Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 14, 2024


Ep 1002 | No Man Can Replace Moms


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

159.1936

Word Count

9,102

Sentence Count

647

Misogynist Sentences

35

Hate Speech Sentences

47


Summary

A 3-year-old girl with two gay dads says she wants a mommy, but her dad says she can be a mom too! Why Christians should care about this and speak up about it! This episode is brought to you by GoodRanchers.


Transcript

00:00:00.280 A three-year-old girl with two gay dads says that she wants a mommy, but her dad, an opinion
00:00:08.140 writer for the Washington Post, says, eh, men can be moms too.
00:00:13.360 Today we are talking about the state of the American family and why Christians must care
00:00:18.860 about this and speak up about it.
00:00:21.180 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:23.220 Go to GoodRanchers.com, use code ALI at checkout.
00:00:25.360 That's GoodRanchers.com, code ALI.
00:00:30.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.
00:00:38.680 Happy Tuesday.
00:00:40.100 Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
00:00:42.780 Thank you so much for the love last week on the 1000th episode of Relatable.
00:00:48.600 Your encouraging comments, your prayers mean so much to me.
00:00:52.860 So thank you so much, Relatable family.
00:00:55.320 I just, I love y'all.
00:00:57.000 It's all for y'all.
00:00:58.220 Y'all are the ultimate executive producers of this show.
00:01:03.220 I try to do everything that I can.
00:01:06.640 We try to do everything that we can to add as much value to you as possible.
00:01:12.120 And you guys always help us do that by giving us your awesome ideas and encouraging us along
00:01:18.220 the way.
00:01:18.660 So thank you so much.
00:01:20.420 I have got a very, very special announcement tomorrow for my Relatable family.
00:01:27.620 It's not today.
00:01:28.840 This is the biggest announcement that we've ever had.
00:01:31.940 No, it's not a new book.
00:01:33.960 It's not merchandise.
00:01:36.160 I may or may not be the vice presidential pick for President Trump.
00:01:41.840 I'm not going to let you know, but that's not the announcement tomorrow.
00:01:45.400 It's also not a Relatable cruise, which I thought was an awesome idea.
00:01:48.840 I'm also not getting bangs on YouTube live.
00:01:51.740 There was another guest that someone made, but there are people on Instagram who have
00:01:58.000 guessed what it is.
00:01:59.700 It's a really big announcement.
00:02:01.200 I'm so excited about it.
00:02:02.820 I am pumped, pumped, pumped, pumped about it.
00:02:05.700 And so you will find out tomorrow.
00:02:07.440 I actually, as I'm saying this, I don't know if I'm announcing tomorrow on the show first
00:02:11.760 or if I'm waiting to announce it on social media tomorrow evening and then talking about
00:02:17.280 it on the show on Thursday.
00:02:18.680 I haven't decided on that yet, but you will find out tomorrow.
00:02:22.880 Woohoo!
00:02:23.360 I'm super pumped about that.
00:02:25.040 Two other small things.
00:02:26.980 We still have our 1000 episodes t-shirt available to you all.
00:02:33.340 AllieMerch.com.
00:02:34.820 It's got a bunch of our most popular sayings on the back there.
00:02:37.920 Super cute.
00:02:38.420 It's limited edition, so it's not going to be for sale always.
00:02:42.180 So if you're a real one, if you're a real Relatable, Relatable, then snag you one of these.
00:02:49.000 Very special for our 1000th episode.
00:02:51.500 And you still also have time to enter to win our amazing giveaway.
00:02:56.020 This is incredible.
00:02:56.660 I'm so thankful for our sponsors just in general, but in particular for participating in
00:03:02.800 this giveaway.
00:03:03.640 So this is our 1000th episode giveaway.
00:03:06.480 You've got until, let's see, when's the deadline for this?
00:03:10.000 I think it's Thursday.
00:03:11.160 Thursday, May 16th.
00:03:12.800 This is the deadline.
00:03:14.040 So you enter for your chance to win a Relatable merch package, a signed copy of You're Not Enough,
00:03:19.740 and that's okay.
00:03:20.920 One ESV study Bible, my favorite study Bible, and then over $1,000 worth of products from
00:03:26.760 our sponsors.
00:03:27.560 So Adele Natural Cosmetics, you've got a gift package from them.
00:03:30.600 $250 gift card to Carly Jean Los Angeles.
00:03:33.800 A set of sheets from Cozy Earth.
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00:03:53.880 Go to the giveaway post on Relatable Show page.
00:03:56.300 That's Relatable with ABS.
00:03:57.720 Tag three friends in the post.
00:03:59.460 Follow Relatable with ABS and Allie B. Stuckey on Instagram.
00:04:03.680 And then follow each of our seven sponsors tagged in the post.
00:04:08.020 So we'll put those instructions in the description of this episode so you can make sure to do it
00:04:14.620 all correctly.
00:04:15.700 And again, the deadline is Thursday, May 16th.
00:04:20.340 Okay.
00:04:21.000 So as you heard at the top, we are going to talk about the state of the American family
00:04:26.020 and fertility and the need for a mom and dad based on recent developments that I've seen
00:04:32.120 in the media.
00:04:33.580 Some stories that were released over the weekend, as well as some relevant data.
00:04:37.480 But first, I want to continue or bring up a conversation that I was having on Instagram,
00:04:43.940 as sometimes I like to do, because I like to get responses from my YouTube viewers, from
00:04:49.480 the people who listen to this, if you didn't happen to see it on my Instagram story.
00:04:53.680 And that really doesn't have anything to do with the topics that we're discussing today.
00:04:58.080 This is just kind of random.
00:04:59.760 It was actually because I was watching American Idol for the first time since Kelly Clarkson's
00:05:05.220 season when I was in, at first I said second grade, but I think I was maybe in third or
00:05:09.220 fourth grade.
00:05:10.180 Have not watched American Idol since then, but I watched it over the weekend because Jack
00:05:15.020 Blocker, who is incredible, he went to the Christian school that I went to growing up and
00:05:21.460 he graduated in 2017.
00:05:24.260 And when I heard that, I was like, oh, we're not that far apart in age.
00:05:28.020 I graduated in 2010.
00:05:30.760 And yet, if someone were to tell me that they graduated seven years before me, 2003, I'm
00:05:36.180 like, oof, oof, we are not the same, not the same generation at all.
00:05:41.840 And so it made me think about how this stage of life is very delusional when it comes to
00:05:49.920 our age, 32.
00:05:51.540 It's a very delulu time when it comes to coming to terms with how old we actually are.
00:05:58.320 It seems like sometimes, even though, of course, we grow and mature, we get all the responsibilities
00:06:02.420 that come with marriage and work and children.
00:06:06.820 We pay our taxes.
00:06:07.700 We're responsible citizens.
00:06:09.160 It's not like a failure to launch situation.
00:06:11.800 But it's like I have to put in effort to remind myself that I'm not 25 or 23 or 27, somewhere
00:06:20.060 in my 20s.
00:06:21.320 That's where I feel like I am.
00:06:23.300 And I have to remember that someone who is seven years younger than me does not feel like
00:06:28.500 we are in the same age range.
00:06:30.820 Sometimes, like I have friends who are between like 38 and 42, and they will say things like,
00:06:37.240 oh, you know, our age.
00:06:39.640 And I'm like, our?
