside marriage or had a committed relationship without living together. The happiness differential ran into double digits.

“Within the U.S., it is clear that married adults rate their lives more highly than others and have done so for the past 15 years,” the survey, released last Friday, concluded. “From 2009 to 2023, married adults aged 25 to 50 were more likely to be thriving — by double-digit margins — than adults who have never married. The 16-percentage-point gap between married adults (61%) and those who have never married (45%) in 2023 is within the range of 10 to 24 points recorded since 2009.”

Marriage’s emotional bonus held true “for men and women across all major racial/ethnic groups” and “is not explained by other demographic characteristics — such as age, race/ethnicity or education.”

Gallup researchers found wedded couples less prone to communication breakdowns in their relationships. Married couples were half as likely (26%) to say they experienced two or more days in the last month where they or their partner felt so angry, they could not speak to each other than those living together (46%) or dating exclusive (41%). Interestingly, living together outside marriage made people 12% more likely to argue than dating exclusively while living separately.

Lawfully wedded husbands-and-wives also experienced greater closeness with their children: 83% of married couples with children between the ages of three and 19 say they have a “strong and loving” relationship with their kids, compared with 69% in a domestic partnership, and 61% in a “non-domestic exclusive relationship.”

Marriage is also linked to another predictor of happiness: having children. “Marriage also increases the likelihood of having children and is associated with better relationships with those children,” write Gallup researchers, pointing to the group’s 2023 Familial and Adolescent Health Survey.

Married parents, and even divorced parents, say they have more affectionate relationships with their own children than those who were never married, the report discovered, in addition to finding that “married parents are significantly less likely than divorced or never-married parents to report that their child is frequently out of control.”

“Finally, ideologically conservative parents report higher-quality and more harmonious relationships with their children compared with liberal or moderate parents,” Gallup’s team noted.

The new Gallup research report speculates the likelihood of entering a permanent, lifelong, and (in Christianity) unbreakable union must “encourage greater partner selection, as well as greater investments and effort to develop and maintain a high-quality relationship.”

Although married people report higher levels of happiness regardless of their religious status, “[m]arried people are also more likely to practice a religion, and religious practice is also positively correlated with subjective wellbeing.”

Gallup’s research reinforces numerous other studies showing married people, parents, and Christians who actively practice their faith enjoy greater happiness, contentment, and quality of life than unmarried couples, agnostics, atheists, and “Nones”:

  • “Americans who have never married, are not religious, and have lower levels of formal education feel their lives have meaning less often than other Americans do,” according to the November 2023 American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life. “Overall, religious Americans tend to believe their life is meaningful more often than do those who are not religious.”
  • Americans who believe in God and value marriage are more likely to be “very happy” than non-believers and single people, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll taken last March.
  • Parents “with two children had a risk of suicide 70% less than their childless peers,” wrote Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute of Family Studies, summarizing a Scandinavian study.
  • Americans who attended religious services regularly were 44% more likely to say they were “very happy” than those who never or rarely attended, found a 2019 Pew Research Center study.
  • Christians who read the Bible regularly rated a higher score on the Human Flourishing Index than non-practicing Christians or the religiously unaffiliated, found a American Bible Society report last June. Active Christians and non-Christians diverged the most when it came to whether they felt their lives had “meaning & purpose.”
  • A Harvard study found childhood religious activities, such as prayer, paid great dividends later in life, even if the children subsequently left the faith. “[P]eople who attended weekly religious services or practiced daily prayer or meditation in their youth reported greater life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s — and were less likely to subsequently have depressive symptoms, smoke, use illicit drugs, or have a sexually transmitted infection — than people raised with less regular spiritual habits,” according to a summary of a 2018 study conducted by researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
  • The “Handbook of Religion and Health” have “reviewed 326 articles on the relationship between health and measures of “religiosity and subjective well-being, happiness, or life satisfaction,” finding that 79% of those studies reported that religious people were happier, while only 1% reported that they were less happy (the rest found no or mixed findings),” reported Stephen Cranney, a nonresident fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for the Studies of Religion and teaches at The Catholic University of America.

