Category: Marriage/Family

Today, a record share of American adults are not married. While the share of married Americans was notably higher in the 1970’s, I witnessed first-hand a key feature of the shift away from marriage and homelife. In public elementary school in a left-leaning community in suburban Maryland, my family’s support of the candidacy of Ronald Reagan did not go unnoticed. One teacher took pleasure in haranguing me for my backward views. From her I heard that “a woman’s place is in the House, and in the Senate, too!”

The government spent decades trying to make fathers unnecessary. The failure of that experiment put society on the long-term path to collapse. Father’s Day is Sunday. It’s much less popular than Mother’s Day for a sad reason. Fewer fathers are involved in their children’s lives. That’s caused by two main factors, the first being children born to single moms. In 2022, almost 40% of births were to unmarried women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The second reason is the prevalence of divorce.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) issued a report that surveyed reproductive-age adults and recommended “reproductive autonomy” as a solution to global fertility rate decline, a solution that received pushback from pro-family experts.

My dad spent more than four decades with at-home kids, actively parenting even as some of his own children became parents themselves. It’s a kind of alternate reality compared to what’s typically marketed in pop culture as a good life for a man.

Fatherhood is not a casual role for the mildly interested; it is a God-ordained calling that secures the identity of a home and, by extension, the vitality of a republic.

Parenting is a job that can be loved deeply. I was never the kind of woman who was good with babies. Oh, I could admire them just fine. I just didn’t have the first clue about caring for them. When I was a new mom, my friend came over and tossed around my baby in total comfort. She held Ethan one way, then casually flipped him to rest on her forearm, then cradled him close and then held him out. She gave him back to me with a breezy smile, and I robotically put my hands under his armpits and pulled him cautiously toward me. To me, he seemed like a piece of china that might break. My friend treated him like a football.