How to Strengthen NC Families (with Aaron Baer & John Rustin)

MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Families are the most fundamental building block of society. The strength of our families helps determine the strength of our local communities, state and country.

So how strong are America's families? Aaron Bear is the CEO of the 2025 Family Structure Index, which ranked North Carolina 21st in the nation with a 61.8 index score. He joins us today to explain what this means. And also joining us today, NC Family President John Rustin, who will give us some insight into North Carolina's Family Structure Index and how we can work to strengthen families in our own state.

Aaron Bear, welcome to Family Policy Matters. And John Rustin, thanks for jumping on with us today. Hey, thanks, Tracey. Aaron, great to be with you. Yeah, brother. All right.

Well, Aaron, why don't you begin? What question did your Family Structure Index seek to answer and what variables did you consider as you figured your rankings? Well, you know, there's a lot of state rankings that come out every year, right, that measure a lot of different things. A lot of times, you know, how good a state is for business, right, or for starting a new business or what your tax code look like or the states with the least regulations. Well, we wanted to really dive into the root of what makes a state thrive.

And we think that's families, right? So we wanted to dive in deep to see what is the actual state of families in states across the country? What states are doing well?

What can we learn from and what states are struggling? And so what we did with this Family Structure Index that Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia and the Institute for Family Studies put together for us, we wanted to look at demographic data. So we looked at three things. We looked at the state's fertility rate. So what's the rate of childbearing age women are having kids? We wanted to look at marriage rates. And we wanted to look at how many kids, especially teenagers, are raised with intact families. And Brad and his team put together an algorithm to take those existing demographic data. That's what's really important about this is we're looking at census data and demographic data to put these numbers together to say, hey, this is the actual state of family culture in the various states across the country. And unfortunately, when we finished this project, we saw a pretty bleak picture for a lot of the country and sort of sets a tone for where we need to go from here.

Okay, we'll talk about some of those findings and trends. And were there some states that you were a bit surprised at? I don't think any states that we were particularly surprised that it's the individual state. First and foremost, Utah has the healthiest family structure in the entire country by a really far margin when you're looking at their Family Structure Index score. I think what was really most surprising by all of it was how poor most of the country is doing, right? North Carolina is ranked 21st, Ohio is ranked 29th.

But there's really not much difference when you look at our actual index scores all combined. And you see in a lot of states, more than half of the teenagers are being raised in non-intact homes. That's really devastating in terms of the long term success of those children. And I think for one of the things, and we're especially talking to our fiscal conservative friends, that's one of the main drivers of things that causes government to grow. Is instability at home. You know, we always say when families fail, government grows. And that's a major driver you're seeing happening in America today. So how do we respond to this as citizens, but also as lawmakers?

That's one of the things that's kind of the struggle, the challenge with something like family structure. There are certainly things that lawmakers can do, and we make some recommendations on dealing with marriage penalties and welfare programs, teaching the success sequence in public schools, things like that that we think are really important. But ultimately, what really jumps out to me is that this is first and foremost a culture problem.

And it is really telling that Utah is the number one state in our report. The one thing that the Mormon Church does better than Christians do in many ways is celebrate and encourage marriage with their kids. And I think that's something that as we're talking to churches, as we're talking to Christians and say, hey, what does your church do to really encourage marriage and family? And I just want to give one little anecdote that really highlights this picture. We were presenting this data to a Christian college university president. And as he was sort of looking at it, he sent an email off to his registrar to say, hey, when was the last time our college taught a marriage and family course?

And the response back was 2008. This just shows across the board in churches and our Christian ministry, we have sort of abandoned the good and celebrating that vision of marriage and family for the next generation. And actually, if we want to change the course, that's where we have to start.

There's certainly some public policy and political things we need to do here that lawmakers should be touting and celebrating. But really, this comes back to the church. John Rustin, what do you think when you hear this? What are the takeaways from North Carolina's score on this family structure index, which, of course, was 61.8 and we were 21st in the nation?

Yeah, well, thanks, Tracey. One of the bottom lines for me is that, as Erin has already expressed, there's some real concerns about the information that came to light with this index. But it's important that we are looking at factual information and really taking sober judgment of what that means.

If it's great, that's great. If it's not, then we need to take the next step in figuring out how best to address it. And I think this study highlights a number of challenges that we're facing across the country and our individual states. And it's really an initiative for a lot of us to really double down on our efforts to highlight the critical importance of families and family structure as, as we often say, the building block of society. What do we need to do to strengthen families, to keep families together?

Some of those things, as Erin said, can be and are being addressed by the government, but a lot of these things really need to be addressed by the church. In North Carolina, as Erin shared, our score was 21st out of the 50 states, which is good, but certainly not an area that we want to rest on. I would point out that North Carolina is the ninth most populous state in the nation, and among the 10 most populous states in the nation, we ranked second behind Texas.

And so I think that's a positive thing. I know that these demographics are not specifically related to population, but I think looking at the most populous states, some of them have some of the most concerning scores. Where North Carolina came in a little bit better, we also did quite well in comparison to other states in the southeastern U.S. But again, being 21 out of 50 states is an area of concern and certainly encourages us to want to look at what we can do, both from a policy perspective, but also from a cultural perspective to improve the status of families here in North Carolina and across the nation. So you guys both mentioned the responsibility of the church in this problem, but how do we address that? Is it as simple as teaching a marriage class or are there some deep-seated attitudes that maybe even the parents and grandparents have developed or absorbed from the culture that we need to attack as well?