Despite these robust findings, Americans are less likely to believe marriage and an active Christian life makes people happy. “The General Social Survey documented a decline between 1988 and 2012 in the percentage of U.S. adults who agreed that married people are generally happier than unmarried people,” Gallup notes in Friday’s survey. Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll last September found 71% of Americans say a fulfilling job makes for a good life, while only 23% say being married (and 26% say having children) are “extremely important in order for people to live a fulfilling life.”

Instead, culture celebrates the LGBTQ movement, despite the well-attested links between transgenderism/same-sex sexual behavior and poor mental health outcomes:

  • “Female students, LGBQ+ students, and students who had any same-sex partners were more likely than their peers to experience poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors,” said a February 2023 report from the Biden administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Teenagers who identified as LGBTQ were twice as likely to report “poor mental health” as those who identified as heterosexual, three times as likely to have “seriously considered attempting suicide” or “made a suicide plan,” and 366.6% more likely to have attempted suicide, the CDC found.
  • “A higher prevalence of substance use and mental health issues has been well-documented among people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (also referred to as sexual minorities) than among those who identify as heterosexual or straight,” noted a 2023 report from the Biden administration’s U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Women who have sex with members of both sexes (bisexuals) were six times as likely to have attempted suicide within the last year as women who identify as straight, and three times as likely to abuse opioid drugs. Bisexual men were three times as likely to have had a serious mental illness in the last year, SAMHSA found.
  • Two-thirds (67%) of Americans who identify as bisexual, and half (48%) of self-identified gays, said they felt “uncertain about who they were supposed to be” in the last year, as compared to about one out of four (29%) of those who identify as straight, AEI’s survey found.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

RELATED PODCAST: The War on Language – How to Discern the Truth

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: Americans Strongly Identify as Parents Despite Marriage Decline

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“Almost 90% of the world’s population now live in countries with falling marriage rates,” CNBC declared recently. In the U.S. alone, marriage rates have decreased “by 60% since the 1970s.” In July, when that article was published, the primary factor in these declining rates centered around a declining economy. However, recent research shows there may be factors outside of valid economic concerns to why less people are getting married.

Deseret News released a poll on Tuesday that found, as marriage rates continue to drop, the rates “of people identifying as parents” remains steady. As reported by the Higher Ground Times, it appears “parenting is more central to [American] identity than being a spouse or partner.”

To get a more accurate read of the survey, however, it’s important to note the overall emphasis on marriage and parenting as it relates to political identity. Christopher F. Karpowitz, the survey’s coinvestigator and research director at Brigham Young University, mapped out the dichotomy between churchgoing Republicans and non-religious Democrats. He described the survey results as a worrisome sign of “culture war tensions.”

The report stated that churchgoing “Republicans argue that marriage is important, but they are far less willing to support families through government spending.” On the other hand, the report said Democrats “express support for public spending that supports families and children, but they have decided to leave arguably the most important institutional support for children off of their agenda: marriage.”

It concluded, “A true coalition for families is lurking out there, but it requires our key factions to give up some of their prejudices. Republicans would have to admit that what we support financially is a key measure of what we truly value. Democrats would have to admit that marriage is a positive good for people and children.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council, shared with The Washington Stand, “The fact that there are partisan differences in how people view marriage … makes sense.” He continued, “The worldview of the Left devalues marriage for the same reason it values abortion and transgenderism — it values short-term personal happiness above familial or societal good.” Yet simultaneously, Backholm emphasized, “The more we value the long-term benefit of children and strong societies, the more value we will give to marriage.”

Ultimately, “The Right and the Left think differently about marriage because they have a different understanding of what produces strong people, family, and cultures,” he added. “The pursuit of immediate personal happiness above all else devalues marriage because marriage requires long-term commitment regardless of how we’re feeling about it today.” He discussed how it is a contradiction to a good family dynamic to be a great parent while also being a bad spouse or not having a spouse, since there is overwhelming evidence that a healthy marriage promotes healthy child development.