00:06:41.160 Our age?
00:06:42.580 Our age?
00:06:43.860 That's how it feels to be 32.
00:06:45.920 You don't feel like you are close in age.
00:06:48.280 You feel like you're closer in age to people who are 22 than 42 in some ways.
00:06:53.440 And yet, it's really not reality.
00:06:56.820 And after I said that on Instagram, I got so many messages from you saying that you feel
00:07:02.820 the same way in your 40s, in your 50s, that it really doesn't get better.
00:07:07.160 That you're constantly kind of stuck in like late 20s, early 30s and feeling like you're
00:07:12.460 still there, and then your body reminds you, oh, yeah, I'm not a 27-year-old anymore.
00:07:18.620 I don't know what it is about that.
00:07:20.320 I don't even desire to be younger than I am.
00:07:23.060 I don't wish that I could go back to being 25.
00:07:26.080 I don't miss those days.
00:07:27.780 I don't see that as like my glory days are the best.
00:07:30.900 I don't see that at all.
00:07:32.000 I love the stage of life that I'm in.
00:07:33.660 I love being 32.
00:07:34.800 I think I'm a lot more confident than I was 10 years ago.
00:07:38.760 But for whatever reason, it is like really hard to wrap our minds around the fact that
00:07:44.580 we are full-grown adults, that we are like the age of the parents in Rugrats.
00:07:51.120 Like that is it.
00:07:51.920 I mean, that's just like crazy.
00:07:53.740 I wasn't allowed to watch Rugrats, by the way, because Angelica was a brat.
00:07:57.040 But I saw a meme about that, that we thought that they were so much older.
00:08:01.740 And yet here we are, the ripe old age of 32.
00:08:06.580 And I am indeed much, much older than people who graduated seven years after me.
00:08:14.140 It's been 10 years this month since I graduated from college.
00:08:19.040 What?
00:08:19.940 What?
00:08:20.400 10 years?
00:08:21.840 Bree, do you ever feel delusional about your age?
00:08:25.960 Yeah.
00:08:27.320 Well, I'm about to turn 30.
00:08:29.000 I know.
00:08:29.360 So that's going to be kind of a...
00:08:31.380 What day is your birthday?
00:08:32.200 I have it in my calendar, but...
00:08:33.540 September 1st.
00:08:34.620 Oh, yeah.
00:08:35.340 Oh, my goodness.
00:08:36.180 Yes.
00:08:36.600 Yeah.
00:08:37.480 Wow.
00:08:38.020 So I probably will start feeling delusional about it.
00:08:41.680 Yeah.
00:08:41.980 Right now, I'm still in my 20s, so...
00:08:43.680 Yeah.
00:08:44.180 Oh, you have to milk that.
00:08:45.780 Yeah.
00:08:46.100 And even when you're 30, you're late, late, late 20s.
00:08:49.560 Yeah.
00:08:49.820 You just hang on to that.
00:08:51.120 Late, extra late 20s.
00:08:52.120 Do you feel delusional about your age?
00:08:54.880 Getting there.
00:08:55.840 Okay.
00:08:57.040 Getting there.
00:08:57.620 Anyone else feel delusional?
00:08:59.080 Well, I know that y'all can't hear them or see them, but I'm just taking a poll around
00:09:02.080 the room.
00:09:03.340 How old are y'all back there?
00:09:05.860 28.
00:09:07.220 25.
00:09:07.820 Oh, I am the elder, the geriatric woman in this room.
00:09:15.400 Wow.
00:09:15.820 Wow.
00:09:16.180 25?
00:09:17.280 Did you say 25?
00:09:18.840 Oh, my goodness.
00:09:20.820 Oh, my goodness.
00:09:22.680 Wow.
00:09:23.240 Wow.
00:09:23.840 Okay.
00:09:24.420 I really am old.
00:09:26.340 Thank you for that.
00:09:28.020 Okay.
00:09:28.580 That's all I wanted to say.
00:09:29.440 So give me your opinions in the comments, in the messages, please, if you feel like that
00:09:33.260 or if your mind has always been able to keep up with how old you actually are.
00:09:36.680 Okay, so there was yet another debate discussion on conservative Twitter.
00:09:52.880 I would say even independent, maybe even center-left Twitter.
00:09:57.240 This seems to actually unite a whole bunch of people with different backgrounds on social
00:10:03.600 media, the conversation about surrogacy and the ethical issues with buying eggs from one
00:10:12.600 woman, renting the womb of another woman, purposely creating children through IVF that
00:10:19.780 are going to be raised motherless, and the need for a newborn especially, but just a child
00:10:27.340 in general, to have a mother.
00:10:29.500 Now, children also need a father, and so creating purposely fatherless children is also evil.
00:10:37.500 I think having your mother and your father is a birthright.
00:10:41.980 Now, we understand that it is a broken world, and there are situations in which a mother who
00:10:50.600 is pregnant cannot take care of her child, and so she adopts out her child, and that child
00:10:58.700 is taken into a home, hopefully, that loves them and can care for that child, but adoption
00:11:06.560 is different than sperm and egg selling and surrogacy because, as we often say, adoption
00:11:12.660 redeems an already broken situation, whereas surrogacy, egg and sperm selling create that broken
00:11:19.540 situation because you are intentionally creating that child to take them away from their mother
00:11:24.980 or father, or even in a situation where, say, you have two biological parents that are using
00:11:30.540 a surrogate, you are still creating a child through what I believe is the unethical process
00:11:36.160 of IVF because it requires eugenics and destroying embryos and indefinitely freezing embryos, and
00:11:42.860 because these are people made in the image of God, I think that is unfair treatment of children
00:11:48.860 in their earliest stages of development, but even in that case, when you're using a surrogate
00:11:54.460 for a heterosexual couple's genetic child, you are creating that child to take them away
00:12:01.240 from the only woman from the only woman they have ever known, the woman that they have
00:12:04.500 bonded with, whose heartbeat she knows, whose smell and feel and touch she knows and longs
00:12:13.700 for, you are using a surrogate, creating that child to take them away from that bond, to sever
00:12:22.140 that bond at the earliest stages of development.
00:12:24.720 And I know it's easy for us to say, well, there are no consequences to that.
00:12:30.180 It's no big deal.
00:12:31.560 We'll get into some data about, you know, what the numbers actually say and what people who
00:12:37.280 have been born through surrogacy actually say about that.
00:12:41.600 But the truth is, we are just taking advantage of a baby's inability to articulate their needs,
00:12:49.140 and we are assuming that everything is fine.
00:12:52.220 And that is cruel.
00:12:53.340 That's worse treatment than we give to puppies and kittens.
00:12:56.980 We understand, even though they can't verbalize their needs, that they need to be with their
00:13:02.000 mom for 6, 8, 12 weeks after birth.
00:13:05.400 But we just assume that human newborns don't.
00:13:08.580 In the name of inclusion, in the name of empathy, especially in the name of LGBTQ celebration,
00:13:14.940 we just say that two men or two women can use these services, use this reproductive technology
00:13:20.780 to purposely create motherless or fatherless children.
00:13:24.420 And it rightly causes a lot of anger and sadness and conviction in people, especially when it comes
00:13:33.720 to newborns who are being taken in by two men.
00:13:38.620 Because while all children need both a mother and a father, babies especially need their moms.
00:13:46.320 They need that comfort.
00:13:47.680 They need that familiarity.
00:13:49.680 That bond that has been created for 10 months of pregnancy is so special and so important for
00:13:56.960 their emotional and physical regulation when they're born, for that bonding.
