Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett
Recently, Stranger Things actress Millie Bobbie Brown has faced the ire of critics, not for the typical behavior that can land a celebrity in trouble, such as drunken behavior or an unpopular political view. Rather, she got married and adopted a child. According to critics, this was irresponsible behavior for someone so young.
Today, marriage and family have been re-imagined as capstone achievements to be enjoyed—if at all—after success, rather than cornerstones on which to build a life with another. Rather than marrying young and having a bunch of kids, people often talk about doing some “living” before they settle down, as if having a spouse and kids is the end of freedom and happiness. Postponing or even foregoing marriage is the path to “the good life.”
In fact, as study after study attests, the opposite is true. For example, a 2024 study from the Institute of Family Studies found that “40% of married mothers aged 18-55 describe themselves as ‘very happy,’ compared to only 25% of single, childless women in the same age group.” Since the 1970’s, the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey has asked Americans about their happiness, and “married people were persistently 30 points happier than unmarried people, whose average scores hovered near zero.” And study after study finds that the best predictor of future financial, medical, and mental success is if the child is raised by two, married, biological parents.
In other words, our culture is getting this one exactly backwards. Those thought to be living their best life are often the most miserable, while those thought to be trapped by responsibilities of marriage and family are consistently doing the best. The truth about marriage and family should be told, and the myth should be exposed.
That’s what my friend Timothy S. Goeglein has done in his latest book, What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family. In it, Goeglein, the Vice-President of External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family, and his coauthor Craig Osten take readers back to the basics of what makes a life and a culture flourish. In this collection of commentaries and articles from the past few years, readers are reminded that the “traditional wisdom” of the past–working hard, saving for tomorrow, getting married, having kids, spending time with kids, being part of wider community, especially a religious community—is called such for a reason. It is the most well-attested path to a good life.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel of God’s created design for marriage and family. Throughout Scripture—from Genesis to Psalms, from Proverbs to Jeremiah, from Malachi to Matthew and nearly one hundred other verses, the Bible articulates what are the fundamental building blocks of a healthy culture. In contrast, the so-called “liberating” revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries promised flourishing and freedom, and delivered neither.
Increasingly, when untethered from the various agendas of social revolutionaries, the social sciences reflect the truth of God’s design. We were not designed to live for ourselves. Autonomy is a myth. Our best lives come by living according to God’s design, embracing what Goeglein calls a “less me-centric” worldview.
In 1961, following a heartbreaking loss in the NFC Championship Game the previous season, Vince Lombardi began training camp for his Green Bay Packers with the simple line, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Our society needs a cultural version of the same common sense. In What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family, Goeglin and Osten offer just that. “America, this is a family. This is faith. This is freedom. These are the keys to everything we hope to find.”