Backholm concluded, “The created order established, and social science has confirmed, that the ideal situation for children is in a home where they are loved by their mother and father. Marriage is good because marriage encourages this. The idea that we can separate parenting from marriage without significant consequences is in the same category as the belief that men can get pregnant.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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.

Thousands of Schools Won’t Tell Parents About Kids’ Gender Transition: Report

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More than 5,000 schools across the nation allow teachers to hide a child’s decision to identify as a member of the opposite sex from the child’s parents. The parental exclusion policy — which is heavily advocated by LGBT lobbying groups and applies to more than 3.2 million children nationally — has already resulted in the sexual trafficking of at least one young girl.

A total of 5,904 schools in 168 school districts nationwide allow, or require, teachers to conceal children’s transgender “social transition” — in which children change their name or preferred pronouns, or begin using the locker rooms of the opposite sex — from their parents. School districts keeping legal guardians ignorant about their children’s life-altering decisions stretch from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and from Alaska to Arizona.

“This investigation shows that parental exclusion policies are a problem from coast-to-coast — and that living in a red state doesn’t mean that families are automatically shielded from this issue,” said Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education (PDE), which compiled the list. PDE discovered four districts in deep-red Kansas that have adopted the policy, crafted by LGBT activists. For example, Wichita Public Schools’ teacher training claims, “The lack of using [a child’s preferred] pronouns could lead to death.”

In all, PDE reports, such policies affect 3,268,752 students — and their parents — in 28 states and the District of Columbia.

“This list is not comprehensive,” the report notes.

A Virginia high school’s decision to conceal a teenage girl’s gender transition ended with the teen being drugged, gang-raped and, on two separate occasions, sexually trafficked. In August 2021, 14-year-old Sage began attending Appomattox County High School. Her biological grandmother, Michele, who legally adopted her, said Sage told her “all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo,” and Sage soon decided she “wanted to wear boys’ clothes.” But Michele added, Sage told school officials “she was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns. Sage asked the school not to tell me, and they did not tell me.”

After a group of boys accosted and threatened to rape her in the boys’ restroom, Michele took Sage home and found a pass made out to “Draco.” Michele said Sage was too afraid to return to school, so she ran away to meet an online “friend,” who sexually trafficked her through Washington, D.C. and Maryland. By the time the FBI found her locked inside a room in Baltimore nine days later, Michele recalled, Sage had been “locked in a room, drugged, gang-raped, and brutalized by countless men.”

“One of the expert witnesses in the hearing [on January 30] confirms that online predators do target social media accounts of children who list themselves as ‘ftm’ or ‘female to male,’” Delegate David LaRock (R-Berryville) told The Daily Signal.

But Sage’s nightmare had only begun. A judge accused Michele and her husband of inflicting “emotional and physical abuse” by “misgendering” their granddaughter. The judge had Sage committed to the male section of a children’s home, where she was “repeatedly beaten” and “given street drugs,” Michele said. Sage ran away from the home, but the FBI found her in the grips of a sexual trafficking in Texas. Sage had again “been drugged, raped, beaten, and exploited.”

“Sage isn’t unique,” LaRock told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on February 9, although “the degree to which she’s been violated is, hopefully, rare.”

Reports of schools allowing or encouraging minors to “socially transition” to another gender have trickled out, as outraged parents have taken legal action against the districts on PDE’s list. A coalition of parents sued Iowa’s Linn-Mar Community School District last summer. Last month, Amber Lavigne filed a lawsuit against the Great Salt Bay Community School in the coastal Maine village of Damariscotta — population 2,300 — after she found a chest binder in her 13-year-old daughter’s belongings. A social worker facilitated the child’s decision to identify as another gender, and the school withheld all information from her mother, according to her legal counsel. “The school never stopped trying to keep me in the dark at every turn, repeatedly stonewalling me when I tried to find out what was going on,” said an exasperated Lavigne, who is represented by the Goldwater Institute. “My parental rights aren’t up for debate: I deserve to know what’s happening to my child in school.”