00:14:02.520 And really, what happens in the first few moments and few days after birth is very foundational for
00:14:09.980 a person.
00:14:10.840 That doesn't mean that that person can never recover.
00:14:13.340 Or if you had a traumatic experience after birth as a baby, that you're not going to live a healthy
00:14:19.960 and fulfilled life.
00:14:21.220 But we know it can have very serious effects on both the mother and child if they are not
00:14:26.620 able to bond after birth.
00:14:29.660 And yet again, in the name of LGBTQ inclusion, we are taking that away from children.
00:14:35.580 There was a video that was going around.
00:14:37.940 We've talked about this couple before.
00:14:40.080 They are two men who used their friend's eggs and one of the man's sister's uterus to give
00:14:50.920 birth to a boy and a girl twins.
00:14:54.420 And they have documented this process from conception.
00:14:58.100 They have monetized this process since the beginning.
00:15:01.940 And they continue to build their lucrative TikTok empire based on their children and their story
00:15:14.640 of obtaining these children.
00:15:17.020 And so they posted a video of one of these babies being placed on one of the men's chest.
00:15:24.620 And the baby is shivering and quivering and screaming and crying.
00:15:30.660 And it caused this very visceral reaction from a lot of people on social media.
00:15:36.460 This is Sot 2.
00:15:37.580 I mean, if that doesn't just break your heart.
00:16:06.540 Now, this man might be a very nice man, and I am sure that he feels love for these two
00:16:14.500 babies.
00:16:15.160 But at the end of the day, no matter what a great guy he might be or a great dad he might
00:16:20.640 be, he's not a mom.
00:16:21.800 He's not a mom.
00:16:22.980 And babies need their mom.
00:16:24.080 That baby right there is crying for her mom.
00:16:27.440 She needs her mother.
00:16:28.540 She wants her mother's smell.
00:16:30.540 She actually longs for the body of the woman who gestated her.
00:16:34.780 She doesn't even get the chance to connect to her biological mom, who is the egg seller.
00:16:40.840 And yet she is forced onto this chest of a man who she doesn't even know.
00:16:46.500 And so that's how we are treating newborn children in the name of LGBTQ celebration.
00:16:53.240 This is the perfect example of children always being the unconsenting subjects of progressive
00:17:01.440 social experiments.
00:17:02.560 We are willing to sacrifice their well-being, their needs, and their rights for the whims
00:17:10.080 and wants of adults.
00:17:12.400 It is wicked and it is wrong.
00:17:14.760 And I know this particular couple is very upset with me for talking about these things.
00:17:22.840 They're talking about it on TikTok.
00:17:25.560 But look, I care about the rights of kids.
00:17:30.100 Kids need a mom and a dad, not just a female presence, not just a female influence.
00:17:35.900 They need a mom and a dad.
00:17:36.860 And yes, I do think it is cruel to purposely create children that are going to be motherless
00:17:42.060 or fatherless.
00:17:43.240 I do.
00:17:43.920 And I will continue to stand for that.
00:17:46.080 And I think one of them even said, don't you, he said, you're a Christian woman.
00:17:52.520 Don't you know that in the Bible they used concubines?
00:17:56.540 My gosh, I'm sorry.
00:17:57.840 I couldn't keep a straight face.
00:17:59.300 Use concubines as surrogates in the Bible.
00:18:02.700 Sir, sir, that is your response to me being against surrogacy, saying that because the Bible
00:18:11.560 you slave women to impregnate and carry a child, that that's the justification for surrogacy
00:18:19.700 today?
00:18:20.520 Are you also advocating for slavery?
00:18:23.100 You understand that those concubines were raped and forced to carry children in those
00:18:29.500 times.
00:18:30.620 Are you saying that you condone that slavery?
00:18:33.900 Are you saying that you condone that?
00:18:35.680 I don't think that that is the biblical example that you want to point to, to justify the choices
00:18:41.000 that you are making today.
00:18:42.320 Maybe there is a better and more sophisticated argument that you have.
00:18:45.680 I personally have not ever heard a convincing biblical surrogacy argument.
00:18:51.480 The surrogacy example that I think of is Hagar and Sarai and Abram.
00:18:56.860 That did not turn out well.
00:18:58.500 That's actually a perfect example of the brokenness and the pain and just the trauma that that can
00:19:07.380 cause.
00:19:07.900 And so, no, sir, no, sir, I'm sorry.
00:19:11.220 I don't desire to hurt your feelings, but look, you're putting it out there for everyone
00:19:16.820 to see.
00:19:17.540 You are commercializing this process.
00:19:19.340 You are monetizing this process.
00:19:22.380 You can't expect everyone to celebrate.
00:19:25.360 There are going to be people who are against this because we believe what human beings have
00:19:29.820 believed for all of time and all of cultures that men and women are different and that moms
00:19:34.480 and dads are both irreplaceable.
00:19:36.900 Now, here is a beautiful example of what it looks like when a newborn is given the comfort
00:19:44.340 and the familiarity of his mom after birth.
00:19:48.340 Here's thought one.
00:19:49.300 Hi, mama.
00:19:54.620 I'm sorry.
00:19:56.460 I was a stinker.
00:20:03.140 She's looking at you.
00:20:04.340 She's really beautiful.
00:20:06.460 She's looking at you.
00:20:10.480 That's it.
00:20:11.560 Every mom knows it's exactly, that is exactly what happens.
00:20:15.020 All that baby had to do was to smell his mom, hear his mom, touch his mom's face, immediately
00:20:25.500 calm down.
00:20:26.500 That is what's supposed to happen.
00:20:28.840 Every mom that has birthed a child, whether C-section or whether it was a natural birth,
00:20:36.220 we all know.
00:20:37.040 We all know that feeling of that crying baby who just wants to be held and just wants the
00:20:44.260 comfort of his or her mom.
00:20:47.440 All of us moms have been there.
00:20:49.700 That is how it's supposed to be.
00:20:51.020 And it's so obvious that God created that, created it to be that way, that these babies
00:20:56.460 long for their mom.
00:20:58.300 And again, to take that away from them intentionally, to create them, to sever that tie is cruel and
00:21:05.340 wrong.
00:21:05.680 There was a stunning example of this and the prolonged trauma and pain that this causes actually
00:21:15.620 in the Washington Post over the weekend.
00:21:18.740 This was their way, I guess, of celebrating Mother's Day, publishing an op-ed titled,
00:21:26.020 Our Daughter Wanted a Mommy So She Picked One of Her Dads.
00:21:30.600 This was written by a gay man who obtained his children through surrogacy.
00:21:40.200 And his daughter, three and a half years old, said, actually, I want a mom.
00:21:45.460 Okay, in the Washington Post, I mean, this was just stunning what this dad was willing
00:22:02.000 to admit and then how completely wrong he was in the conclusion that he drew at the end
00:22:07.260 of this.
00:22:07.720 So the summary is this, the TLDR, the three-year-old daughter of two gay men realized she does not
00:22:15.000 have a mom despite being inundated with gay children's books.
00:22:18.980 So she insists that one of her dads will now be her mom.
00:22:23.140 This is a very common story, by the way, as we will get into after I read you some quotes
00:22:29.140 from this article.
00:22:30.700 So he says, sometime last fall, our oldest daughter, then three and a half years old,
00:22:34.560 began telling us she wanted a mom.
00:22:36.120 My husband and I, two men, had known this moment might come.
00:22:40.400 We had done everything we could to lay the groundwork for her and her little sister.
00:22:44.440 So two girls, purposely created, without a mom.
00:22:49.020 By the way, in the IVF process, you choose the gender that you want very often, and I'm
00:22:55.780 sure they did.
00:22:56.580 And so they decided to create two little girls to be raised without a mother.
00:23:00.980 Again, cruel, selfish.
00:23:02.140 So he says, we had done everything we could to lay the groundwork for her and her little
00:23:08.560 sister to feel pride in our nontraditional family.
00:23:10.920 We'd stocked up on two dad children's books and recounted many times the story of how they'd
00:23:15.560 come into the world with the help of a generous egg donor and an amazing surrogate.
00:23:20.000 It's so funny that they say, generous egg donor and an amazing surrogate.
00:23:24.560 Egg donors and surrogates get paid tens of thousands of dollars to do this, okay?
00:23:28.820 So I'm not sure where the generosity is coming in.
00:23:32.540 But at least for our older daughter, none of these preventative measures had seemed to
00:23:38.760 soften the blow of realizing that every other kid she knew had a mom.
00:23:44.000 For a week or two, she seemed genuinely upset, but then came a twist that neither my husband
00:23:48.480 nor I expected.
00:23:49.920 She announced that she would now call my husband mommy.
00:23:53.240 I guarantee that this husband or this man is probably the more feminine and passive one
00:24:01.040 in their relationship.
00:24:02.200 She picked up on that because kids are smart and she decided, you're more feminine.
00:24:06.720 I'm going to call you mommy.
00:24:07.700 And that in her mind seemed to settle it.
00:24:10.140 She also started calling him by she, her pronouns.
00:24:13.400 She really, she didn't just want the label of a mommy.
00:24:16.600 She wanted a mommy.
00:24:17.420 And she decided in her sweet little brain that I am going to make myself a mommy.
00:24:23.920 I want a mother.
00:24:25.780 I want the love of a woman.
00:24:28.980 And then this was interesting.
00:24:30.820 I thought it was so interesting, his comment about his daughter calling his so-called husband,
00:24:38.100 she, her.
00:24:39.400 He said, was it okay to let her bend reality in this way?
00:24:44.120 So calling him, she, her, even though he goes on to say that the dad was okay with it,
00:24:51.840 that he's okay with being called mommy.
00:24:53.860 He's okay with being called she, her.
00:24:55.900 He says that calling him by these she, her pronouns is bending reality.
00:25:02.900 He says, wasn't this too big a concession to heteronormativity?
00:25:07.180 And then she, he says that it's gone on and on.
00:25:11.000 It didn't stop the way that he thought that it would.
00:25:15.960 He says to hammer home the point, she began every so often calling him she mother, a title
00:25:20.360 my husband delighted in.
00:25:22.980 Here's also just so selfish, so self-centered, such a narcissist.
00:25:28.500 The daughter's school was confused.
00:25:30.600 Her teachers the previous year had, after consulting us, rebranded the holiday of Mother's Day.
00:25:37.040 As parents' day, a gesture we really appreciated, but this time we required no special accommodation.
00:25:43.920 So again, mothers and women have to be erased in order to accommodate two men.
00:25:51.320 I mean, how much erasure can two gay men accomplish in their lives?
00:25:56.740 I mean, you've erased the role of mother, of gestator, by paying them and then separating
00:26:04.160 them from your family.
00:26:06.720 You are entering into a space that wants to celebrate mothers through Mother's Day.
00:26:11.960 And then you are encouraging an accommodation, which takes away the special attention from
00:26:19.820 mothers who are different from just parents and different from fathers in order to accommodate
00:26:24.860 you, a choice that you have made to raise motherless children.
00:26:31.400 And then he goes on to say, this year, however, they could do Mother's Day because now his partner
00:26:39.460 is called a mother.
00:26:41.500 And so this year at school, they got to have Mother's Day.
00:26:44.380 Yay!
00:26:44.640 We just get to change these celebrations and what our holidays are called based on what
00:26:51.680 two gay men want.
00:26:53.620 It's really incredible how they wield that much influence and authority.
00:26:58.320 I wonder what the other moms in the class thought about that, that it was just Parents'
00:27:02.860 Day, but the father, because Father's Day is in the summer, still got to have Father's
00:27:07.080 Day.
00:27:07.260 So these parents got to have Parents' Day and Father's Day, really incredible development.
00:27:15.640 He goes on to ask, but did she have a mother?
00:27:18.160 That was the question or a version of it that I've kept turning over in my head these past
00:27:22.560 months.
00:27:23.220 If a mother is simply a woman, simply a woman who is raising a child, simply, that's just
00:27:28.920 so myopic, then no, our daughters do not have one.
00:27:33.660 But are women really the only people who can be maternal?
00:27:37.840 Why can't the roles that were historically assigned, assigned, that's the language that
00:27:42.300 they use, it's just arbitrary, assigned mothers be fulfilled by parents or loved ones of any
00:27:47.700 kind?
00:27:48.080 Because you don't have a uterus.
00:27:49.980 You don't have ovaries.
00:27:51.820 That's why.
00:27:52.620 Because you're a man.
00:27:54.180 And y'all might be great dads.
00:27:56.540 Y'all might be great dads, but you'll never be a mom.
00:27:59.780 You'll never be a mom.
00:28:01.320 Men and women are not interchangeable.
00:28:02.760 You know that as a gay man, right?
00:28:05.900 You know that men and women aren't the same because there's a reason that you chose to
00:28:08.680 be with a man and not a woman.
00:28:10.000 If men and women were interchangeable, then surely you would have just chosen to be a woman
00:28:14.060 or chosen to marry a woman and to have children.
00:28:18.220 Naturally, you know that men and women are different when it comes to your attraction,
00:28:22.420 but you claim that men and women are interchangeable when it comes to parenthood.
00:28:27.460 That's interesting.
00:28:29.120 And yet it really is the same math.
00:28:30.760 And this is what even some people on the right don't understand.
00:28:34.400 The same math that says that men and women are interchangeable, therefore transgenderism
00:28:39.660 is totally valid.
00:28:41.000 Trans women are women.
00:28:42.140 The motto goes.
00:28:43.160 It's the same math as love is love.
00:28:45.180 These are circular mantras that have no real definition.
00:28:49.040 Therefore, they have no concrete reality, no grounding in biological truth because they
00:28:56.260 can be defined however you want to define them.
00:28:58.340 If love is love, then it can be anything.
00:29:00.340 If trans women are women, then they can be anything.
00:29:03.500 If you're not defining what a woman is, if you're not defining what love is, then these
00:29:08.700 are completely meaningless mantras that are used to simply manipulate people.
00:29:14.400 They're just kind of these vapid euphemisms and they work as really effective propaganda.
00:29:20.040 But again, there's no moral truth to them.
