Author: John Stonestreet and Andrew Carico
Much of the South was under deadly conditions last week with frigid temps and snow, but the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, a hub for sports and concerts, thought it most important to warn against regretful pregnancy, posting on X: “9 months from now, you could be at a concert or changing a diaper. Make good decisions this snow storm.” Only more evidence that the Heritage Foundation’s report, Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, could not have come at a better time.
As far back as Aristotle, the family has been understood as the most natural of associations and an essential pillar of civilization. As Chuck Colson described in How Now Shall We Live?,
nearly every civilization has protected the family both legally and socially, for it is the institution that propagates the human race and civilizes children . . . .The [contemporary] systematic deconstruction of the oldest, most basic social institution is a prime cause of the social chaos in America in recent decades.
This deconstruction was not accidental. Many progressive voices have called for transgressing traditional family structures and gender norms. Academic and author Gloria Watkins, for instance, argued that the family is not a “safe space.” Ideas like this have permeated schools and institutions and, therefore, the worldview of many.
In the press release announcing their report, authors Roger Severino, Jay Richards, