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. Hello and welcome into the fifth episode of The Truths We Hold, a special series that we're doing this year in celebration of the 250th signing of the Declaration of Independence, as well as our 35th anniversary as an organization here at NC Family. I'm Mitch Prosser, Vice President, along with Director of Research and Education, Adamo Manfra, and we are excited to talk to you today about parenting and what that means for our state and the work that we do here at NC Family.
So Adamo, we started with the unalienable right of life as it's enumerated within the Constitution. Walk us through a little bit of what we've talked about, a little bit of review of where we've been so far. Yeah, so that first enumerated right, so the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so we started with looking at life, so of course the sanctity of life, and then we talked about how the natural and God-ordained place and context in which life comes into being is in the context of marriage between one man, one woman producing a child. And so that naturally leads us then to talk about marriage, and then from that, marriage as it applies to.
Parenting and so, then the family context of a mother and a father, parents raising a child up in the way he should go, as we read in scriptures. Absolutely. One of the things that we focused on and will be focusing on here in the years ahead is the success sequence. Our friends at the Institute for Family Studies, Brad Wilcox, have partnered with us. Of course, we know that when people graduate high school, get a job, then get married, then have children, that sets them up for success a majority of the time.
We're saying the same thing today: when people get married, and we've talked about marriage, and then they choose to parent having children after marriage, that sets the family and society for that matter, as the family is the bedrock of society up for success. And so, talk to our listeners a little bit about what parenting is. Yeah, sure.
So, parenting today kind of gets a bad rap. We look at it more as a burden and how much it's going to cost. And you'll see people talk about it's too expensive to have a child, and no one can afford a child, or no one can afford a house and then a child. And so, what we want to Think about is no, parenting is the natural outgrowth of the love of man and a woman joined together in marriage. And then the duties that follow upon that is that you bring this life into this world, and then that gift is a gift from God.
And we steward that gift by raising that child in the way he should go, teaching our sons and daughters about the importance of our faith, what it is to live right, virtue, education, flourishing, and setting them up rightly to be able to experience the liberty and pursuit of happiness that they'll then exercise once we've raised them and they go out and go forth. Absolutely. So some of the primary roles for these parents, this man and this woman that have come together in the sacred bond of marriage, what that looks like, they've now had a child. What are they to do? Obviously, one of those things is care, right?
Yeah, so parents, we want to think of them as caregivers and educators and formators, and then lots of things can fall under there. But caregivers, especially, when a baby first comes out, largely the first thing is feed them, clothe them, house them, keep them safe and alive. And so that's going to be caregiving, and that's going to extend throughout raising the child. Going to extend into concerns of health and sexuality and providing for that, and the importance of that inside the family, and the parents being the primary caregivers in all of those ways, providing for the physical needs of the child as they grow, which starts out very simple and then gets more and more complex as you age. And then you mentioned formation, so care and then the graduation into formation and what that child is going to grow to be.
Of course, we know that there's physical formation, there's mental and emotional formation, but there's also spiritual formation and what that looks like. Whether people want to call it discipleship or they want to call it parenting, it works out. And so, as we walk with our children, as we help them grow into being good citizens, Christian citizens, flourishing adults, what does that look like? Yeah, all of these contribute to what you might put in sort of a bigger umbrella, like maybe human formation.
So, you do, as parents, we want to be the primary formators in all of these areas, and especially we would say, above all, the spiritual formation.
So, knowing their orientation to their Final end, which is God, and knowing their relationship with their God and Father, and knowing their Savior Jesus Christ, and the importance and primacy of that relationship and that identity, that that will be the primary formation. And then all of the other things fall under or add to whether that's academic formation, intellectual formation, virtue formation, moral formation, all of those things are subordinated and ordered to that Christian formation of growing in the faith and growing in their relationship with the Lord. The stronger they are in their relationship with the Lord, the stronger they'll be in all of those other areas. I mean, letters going back to the first and second century of Christians, even during times of persecution, pointing out that Christians are then in fact the best citizens because we live rightly, we contribute the most, we love our neighbors the most, we're most virtuous because of our relationship with the Lord, and that those things redound unto society. But also, the Western culture developed much of the science that we have in the world today based on our knowledge and trust and our faith in our Lord, and that scientific truth and biblical truth cannot be in conflict because they're.
From the same source. And if that was the bedrock from which grew all of the science we know today, then naturally Christians will then be better fit to, in fact, advance even in the sciences and other intellectual formations. To that point, a man who had a very serious impact on the formation of our country, Daniel Webster, said this: He said, Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good citizens. And I think that's the purpose, as you're stating, of the formative aspects of being a good parent. As we grow these children, very similar to the way a person might grow a plant, we put all of the things necessary into helping the formation of that child grow into being a flourishing adult so that all of society benefits, our culture benefits, our nation continues to be the exceptional place that our framer set it up to be.
So, while the care and formative aspects are how it's done, let's talk about why that's so important for not just the child, but everyone around that child. Sure, and not even just the society, right? The church? Yeah. God's kingdom grows when we bring children up in the ways of the Lord.
And so we do this, again, as good parents. To be truly good parents, we have to, again, understand the stewardship of the gift of God. But then again, that redounds unto the further society because those children once formed and raised and now able to give back and contribute will be contributing from the same source of good, which is the only source of good. And they'll be participating in that and benefiting our society as a whole in their jobs, in their work, in their own marriages, and raising their own children, in their voting habits, in their engagement in the political community. All of the things they touch will be touched by God's grace because they become instruments of that by our bringing them up in that.
And so when we raise the next generation of believers, we raise the next generation of citizens. And we know our country was founded on Christian principles. And so not only will they be better citizens by the nature of the human person and virtue, but they will be necessarily better citizens in American culture because our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. were written from the same principles.
So if the family is the bedrock of society and good marriages make strong families, the natural byproduct of that is good parents making sure that children are not only set up for success, but also grow into flourishing adults who will make the world around them, the church, their neighbors, their government, all of those things successful in and of themselves.
Sounds to me like parenting is pretty important. I think that that's a fair assessment. Yeah. So it's incumbent upon us, not just as individuals, but as people who coalesce around these ideas, as an organization and ministry like NC Family, to promote not just good parenting, but good parents and setting them up for success by giving them the tools necessary, but even in the halls of the General Assembly, making sure that parental rights are affirmed. Of course, we know that the government cannot give parents rights.
They possess those rights innately as the parents of that child, but to promote those laws that make sure parents are set up for success. What do you foresee? That looking like in the years ahead? And what should then the response of those parents be to such laws?
So, you bring up a good point, and we talked about this particularly with the sanctity of life. And we talked about the Declaration of Independence, going back all the way to our first episode, that these fundamental rights are not created or endowed or created out of whole cloth by the government and then bestowed upon us by our generous givers on high. But in fact, they're by nature, by the way God has created the order of society and the order of man and all of creation. And it's the government's job to recognize that, honor that, protect it, support it, defend it, bolster it, all of these things. And parenting, particularly in the context of a marriage and an intact family, is especially one of these areas where I think you can look at policies and see a temptation to invert that or not.
So you can see policies, whether it's educational freedom or health and sexuality, and we'll look at ways that policies can be written such that the government is seen as engaging with the individual from birth. Really, the government is who looks after the two-year-old, four-year-old, five-year-old, ten-year-old, and the parents are sort of just feeding them to keep them alive until they're ready to be the care aspect that is not the formative aspect. Exactly. Versus policies that engage the family, and until there's a reason to say something's wrong with this family, which, of course, we have child protective services and health and human services and all the subordinate agencies there to do that.
So, when there are cases where it is deemed that, in fact, this specific family unit is compromised, we have exceptional cases for that and policies for that. But outside of those exceptional cases, we should assume that the family is the place and the entity that the government should be engaging. And any policy that assumes that the child is engaging directly with the state and not the family with the state effectively undermines not this particular family unit, but the family as such. Absolutely. And parenting as such.
Because if you start saying that the government, through the public schools, is the best expert in a sort of technocratic view, that the experts know best of how to raise the child, whether it's in Intellectually or morally, you're now compromising that parenting is the natural order. If you think that the healthcare systems know best what is good for the child, now obviously there are scientific questions that medicine may be better fit to answer, but to just assume wholesale that the medical system is going to have all the answers for the child's health and the parents are sort of second-class participants in those choices is again to undermine parenting as such and the family as such. And so, things like the Parents' Bill of Rights a couple years ago, back in 2023, or Parents' Medical Bill of Rights, which is sitting in the Senate and hopefully we'll see some traction as the short session starts. We'll see. Bills like this reclaim and reassert and re-recognize, but do not create the rights of the family and the rights of parents and the primary role of parents.
And the more we honor that with policy, the more we will reorient our society and our culture and our laws to the natural order that God has implemented. That's excellent. Another thing that our friends at In Before Us, Katie Faust, and we have been a strong proponent of is a child's fundamental. Right to their parents. What does that look like?
What does that mean for us today in this moment?
So, in addition to us talking about parenting from the parent's perspective, thinking about parents and their relation to their child is another important thing. And as you mentioned, Katie Faust and them before us, they're huge on that a child has a right to their mother and father, and that situations that would deny them their mother or father intentionally are harmful, at least in some psychological degree, and often in much more catastrophic ways to the child.
Now, they want to be clear, and so do we, that that does not mean that situations that present themselves that compromise that are bad.
So, adoption is a great answer to a tough situation, whether that's a mother choosing adoption rather than abortion, we praise that. Whether that's an orphaned child for some tragic circumstances, obviously adoption is a great answer to that. Fostering is another great gift and service and ministry and way to love on children in bad situations, but we would not want to create situations in which that necessarily is the case, that the child is cut off from their Biological mother and father, because every child has necessarily a biological mother and father, and the ideal situation is that they are then in a parenting relationship with those same two individuals. When that can't be the case, mothers and fathers and men and women who step in to love that child and care for them and parent them, properly speaking, that's a great gift. And we want to honor that, but we don't want to create situations that deny that upfront and by nature of the act.
And so, this came up when talking about redefining marriage. If you change marriage into not a man and a woman, then if that new thing that they're calling marriage demands a child, well, you're now demanding a child be denied one of their parents.
So, we want to affirm all forms of parenting as a good way to love on a child in a given situation, but we don't want to start creating situations where you have to necessarily create non-natural or cutoff situations for children. Absolutely. And to reiterate what I think we've said so many times: in an optimal situation designed by God, a man and a woman come together. And in the bond of marriage, they have a child, and that is the formula whereby that child not only succeeds but flourishes to benefit everyone around them. Absolutely, great point.
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times in regard to the way most policies should affect people. We govern to the rule and not to the exception. And I think there are, of course, exceptions to that statement, but it's important for people to understand that the intact family unit, as designed by God, should be the bedrock of society on which everything that we hold dear flourishes. Thank you for watching this episode of The Truths We Hold. We invite you to join us and come along for the ride as we cherish these truths, not just over the past 250 years, but in the next 250 years.
So on behalf of Adamo, myself, Mitch, and the rest of our team here at NC Family, thank you for watching this episode of The Truths We Hold. 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.