00:29:23.300 And the love is love mantra that justifies two men coming together in marriage, two women
00:29:28.840 coming together in marriage.
00:29:30.740 Again, it's the same mentality that men and women are the same, that they're interchangeable,
00:29:35.340 that they're replaceable, that human beings are just widgets, that kids don't really need
00:29:40.520 a mom and a dad, that they can be raised by any kind of person and turn out perfectly fine.
00:29:45.740 These are the same people, by the way, who say that we need fair representation of the
00:29:51.020 genders in all spheres of society, that on every board of trustees, in every C-suite, in
00:30:02.160 every chamber and sector of government life, we need to make sure that men and women are
00:30:09.720 fairly represented, but not in a family, but not when it comes to marriage, but not when
00:30:16.420 it comes to parents.
00:30:18.400 They're also the same people who are constantly chiding everyone to trust the science.
00:30:23.420 Are you telling me that the science of reproduction doesn't tell us anything about what a child
00:30:29.020 needs for healthy development?
00:30:30.860 You know that you need a man and a woman to have a child.
00:30:34.280 Don't you think, just using deductive reasoning, that that tells us something about what children
00:30:42.280 need also to be raised?
00:30:44.160 Not just to be reproduced, but to be raised.
00:30:47.580 But apparently, the science doesn't speak to that.
00:30:50.600 It doesn't give us any indicators, any signals of how we should structure families and structure
00:30:56.180 society.
00:30:58.180 Now, he does not walk away, unfortunately, with the conviction that, wow, we've created
00:31:05.000 this motherless child, and innately, she knows that she wants a mom.
00:31:09.560 She wants to know who she is and where she comes from, because those are basic instincts
00:31:13.960 as human beings.
00:31:15.060 We want to know our origin story, even children who are adopted.
00:31:19.340 And they might love their parents.
00:31:21.840 Children of gay parents might love their parents.
00:31:25.240 And maybe they were afforded all the opportunities, given all the resources in the world.
00:31:29.460 They still have a mother hunger or a father hunger.
00:31:33.000 They still want to know who they are.
00:31:35.460 What's in their DNA?
00:31:37.120 Where did they come from?
00:31:39.080 What is the nationality of their ancestors?
00:31:42.440 Where did they get their personality quirks?
00:31:44.900 Where did they get their strengths and weaknesses?
00:31:46.900 We are taking away the right of people to know who they are and where they come from and
00:31:52.700 impart what their purpose is and where their place is.
00:31:56.500 And we are just assuming that everything is going to turn out okay.
00:32:00.200 Kids innately know that they have a mom and a dad and need a mom and a dad.
00:32:07.040 And again, it is so wicked for adults to sacrifice that in the name of fulfilling their own wants.
00:32:14.220 But unfortunately, this author of this article, he doesn't get that.
00:32:18.040 He actually still thinks, as all progressives do, that it's society's fault.
00:32:23.160 That society just hasn't caught up yet.
00:32:25.560 He says, even in our liberal East Coast community, the local Spanish language program that's advertised
00:32:31.320 as Mommy and Me and the email in other class parents that started High Class Moms.
00:32:39.040 And so any mention of a mother is offensive to them.
00:32:42.900 Everything has to be gender neutral to accommodate them.
00:32:46.360 We have to erase the idea of motherhood altogether.
00:32:50.200 And they think that when that happens, their little daughter will all of a sudden not want a mom anymore.
00:32:56.220 Again, it's heteronormativity that has caused her to desire a mom.
00:33:00.820 No, it's not that.
00:33:03.180 It is that everyone craves their mother.
00:33:07.240 Everyone does.
00:33:08.220 And everyone in the world has a mom and a dad.
00:33:10.280 And you can't erase that.
00:33:11.660 And you can't make her forget that.
00:33:13.120 And it makes it even worse, I think, that this is a little girl.
00:33:15.520 Of course, she's going to want her mom.
00:33:17.520 Gay men know the very least about women than any other kind of person.
00:33:22.380 Like, what business do you have raising these little girls who are going to turn into women one day?
00:33:28.000 He says he worries about the message regarding gender roles that it's being delivered to our kids.
00:33:32.700 And I wonder about the messages being sent to other parents of all types.
00:33:36.100 What about non-binary parents who aren't reflected in the mom-dad dichotomy?
00:33:39.520 Dichotomy.
00:33:40.640 His conclusion is this.
00:33:41.920 In the end, I've come to believe our daughter has been telling us something beautiful and profound, that she has everything she needs.
00:33:47.800 She's literally telling you the opposite.
00:33:51.120 Literally the opposite of what you took away.
00:33:54.380 Including those attributes that society has normally treated as the provenance of mothers right here in her two-dad family.
00:34:01.600 No, your sweet little daughter is actually saying, how did I end up with two men?
00:34:07.300 Where the heck is my mommy?
00:34:09.280 That's what your daughter is saying.
00:34:11.240 And it's very sad.
00:34:12.660 And I pray for her.
00:34:14.540 And I hope that she does have a wonderful life.
00:34:18.340 And I hope that she is able to find some fulfillment and stability.
00:34:22.960 But I promise you, her entire life, she's going to wonder who her mom is and why she didn't get raised by a mom and why she never got to make memories with her mother.
00:34:32.120 Why when she's sick or when she has a question about growing up, why she longed to be able to talk to her mom and she didn't get that.
00:34:41.700 I promise you that that is going to affect her forever.
00:34:46.340 And it's really sad.
00:34:48.280 It's really sad.
00:34:48.820 Dr. Al Mohler also commented on this and he says, Mother's Day tends to bring out the very best in our culture and simultaneously to bring out the very worst.
00:34:57.480 The big lesson here is that the three and a half year old sees what the others will not see.
00:35:01.800 Christians must look at this kind of argument and realize that the fact that the article appeared as the nation turned to observe Mother's Day tells us just about everything we need to know about the Washington Post and the dominant media class in Washington.
00:35:13.820 But it's not enough for Christians to refuse the Kool-Aid.
00:35:16.520 We must recognize that this level of confusion and contortion underlines the fact that our current cultural warfare is now at the level of an ontological crisis and an outright rebellion against the creation order.
00:35:29.480 He is absolutely 100% right about this.
00:35:33.300 And that's why Christians have to care about the so-called culture war.
00:35:38.160 That's why we have to be willing to be, quote unquote, divisive.
00:35:42.200 That is why we have to be willing to be called all kinds of names, to be accused of not having empathy, of not being loving enough, of being too judgmental.
00:35:54.140 Because on the other side of those accusations are children.
00:35:59.100 They're children, helpless, vulnerable children who don't have political capital.
00:36:03.120 They don't have a voice.
00:36:04.400 They don't have a lobbying group.
00:36:06.560 They don't have anyone that is standing in their stead.
