Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here's the host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy DeVett Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters.
In today's show, we're talking about the American family, why it matters, why it's struggling, and what the church can do to help strengthen it. Nearly 60 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan sounded the alarm about the breakdown of the family. His warnings were largely ignored, but time has proven his. Him right. Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement, says that renewing the American family is one of the most patriotic acts we can do.
It's not a, quote, culture war issue, he says. It's about the very health of our communities and our democracy. Dan Darling, thanks so much for joining us today on Family Policy Matters. I'm grateful to join you.
Okay, well, let's talk about, for listeners who might not know, who was Daniel Patrick Moynihan and why did his 1965 report cause such a stir? He wrote this assessment of the American family and he issued some real concerns about the decline of the family, minority families, white families. And at the time, it was a really bombshell report. It was very controversial. At first, President Johnson actually delivered a speech talking about the importance of the family.
Then progressives really pushed back and he sort of shelved some of the proposals he was going to do. But as it turns out, all these years later, I believe 60 years later, that he was proved right. It was pretty prescient that, you know, all these social experiments America has been doing when it comes to the family have had a real disastrous effect across the board and really impacts our communities and our country.
Okay, well, talk about that. What has changed so much in the American family since the 1960s? What has changed significantly is the number of children who grow up in families that don't have both a mother and a father in the home. I mean, many grow up without their birth mother and father. That has increased exponentially.
Of course, that is tracked with the sort of rise of the sexual revolution, the redefining of marriage, the sort. of say mockery of the family that you saw really in the latter part of the 20th century into the 21st century that has really produced significant impacts and across the board almost every metric by which you'd measure community health whether it's poverty reading education you know crime all those can be traced back in many ways to the decline of the family so i think moynihan was right in his concern and predictions and i think it's incumbent on christians particularly to try to help alleviate and push back not only with messaging about what the family is and why God hasn't designed the family the way he has and why it's so important for society, but also with help and hope for those families who are struggling. You talked about the benefits of a two-parent family. What are those benefits if they're not plain to everyone listening?
Well, we know how God has designed marriage to be complementary. A husband and wife, men and women are different, but complementary, and how important that is for the life of children. And almost every metric shows that children that grow up in that environment fare better. And what I'm not saying and what family champions aren't saying is that children who don't have that privilege are doomed for failure. You know, God is in the business of redeeming and renewing and restoring.
And many times there are surrogate mothers and fathers that can step in, which we do need. But it's just true that the nuclear family, a husband and wife committed in marriage together for life, is the best environment for children. Brad Wilcox has detailed a lot of this in his book, Get Married, but it's not just conservatives who are saying this. Melissa Kearney, who works for the Brooking Institution, and she's center left. She has a book called Two-Parent Privilege.
And she talks about this. One interesting statistic: children who grow up, for instance, without both a mother and a father in a home are four times as likely to end up in poverty. They're much more likely to end up in prison. They're less likely to go to college. And there's a whole range of metrics.
And even neighborhoods where there's a predominance of intact families, children actually fare better. And so I think there's starting to be a bipartisan concern about the family. And a lot of voices starting to say maybe we need to shape our policy more toward that. And I think it's a call to Christians and the church to really step into the breach and try to be the solution.
So you mentioned that a lot of people consider marriage are talking about marriage and the family as culture warring. If you're seeing some movement on both sides, do you feel like there's less of a war going on now, or is it raging on? Aaron Powell, you know, the term culture war is so loaded, I think. At times, it can mean these sort of unnecessary fights over frivolous things, right? Red Starbucks cups or things like that.
But a lot of times, people who are concerned about things like the sanctity of life. like family formation and really push back against some of the progressive attempts to redefine the family and to push things like abortion are considered culture warriors. But actually, and I've, you know, this is something I got from Dr. Richard Land. He said, most social conservatives over the last 50 years, our positions have actually been defensive.
In other words, it's the left and the media who have actually pushed these kind of new family forms and pushed abortion on demand onto conservatives. And when we pushed back and said, no, this is not good for society, this is not good for human flourishing, we're considered the culture warriors. It's interesting how these things are framed. You know, if you have a progressive cause, sometimes it's called justice. If you have a conservative cause, it's called culture warring.
I don't think that's fair framing. I do think there are people on all sides who sometimes unnecessarily pick fights. But when you're talking about the basic structure of society, the family, and what's good for children, I think you just look at the social science data that shows this is really important. If you care about justice, If you care about things like poverty, if you care about things like education, if you care about things like crime, you can't address those issues without addressing the family. I'm not saying the family is the only factor, but it's a major factor.
And so, you know, it's not culture warring. It's really a concern for our neighbors, a love for our neighbors, and a concern for our country. You're listening to Family Policy Matters, a weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. This is just one of the many ways NC Family works to educate and inform citizens about issues that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our vision is to create a state and nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.
For more information about NC Family and how you can partner with us in pursuit of this vision, visit our website at ncfamily.org and be sure to sign up to receive our email updates, action alerts, and Family North Carolina magazine. You can also follow us on social media at NC Family Policy. That's at NC Family Policy.
So you mentioned that churches can play a part in strengthening the family. Can you give us some practical suggestions on how you think that could work? Yeah, I really think there's a number of things that we can do. I think number one, churches looking out for the marriages and families in their communities to have regular checkups with marriages and families. How are you doing?