You know, Tracy, I think that's the key question here. And one of the big things we've talked about, and this is one of the things that I think is so illustrative of Utah being number one and what I've just even seen. You know, I run the Family Policy Council in Ohio. I started my career at the Center for Arizona Policy, our sister organization in Arizona, and there's a large Mormon contingent in Arizona. And what I saw there was the Mormon Church does actually a phenomenal job of teaching the next generation that marriage is essential and kids are a blessing. And I've seen that happen too many times in churches where the opposite lesson is somewhat communicated. My wife is a writer for World Magazine and Christian Today, and she wrote one of my favorite op-eds a few years ago called Dear Pastors Say Happy Mother's Day Full Stop. And her whole point of it was how every time she comes into a Mother's Day service and the pastor wants to get up there and say Happy Mother's Day, he first has to caveat so much about, well, I know some people have a difficult relationship with their mom, and I know some people want to be moms and they can't, but for the moms in the room, Happy Mother's Day. And she said, you know, by the time they actually get to that last part, the moms in the room actually feel guilty about being moms.

And that's just one small example, but you can see how that culture kind of goes across. And even the way we talk about kids a lot of times, you know, the Bible tells us children are a blessing. Do we really celebrate children in that way?

I know, again, I'm a millennial. And even for us, when we were coming out of our Christian ministries and things like that, kids were kind of seen as a burden, as something for later in life. And it was all about how do we go and experience our career and do these things. And then marriage and family was sort of secondary. And that's not certainly the way that God has structured things in our lives, and that's not the way that we should be teaching about these things. And I know for some folks that sounds abstract, but when we actually go in and talk about our experience in church, I think a lot of folks would resonate with that. John, you mentioned also the government or you mentioned some things that were happening on the public policy front.

So talk about that. What kinds of things can we do to address this in that way? Well, I think as Erin said, there are specific policy recommendations like eliminating marriage tax penalties, making sure that people who get married aren't suffering inequality in representation to the tax code, things like that. Having programs in schools that help teach the beauty and the value of marriage. I remember when my daughter was getting married. Well, before she was getting married, she was moving to Baltimore where her now husband lived. They were dating and it had been in a long term relationship. But one of the things that her mother and I counseled her on as she moved up to Baltimore was we would not be in favor at all of you and him cohabitating outside of marriage, although it might be from an economic standpoint, kind of make a lot of practical sense. That's not a good thing. Her immediate response was, oh, no, no, no, we would never do that.

I learned about that in my economics class at UNC Chapel Hill. How harmful cohabitation was in my wife and I looked at each other and went, wow, we were not expecting that. But that was pretty incredible that she learned the economics of the harms of cohabitation in an economics class in college.

And so that's maybe a somewhat rare experience that she had. But we were really grateful for that. And that's part of what I think the message here is, is that the church really needs to lead the way in expressing the beauty and the value and the importance of marriage. But our civil laws and our public policy needs to affirm that as well. So there is a constant theme running through our society that says marriage and children are a wonderful, blessed thing and something that we should aspire to. And especially when we look at some of the statistics in this index that showed the incredibly high percentage of teens who were raised not in intact families. A lot of times those are generational habits that have formed generational effects. And when you have a couple of generations of individuals who don't know what a stable family led by a married mother and father is, then, you know, they really don't have the context to understand what marriage really is about. And so those are the types of things that we really need to take a sober look at and figure out how we can best really affirm that in our culture, both through the church, but also through our public policy and governmental structures. Yeah, great examples, John.

Thank you so much. So, Aaron, when you look at North Carolina, can you point out some things that you think the statistics show us that we really do need to improve on? And also, is there some hope found in those numbers?

No, I think there really is. Just looking at North Carolina's numbers compared to the rest of the nation and why you guys are sort of ahead of the curve compared to where Ohio is behind the curve. The fact that you have so many prime-aged adults married, your marriage rate of about 58% is really good in the nation. I think that's something that is great happening in North Carolina or pretty good, right?

I think we'd all love to see that higher. But really where North Carolina is struggling much like the rest of the nation would be in your fertility rate and in your percentage of kids raised in intact homes. And again, I think for a lot of people, that's going to be shocking to know. Think about that this way. More than half of the kids in your high schools don't have a married mom and dad at home.

And just, again, think about that practically speaking, about what that experience is like. How much harder is that on life and how much harder is that on folks? And then the other side is the fertility rate.

And I think this is really the major disaster that's coming for America right now that we need to be aware of. You know, North Carolina is right about a national average of 1.7 children per childbearing age woman, where that needs to be at 2.1 to be at replacement levels. So basically, North Carolinians, just like the rest of the country, aren't having enough babies to replace their population. And this is where you see a lot of the folks talking about the national debt bubble and is social security going to last because we're just not having enough babies anymore to replace the people that we have.

Again, I think that's a part of the way we talk about kids and view kids. Tracy, I do just want to touch on one other quick thing that you asked a little bit ago because I think this is a really important part about public policy, which is you said there's not a lot of marriageable men out there, right? And I think this is one of the things we need to be talking about in our education system, and there's been some really good research on this, that our education system is not built towards young men, right? It's the reason why you're seeing that 61% of college students are women. Long term, this is going to be really sort of demographically devastating for the country if we don't start thinking about how are we raising up great men to marry these great women? And the confluence of an education system that's not built around how men learn to the fact that there's not a lot of jobs that are not easily accessible without sort of high levels of college degrees, so a lot of manufacturing jobs are gone. And third, the sort of evil kind of combination of video games and pornography that are also accessible now on screens have really harmed our young boys. And that's another one of sort of the secondary major stories that comes out of this Family Structure Index is talking about what's happening with men that I think a lot of people who know young women are seeing this sort of playing out in real time. We're just about out of time. So before we go, Aaron Bear, where can our listeners go to find this 2025 Family Structure Index?

So they can go access the index at ccv.org slash family index. All right. Aaron Bear, President of the Center for Christian Virtue and NC Family President John Rustin, thank you both so much for being with 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.