00:36:11.480 And that's what Christians must do.
00:36:13.020 That's what Christians have always done.
00:36:14.600 If you look back in ancient pagan times when Christians burst on the scene, one of the most transformative changes that Christians made was how society treated children.
00:36:27.260 No longer as sexual objects.
00:36:29.500 No longer as things to be discarded or pushed to the margins of society or ignored or neglected.
00:36:36.660 But people made in the image of God who can be, by grace through faith, saved by Christ.
00:36:44.280 People who deserve dignity and respect and need special care.
00:36:49.760 The church has always been a refuge for the most vulnerable, namely for children.
00:36:54.720 We serve a Jesus who said, let the little children come to me.
00:36:58.600 We serve a Jesus who said that we should have faith like a child.
00:37:03.380 That is the Christianity that we are supposed to embody.
00:37:09.300 And that means speaking up for the motherless, speaking up for the fatherless.
00:37:14.800 And Christians who think this is too political, it's too divisive, it's too unloving.
00:37:18.700 You have just been effectively brainwashed by the culture into believing that love means the affirmation of sin.
00:37:25.860 But the God who is love, 1 John 4, 8, created us male and female and gave us the family in the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible.
00:37:34.340 That's how fundamental it is.
00:37:35.780 And I don't believe you if you say that you are bold enough to share the gospel, John 14, 6, but not bold enough to stand up for Genesis 1, 27.
00:37:43.440 I don't believe you.
00:37:45.460 We have to be bold enough to stand up for both.
00:37:48.200 Because the creation order matters.
00:37:50.380 The creation order is protective.
00:37:52.040 The creation order glorifies God.
00:37:53.800 And our purpose is to glorify God.
00:37:55.920 Our purpose is also to love our neighbor.
00:37:59.440 You cannot love your neighbor without defending the creation order that God put in place to protect the most vulnerable.
00:38:08.500 And so Christians need to get a lot louder about this.
00:38:11.940 Pastors need to get a lot louder about this.
00:38:14.920 And we'll look at some of the statistics very quickly before I end with another story.
00:38:23.800 So this op-ed isn't just a one-off.
00:38:35.480 This is actually very common.
00:38:37.360 I think more common than we know because these kinds of stories are suppressed because the spirit of the age, the secular moral and sexual revolution narrative says that there's no such thing as gender.
00:38:50.800 That the family is completely arbitrary, that marriage doesn't really matter, that male-female doesn't really matter.
00:38:58.360 And therefore, if kids are raised by three men or one trans, non-binary, furry, and a mom, that it's all well and good.
00:39:08.660 It's all the same.
00:39:09.880 And yet it's not.
00:39:10.960 There are a lot of examples of this on Reddit, actually, and it really is super sad.
00:39:16.520 And many of you have actually messaged me stories of when you were a nanny or a babysitter for two gay men, for example, that you knew their kids.
00:39:26.640 The questions that they would ask trying to call you mother more than a few of you have sent me similar stories.
00:39:33.800 And it's just very heartbreaking.
00:39:35.380 Here's one from Reddit.
00:39:37.840 Nanny of a three-year-old girl who has two gay dads said the little girl calls her mommy.
00:39:42.840 She is asking how she should respond to the girl and whether or not she should tell the two dads.
00:39:48.040 She says, maybe I'm making it into a bigger deal than it is, but she's three and she calls me mommy or asks if I'm her mommy.
00:39:54.280 I tend to laugh it away and redirect it and say, I'm not a mommy.
00:39:59.400 I'm a zombie.
00:40:00.300 Or I change the topic.
00:40:02.820 And then another nanny on the thread has said the same thing, that she is a nanny for two gay dads, too.
00:40:10.800 And she says she has jokingly, a little girl, has jokingly called me mama.
00:40:16.160 And she has asked me to play pretend as her mom.
00:40:18.600 But I would always say that these incidences were just in playful ways.
00:40:23.620 And then she came home pretty recently annoyed because a kid assumed that she had a mom.
00:40:29.260 And then another kid chimed in, she doesn't have a mom.
00:40:32.460 She has two dads.
00:40:34.420 And then the other kid said, but you need a dad and a mom to have a baby.
00:40:37.680 Two dads can't have one.
00:40:39.080 Smart kid.
00:40:40.520 And this nanny on Reddit says that the child asked her, am I a rescued baby?
00:40:47.900 And so she wants to make sense of her origin.
00:40:51.980 She wants to make sense of herself and her identity.
00:40:56.040 And she's trying to do that.
00:40:57.600 And it's so, so difficult for kids to understand that.
00:41:01.560 There's a similar story on the thread of another nanny of a three-year-old child with two gay dads.
00:41:08.380 She says, I nannied for a gay couple with three kids.
00:41:10.700 And I would definitely recommend letting dads know.
00:41:13.020 She's talking to the original poster.
00:41:14.740 Their daughter was about three and a half when she started asking me a lot of questions about moms and her mom.
00:41:20.160 And was I someone's mom already?
00:41:22.680 They had all kinds of books about different families.
00:41:24.800 But as someone else has already said, she was starting to truly understand that her family is different from some of her friends and trying to sort it out.
00:41:31.300 So it says her twin brother's biological mom was already semi, was around semi-regularly, but her bio mom had chosen to be uninvolved.
00:41:39.740 So she was trying to sort that out, too.
00:41:45.620 So really, really upsetting.
00:41:50.180 There is also this article in Today's Parent from August of 2022 that says, my kid didn't feel like two moms were enough.
00:41:58.300 So we created Project Queer.
00:42:01.900 When he was three, typically seems to be around that age.
00:42:05.080 That's interesting.
00:42:06.240 This is what one of the women says.
00:42:07.680 These are two gay women.
00:42:08.620 And when he was three, her son started asking to see his dad.
00:42:12.680 Even at age four came the theories that his father used to live with us, but got bored and wandered off or that Jacob did something bad and his dad had to suddenly leave.
00:42:21.160 The last one got me.
00:42:22.040 It felt like someone had speared my stomach.
00:42:24.140 Yeah, that's conviction because your son is trying to figure out who his dad is and why his dad isn't around anymore.
00:42:30.660 He doesn't even know his dad.
00:42:32.820 He was donated by a sperm donor or sold by a sperm donor.
00:42:37.580 And then, of course, she goes on to blame society.
00:42:41.800 Cisgender heterosexual parents are the ubiquitous norm.
00:42:44.560 One of the people that she consulted for this article said it comes to be seen as normal, natural and ultimately healthy.
00:42:50.640 Well, it is normal and natural and healthy.
00:42:53.340 And so, again, rather than this woman understanding where her conviction is coming from and understanding the mistake that she has made, what she has robbed her son, she says that she began something called Project Queer, which aimed to do whatever it took to instill queer pride in her son, Jacob.
00:43:12.840 The mother describes how each time she tried to read him LGBTQ books.
00:43:16.600 That's another theme in all of this.