How is your family going? I think having regular classes on how to have a healthy marriage, how to raise your children with both discipline and love. When I was a kid, and this might just be anecdotal, Tracy, but when I was a kid, it seemed like every church was doing those kinds of things, right? Parenting classes, marriage and family classes. And I just don't see as much of it anymore.
It could be that they are doing it. And, you know, I'm just, it's just sort of anecdotal experience. But I really think churches should lean in on these things. There are struggling families in our community that need help and they need hope. We have the truth.
We have truth from scripture. We have the hope of the gospel that can help families heal and help them flourish. I think it's also, you know, the church community is uniquely designed by God to help sustain families in times of need when there is a crisis, they don't feel like they're alone, that they can do this. To come alongside young fathers who feel inadequate about raising their children and to give them the tools to do that, to come alongside young mothers who, you know, have their hands full and have, you know, community and help and wisdom, older parents kind of mentoring younger parents, older couples mentoring younger couples, and have that community that lets families know that they're not alone in this. I know for our family, you know, it's been our church communities at times in crisis that has helped us when things come up.
And I think that's important. And that can not only be inward facing, Tracy, but I think outward facing to the community. Family help, help with marriage, help with parenting, is kind of a felt need that a lot of families in our community have. This is not why we're doing it. I think we could do these kinds of things in order to really minister and help families, but also it can be an unapologetic, a way for people to come and experience the church by getting help with their families.
In a great way. Look, I think family formation is a social justice issue. If we care about poverty, if we care about crime, if we care about all these things, we have to start with that. And the church is uniquely poised to do that. And every church knows their community differently.
So these kinds of things will be designed differently. But it really is an area where I encourage pastors to step into the breach to do these things in order to help renew their communities and renew the country. You know, you use the term social justice like it's a good thing, but there are certain people that fires them up. That's a pejorative term. Talk about social justice.
Why is that a term that's kind of gotten a bad rap? And also, why is it something that the church needs to be concerned about? The term social justice has gotten hijacked really by the left. And, you know, it's come to mean kind of a series of ideas about race and about other things that are really found to be harmful, whether it's, you know, CRT and other kind of issues. It also sometimes is coded for government spending and government programs.
So if you're not for certain government programs, you must not care about the poor and all those kinds of things. But I do think scripture does talk about justice. It's about righteousness. It's about, you know, God's standards of righteousness. you know, the way that things in society can be out of balance.
If you read the prophets, they're constantly talking about the rich taking advantage of the poor and these things being unequal. I think Christians should be unafraid to talk about this, but it has to include the entire range of things, right?
So it can't just be left-right. It has to be what are the range of issues. And I would argue, if you want to use the term social justice, I don't often use that just because I think it's coded certain ways. But if you do want to talk about that, I think you have to talk about the sanctity of life. That's a justice issue.
I think you have to talk about family. Formation and how the most vulnerable, particularly children, are kind of victims of the sexual revolution. I think that is a justice issue.
So these are, you know, nuanced conversations, but I think Christians have to meet them with really truth and scripture and compassion. The North Carolina Family Policy Council, of course, is a public policy advocacy organization on the state level. Do you have some suggestions as to the kinds of policies, statewide policies, that might help strengthen families?
Well, I think there's a number of things. I think, you know, I'm not an economic expert, so I don't want to get too deep in the weeds here. But I do think if there's ways to help to make it easier to raise a family, and obviously what are the most prudent ways to do that, I think one of the things that really is hard for families now is affordability. You know, if everything costs so much, you know, we want to encourage parents to have children and raise children in healthy communities. What are some ways that we can remove barriers to that?
What are some ways that we can help stimulate local economies in order to do that? What are ways that we can provide jobs that allow mothers and fathers to be present with their children? I don't know all the solutions to that per se, but are there ways that we can fix the tax code that makes them even better? More friendly to families. All those things I think are important and will pay off in the future, right?
If you keep families stable and healthy, you're going to be paying much less for social service costs down the road when it comes to crime and the state having to step in with broken families and all those kinds of things.
So it's an investment on the front end that will pay dividends on the back end. And so I think Christians should champion policy that actually works to help stabilize families. You know, we don't want to just do things because they feel good. We want to say, okay, do these things actually work? Do they actually, you know, help families stay stable economically and moms and dads stay together and children flourish.
I think one of the things that is also really helpful that I've seen a lot of states do across the country is expanding the range of school choice where parents have choices in terms of where they send their children. That there's some economic support for parents to choose the best educational outcome so that those are not just restricted to people who are in the higher income brackets, but people who are in the lower income brackets may have access to some of those things. I think all those things work together, and mostly, I think, having policies that encourage. the family, rather than discourage it. I think it is important.
Okay. Could you tell our listeners where they can go if they would like to read the article that we were discussing today? Yes, the article is, I wrote this for Family Matters. It's the Institute for Family Studies. that is led by some really capable people, including doctor Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia and others, who are constantly churning out and writing really good things on pro-family policy and some of the statistics and other things that kind of show us where the family is today.
Sounds good. Dan Darling, Director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement, thanks so much for joining us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org.
That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