“Counselors and teachers didn’t tell Sage’s family about the fact that she was transgender. And she got caught up in some horrific human trafficking issues, and they almost lost her,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) told a CNN townhall last Wednesday. “There’s a basic rule here, which is that children belong to parents — not to the state, not to schools, not to bureaucrats, but to parents.”

Last September, Youngkin enacted model school guidelines that affirm, “School personnel shall keep parents fully informed about all matters that may be reasonably expected to be important to a parent.” Parents may “determine (a) what names, nicknames, and/or pronouns, if any, shall be used for their child by teachers and school staff while their child is at school, (b) whether their child engages in any counseling or social transition at school that encourages a gender that differs from their child’s sex, or (c) whether their child expresses a gender that differs with their child’s sex while at school,” the guidelines add.

Despite Youngkin’s actions, the report lists seven school districts in Virginia that continue to hide social transition from parents.

To remedy the situation, LaRock introduced “Sage’s Law” (H.B. 2432), which requires school officials to contact parents if a child begins using names or pronouns not consistent with his or her sex. The bill passed the House of Delegates on February 6 by a narrow 50-48, party-line vote. (Democratic Delegate Cliff Hayes also intended to vote no.) It is currently under Senate consideration.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is taking steps to assure no American parent is frozen out of his or her child’s life decisions. Last week, House Republicans advanced a measure barring any federally funded elementary or middle school from changing a “minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name” on any school form, or allowing students to use the restrooms and changing facilities of the opposite sex. The House Education and the Workforce Committee adopted the measure — originally introduced as a separate bill, the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) — as an amendment to the Parents Bill of Rights (H.R. 5). Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S. 200).

Walberg, an ordained pastor who once worked for the Moody Bible Institute, found it “unconscionable that some believe that parents should be kept in the dark regarding gender transitions of their own children. He urged Congress to “ensure that schools do not hide important information about children from their own parents,” “increase transparency, and defend the God-given authority and rights of parents.”

President Joe Biden is all but certain to veto such a bill. The president’s now-inactive nonprofit, the Biden Foundation, partnered with Gender Spectrum, a group whose “Gender Support Plan” tells schools to have “contingencies in place” if parents find out their child is “being supported” against their will. Since taking office, Biden has said transgenderism reflects “the image of God.”

You may see PDE’s incomplete list of the school districts that have adopted anti-parental rights transgender policies here. The group asks citizens to report such policies to PDE.

“Frighteningly, this only begins to scratch the surface of what is taking place behind closed doors in America’s schools,” said Neily. “Without a doubt, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of others with similar policies on the books.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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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.

4 Ways to Safeguard Your Child from Radical Gender Ideology

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When we find ourselves encountering education professionals who sincerely believe and defend concepts like Queer Theory and believe they have a moral obligation to teach those concepts to children for the good of society, it is long past time for parents and concerned citizens to act. Gender ideology is a dangerous force in education and our culture. Parents can take several important steps to safeguard our own children and our communities from this evil influence.

1. Parents need to be the most important person in their children’s lives.

Our right to direct the upbringing of our children is unquestioned. Our responsibility to our children is confirmed by our love for them. We need to make sure that we know our children’s hopes and dreams, their friends, their teachers, and those who influence them. When schools have policies that would seek to “affirm a gender identity” in children without the knowledge or consent of parents, we can protect our children — and ourselves — by being fully engaged in relationship with our children.

One of the common rejoinders to efforts to enact policies to protect children from secret social transition in schools actually does have a grain of truth in it. Gender activists will demagogue: “If you want to find out what gender your child is, just ask your child; the school can’t hide that from you.” We can see the arrogance and dishonesty behind such a comment, but it makes a point too — never let anyone know your child better than you do.