00:43:18.580 Tons of gay propaganda in these kids' lives.
00:43:21.200 And yet these kids are still like, OK, but where's my mom or dad?
00:43:24.880 Goes on to say, I didn't believe having a dad was an inborn need, but it was one that had, for whatever reason, either nature or nurture, been instilled in him.
00:43:33.440 What if instead of trying to stamp out this need, I simply embraced it?
00:43:38.240 And then she said she asked her dad and stepdad if they would agree to step into the father figure role.
00:43:44.480 They agreed, but lived far away.
00:43:46.120 So the agreement included more frequent Zoom meetings and agreeing to call themselves dad.
00:43:51.280 How freaking heartbreaking is that?
00:43:54.040 How heartbreaking is that, man?
00:43:55.840 And I understand, like, if you are a gay parent, to reckon with the mistake that you've made, to try to come to terms with the fact that you have robbed an unconsenting, helpless child of the right to a mom or a dad.
00:44:15.540 And that, I mean, I'm sure as a parent, you want them to be happy.
00:44:19.680 You want them to be whole and realizing that you've taken that opportunity from them in a lot of ways.
00:44:26.100 I understand why there's all this mental gymnastics to try to justify what you did, because that is a painful, tragic realization.
00:44:33.440 And it would take so much humility and repentance to embrace that and to try to seek some kind of, like, forgiveness for that and try to make that right.
00:44:44.140 Because you can't, like, you can't take it back.
00:44:46.500 And you love your child.
00:44:47.940 You don't want to say that you regret your child, because I'm sure you can't imagine your life without your child.
00:44:53.020 I think that that is true of most gay parents.
00:44:55.860 And so to try to come to terms with the fact of this really, like, egregious choice that you've made, this burden that you have forced them to carry, a fatherlessness or motherlessness, I imagine that that's really hard.
00:45:07.140 And so you try to, you write all these op-eds and you start all these organizations and you jump through all these hoops to say it's society's fault.
00:45:14.940 It's everyone else's fault.
00:45:16.600 We're the ones who are normal.
00:45:18.000 It's not innate.
00:45:19.000 It's the problem with the cis-heteronormative patriarchy out there.
00:45:24.300 It's the media.
00:45:25.700 It's Christians.
00:45:26.880 It's the right-wing political machine.
00:45:29.320 Whatever it is that you want to blame when really it's just innate because everyone has a mom and a dad and everyone wants to know where they come from and who they are.
00:45:36.620 That's what it is.
00:45:37.560 And that's what you're taking from kids when you purposely create fatherless or motherless babies.
00:45:43.500 I remember a couple of years ago hearing the story about Hayden Panettiere.
00:45:48.220 And this is different.
00:45:48.920 This doesn't have to do with anything LGBTQ, but it speaks to this, that children need a mom.
00:45:53.960 Children need both of their parents.
00:45:55.560 I remember she went through something.
00:45:57.940 She went through, I guess, what you would consider some kind of mental health crisis, and she was going through a custody battle with her seven-year-old daughter.
00:46:06.400 And she interviewed on Red Table Talk, and she talked about the custody situation with her seven-year-old daughter, who lives in Ukraine, with her father, who is now her ex-husband.
00:46:19.320 She's lived there since 2018.
00:46:21.520 Her father petitioned for full custody in Ukraine.
00:46:24.240 Panettiere's efforts during Panettiere's efforts to treat her own alcoholism.
00:46:30.260 Panettiere said that while she goes to visit her daughter when she can, her absence was affecting Kaya in some alarming ways.
00:46:37.900 Here's Sot 3.
00:46:38.800 I also remember her dad calling me, and he said, Kaya's going around and asking other women if she can call them mommy.
00:46:46.440 And my, like, breath hitched, and my heart stopped, and he was laughing.
00:46:54.140 He thought this was funny.
00:46:56.300 Ugh, it just breaks my heart.
00:46:58.700 Breaks my heart.
00:46:59.860 It's not enough for kids just to be raised by adults.
00:47:03.760 That's not enough.
00:47:05.560 We need intact families.
00:47:07.360 You know them before us by now because we talk a lot about Katie Faust, and we've had her on a few times, and she has been a champion of children's rights and the importance of marriage and intact families for a long time.
00:47:20.720 She was raised by two women.
00:47:23.220 She also has an adoptive son, so she understands so many different sides of this, and she really has been on the front lines for such a long time when it comes to this very taboo topic.
00:47:35.140 And she's gathered a lot of data on this, and if you go to the Them Before Us website, you can read all of this.
00:47:41.760 You can look at the sources yourself.
00:47:43.180 We don't have time to get into all of it.
00:47:44.860 But, for example, a new family structures study researcher Mark Regner has concluded, on 25 out of 40 outcomes evaluated, there were statistically significant differences between children from intact biological families and those of the mothers and lesbian relationships
00:48:00.040 in many areas that are unambiguously suboptimal, such as receiving welfare, need for therapy, infidelity, STIs, sexual victimization, educational attainment, safety of the family origin, depression, attachments, and dependencies, marijuana use, frequency of smoking, and criminal behavior.
00:48:18.140 We know that fatherlessness can increase the risk of all of these issues.
00:48:24.780 Using data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey, Paul Sillins discovered that when compared with children in dual-gender households, children in same-sex-headed families,
00:48:34.140 one, were likely to suffer emotional and behavioral difficulties at a rate of 9.3 percent, more than twice the rate for children in dual-gender families,
00:48:43.200 experienced definite or severe emotional problems at a rate of 14.9 percent versus 5.5 percent,
00:48:50.000 were diagnosed with ADHD at a rate of 15.5 percent versus 7.1 percent, struggled with learning disabilities at a rate of 14.1 percent versus 8 percent,
00:48:59.900 received special education and mental health services at a rate of 17.8 percent versus 10.4 percent.
00:49:07.060 Research from Focus on the Family says reams of social science and medical research convincingly show
00:49:12.700 that children who are raised by their married biological parents enjoy better physical, cognitive, and emotional outcomes,
00:49:18.800 on average, than children raised in other circumstances.
00:49:24.260 The Center for Law and Social Policy says that research indicates that, on average,
00:49:28.260 children who grow up in families with both their biological parents and a low-conflict marriage
00:49:32.380 are better off in a number of ways than children who grow up in single-step or cohabitating parent households.
00:49:39.500 Princeton University Research even says,
00:49:42.020 if we were asked to design a system for making sure that children's basic needs were met,
00:49:46.340 we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent family.
00:49:50.800 Ideal, the fact that both adults have a biological connection to the child,
00:49:55.100 so that would require a mother and a father,
00:49:57.760 would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child
