recently, New York Times Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof called out his fellow progressives on the issue of privilege. Kristof noted that while his colleagues love to talk about how certain groups of people in our country have certain unfair privileges, there is one particular privilege that they hardly mention.
The remarkable thing about this unspoken privilege is that there are decades of social science research proving just how much of a privilege it is. In case you haven’t already guessed, the privilege in question is raised by two married parents.
Watch the full LifeChat: The Unspoken Privilege of the Two-Parent Family
First of all, I want to commend Kristof’s courage in speaking this inconvenient truth. While her fellow progressives spent decades trying to downplay the importance of marriage for the sake of children, Kristof publicly stated that it is impossible to ignore the undeniable evidence that children who grow up with their two married parents do better on every measure of child well-being.
As a result, he gets a lot of negative comments on his article, which is strange. You would think that people would want the best for children, right?
If you saw something that helped kids avoid poverty, school failure, incarceration, crime, and drugs, you’d think everyone would be excited about it, which of course begs the question of why some continue to destroy the institution of marriage in despite its enormous benefits for children, adults, families, and society.
But that’s the subject of another LifeChat. For now, I want to briefly cover why this is so important for the Pro Abundant Life movement led by Care Net.
In other words, what does parental privilege have to do with abortion? If you’ve followed Care Net for any length of time, you’ve probably heard us talk about being not just pro-life but Pro Abundant Life. This means that it is important not only to save the life of the unborn child, but also to ensure that the child has every opportunity for a prosperous life.
One of the most important ways we can do this is by promoting marriage, fatherhood, and two-parent families so that children can thrive. So from our point of view, if a left-of-center opinion writer for New York Times says that it is so important and profound to children, then surely the pro-life movement should recognize it as well.
That’s why Care Net focuses on marriage and family by equipping our network of more than 1,200 pregnancy centers and a growing number of churches to serve fathers and encourage healthy marriages. 85% of abortions are by unmarried womenand our two national surveys found that women who have had an abortion and men whose partners have had an abortion agree that the father of the child is the most influential factor in a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
Family breakdown directly leads to more abortions. Accordingly, we want to make sure that all our work is related not only to God’s design for the sanctity of human life but also to God’s design for the family, which can be seen even in the birth of Christ himself. In fact, the two pillars of the Pro Abundant Life vision are God’s design for the family and God’s call to discipleship.
These Pro Abundant Life principles are beautifully illustrated in the first chapter of the first book of the New Testament and the last chapter of the first book of the New Testament. In His grace, God laid out everything for our movement right there in Matthew’s gospel. Moreover, these two principles are interrelated.
The wicked know that one of the surest ways to draw anyone away from God and their call to discipleship is to destroy the family.
After all, if a child has an absent or neglectful earthly father, the idea of a loving father in heaven seems distant or even frightening to them. But when children are raised in loving two-parent families, not only are there significantly lower chances of them being aborted, but they are also less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior that leads to unplanned pregnancy and abortion later in life.
In other words, marriage is an intergenerational abortion prevention tool. Again, I want to commend Kristof for his courage in writing about how important marriage is for the well-being of children. And I want to emphasize again how important it is that the pro-life movement also focuses on this fact. In fact, we should be Pro Abundant Life, amen? Until next time, may God bless you every day as you faithfully serve Him.