2. In the event of a gender identity crisis in your home, be careful to get the right help.

There are fewer resources for parents who do not wish to affirm their children in a gender delusion, but they are good resources. Desist, Detrans, and Detox by Maria Keffler is a wonderful book with advice from a mother and former public school guidance counselor. Be careful not to rely on the advice of “gender specialists.” It is more likely than not that advice from this perspective will “affirm” a sex change approach rather than explore the reasons for gender dysphoria and seek to integrate body and mind consistent with biological reality.

3. Engage your school system or state legislature.

If you wish to engage your school system or state legislature to protect the rights of parents and children, there are many efforts underway to use as guides. Groups like Family Research Council, Parents Defending Education, and Parental Rights Foundation are ready to help, with research, advice, and connections to other resources. Making sure to keep parents at the center of the process is key.

Virginia’s recently drafted model policy includes this useful definition: The phrase “transgender student” shall mean a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child’s persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school. The Virginia draft is a reaffirmation of parental rights, keeping parents front and center.

4. Never doubt yourself when you stand for the truth of biological sex.

History is littered with examples of medical fads that have victimized people and cultures: lobotomy, eugenics, and recovered memories are just a few examples. The gender fever seems to be breaking. It will take parents and a public committed to truth spoken in love to protect our children and heal our culture.

We live in the greatest nation on earth, the beacon of hope for the world. Let’s make America’s school systems as exceptional as our nation. Our children, entrusted to us by God, deserve our very best.

AUTHOR

Meg Kilgannon

Meg Kilgannon is Senior Fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council.

RELATED ARTICLE: Parents, It’s Time to Get Your Child Off of Social Media

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.

The Number of Children Growing Up in Intact Families Is Rising

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Amidst the negative news surrounding the state of marriage and the family in the U.S., a bright spot is beginning to emerge: the number of children being raised by their married mothers and fathers is slowly rising.

A new analysis from Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, found that “[s]ince a low ebb around 2014, the share of kids living with their parents has actually risen by about 1.5 percentage points.” While the relatively low growth rate might seem inconsequential, it stands in stark contrast to the overall pattern of decline in stable American families over the last 50 years. From the early 1960s until around 2014, the share of children living in intact families steadily nosedived from 87% down to around 62%.

As Stone observes, there are a number of reasons behind the increase in stable households for children. Even though marriage rates are falling, so is divorce, which means that the marriages that are happening are more stable. On top of this, the rate of children born to married parents has remained stable. At the same time, writes Stone, “birth rates of unmarried women have fallen very rapidly” over the last 20 or so years. So despite falling fertility and marriage rates, “the children who are born are more likely to live with two married parents.”

This is good news for children, as an abundance of studies show that kids raised in an intact, two-parent household have vastly better life outcomes than their peers who are raised in single-parent households. One recent research brief found that children raised in intact homes are “more likely to be flourishing economically, educationally, and socially” with regard to child poverty, college graduation rates, and rates of incarceration than their counterparts in single parent homes.

In addition, a summary of the effect that family structure has on children noted that kids who grow up with their married mother and father are more often involved in community activities like sports and other extra-curricular activities, spend more time with their fathers, are 20 to 35% more physically healthy, score higher in cognitive tests like verbal reasoning, and are less likely to exhibit problematic behavior at school than their peers from non-intact families.

As family sociologist Brad Wilcox and other researchers have observed, there has been a notable recent challenge to the social scientific consensus on the benefits that intact families give children in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Harvard Gazette, which argue that family structure has negligible consequences on children. But as Wilcox contended, these arguments ignore what the consensus in the sociology field has been for decades. “It is simply the truth that white and black children usually do better when raised by their own mother and father, compared to single-parent and stepfamilies,” he wrote.

According to Stone’s most recent analysis, this means that the future is looking a little bit brighter for America’s children. “All in all, the decline in intact families in America appears to have bottomed out for now,” he wrote. Stone also noted that not even a global pandemic could stop the rising trend of children growing up in intact families.

“Naturally, these trends could change in the future, but as of now, it appears that not only did COVID fail to undo the trend of rising intact families, it may have accelerated it for certain groups,” he pointed out.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The 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.