00:50:01.140 and be willing to sacrifice for that child,
00:50:03.580 and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child,
00:50:08.460 because that's the thing.
00:50:09.620 The riskiest place for a child to be is in a home with a non-related male.
00:50:14.600 Is that saying that all step-parents or all gay dads who are not biologically related
00:50:20.940 to one of the children in the home are abusive?
00:50:23.640 No, but the stats are the stats.
00:50:25.920 They are far more likely to be abused by someone they are not related to,
00:50:29.540 yet lives in their home.
00:50:30.500 That's why the cohabitation, the rotating boyfriends or girlfriends in the home,
00:50:35.800 they're all very dangerous to a child.
00:50:37.800 God created this biological family for the safety of the family,
00:50:41.820 for the safety of children.
00:50:44.680 We've talked many times about the data on fatherlessness,
00:50:47.760 how the risk of delinquency, of eating disorders, of teen pregnancy,
00:50:50.900 all go up when there is not a dad at home.
00:50:54.780 And yet we are continuing to move in the direction for the most part of creating children
00:51:02.700 to raise them in purposely broken situations.
00:51:07.380 Even NPR is saying this is not a good thing.
00:51:10.340 In an article of October 2023,
00:51:13.080 Why Children of Married Parents Do Better,
00:51:15.000 But America is Moving the Other Way.
00:51:17.480 The U.S. has the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households,
00:51:22.080 according to a 2019 Pew Research Center study.
00:51:25.780 What?
00:51:27.020 That is insane.
00:51:28.260 Almost a quarter or 23% of U.S. children living or under the age of 18
00:51:32.900 live with one parent and no other adults.
00:51:35.040 Kearney finds that this arrangement hurts children,
00:51:37.800 widens inequality, and ultimately damages society.
00:51:42.660 So Kearney, Melissa Kearney, is the author of The Two-Parent Privilege,
00:51:48.540 How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.
00:51:51.880 She points out this obvious fact that children raised by two parents have a much higher chance
00:51:56.160 of success than those raised by one, particularly those that they are biologically connected to.
00:52:01.860 One fact is undeniable in all of this.
00:52:03.980 More women are deciding to have children and also remain single.
00:52:08.660 That is stupid.
00:52:09.360 That is wrong.
00:52:09.980 That is selfish.
00:52:11.440 Kearney notes that families headed by a single mother are five times more likely to live in
00:52:15.880 poverty than families headed by a married couple.
00:52:18.520 That also shows that many single mothers don't have help from any other adult,
00:52:22.520 like a grandparent or a family member.
00:52:24.920 Kearney says the problem is that unmarried parents very rarely stay together,
00:52:29.080 even if you say, well, they're being raised by a loving boyfriend, girlfriend.
00:52:33.620 Well, that very rarely is a stable, solid situation for that child.
00:52:39.440 She says this.
00:52:40.240 I don't know exactly what it is about marriage, but it is a very practical matter.
00:52:45.500 If you just look in the data, marriage is what delivers kids a stable, long-term,
00:52:50.420 two-parent household in this country.
00:52:52.880 As an economist, she sees marriage as a long-term contract between two individuals to pool their
00:52:57.380 resources and share household responsibilities, including raising children.
00:53:01.580 Two is better than one.
00:53:02.840 The genders of the parents are irrelevant, according to Kearney.
00:53:07.380 Of course, we know that that's not true because, again, the data shows that kids are safest
00:53:11.680 when they are being raised by those who are biologically related to them because God has
00:53:17.280 given us that instinct.
00:53:20.120 Yes, there are bad biological parents.
00:53:22.160 Yes, of course, there are many, many, many amazing adoptive parents.
00:53:27.040 But again, the statistics are the statistics that that biological connection actually matters.
00:53:37.380 Okay, let me just tell, let me end with this.
00:53:46.080 I was going to do this whole other story about Erin Andrews.
00:53:48.760 We'll get to that tomorrow.
00:53:49.720 We just didn't have time for it.
00:53:50.860 But let me end with a little bit of a positive trend.
00:53:54.280 So this is according to Brad Wilcox, and this is in his book, Get Married.
00:53:58.920 So he accumulated data from the U.S. Census Bureau population surveys from 2007 to 2022.
00:54:05.440 You'll remember Dr. Brad Wilcox is UVA professor.
00:54:12.240 He is a fellow at Institute for Family Studies.
00:54:15.000 We've had him on a couple times.
00:54:16.520 And so he says, also note that as divorce falls and motherhood becomes more selective,
00:54:21.620 the share of kids being raised by single moms is dipping.
00:54:24.200 And the share of kids being raised by intact married families is surprisingly ticking up.
00:54:29.560 So it's still lower than it was, for example, in 2007.
00:54:33.780 In 2007, 60% of children aged 0 to 17 lived with married biological parents that dipped to
00:54:41.440 57.8 in 2012.
00:54:44.120 Now it's back up to 58.9.
00:54:46.880 Now, does that include two men or two women?
00:54:51.840 Is that what's really making the difference here?
00:54:53.820 Or are we actually seeing positive trends away from divorce and away from choosing single
00:55:02.160 parenthood?
00:55:03.040 I would say that that is a positive development if it is that, if people are simply making
00:55:08.900 better choices, because divorce also tears apart families.
00:55:12.920 Unless it's in cases of abuse, it is very often parents doing what is best for their feelings
00:55:23.900 and their wants and not what is best for their children and their needs.
00:55:29.140 So it's almost like the God of the universe knew what he was doing when he created all this,
00:55:33.760 when he gave us the creation order, when he gave us families, when he gave us genders, when
00:55:38.080 he gave us moms and dads, when he defined the family in the very first chapter of the first
00:55:42.920 book of the Bible, God's order, his parameters, his boundaries, his definitions are all good.
00:55:50.860 They are all for our good.
00:55:53.840 And it is the godless mind that sees God's parameters as limiting and as evil and as things
00:56:04.880 that need to just be torn down in the name of liberation.
00:56:09.520 And it is up to the godly to show how God's ways are better.
00:56:16.300 They're actually more liberating.
00:56:17.640 They're more free.
00:56:18.320 They're more protective.
00:56:20.260 They are for human survival and also human flourishing.
00:56:24.820 So all of this stuff about families, about reproduction from the point of conception onward, it all really
00:56:30.220 matters to the Christian.
00:56:32.240 And as unpopular as these things might be, children's lives and their well-being, they're
00:56:39.460 on the line.
00:56:40.700 And if we care about anything, we have to care about that.
00:56:44.940 All right.
00:56:45.360 That's all we got time for today.
00:56:46.560 We will be back here tomorrow.
00:56:47.640 We will be back here tomorrow.
00:57:06.060 We will be back here tomorrow.
00:57:06.420 We will be back here tomorrow.
00:57:06.540 We will have to care for today.
00:57:08.160 We will be back there tomorrow.
00:57:08.520 We will be back here tomorrow.
00:57:08.600 We will be back to tomorrow.
00:57:09.680 We will be back here tomorrow.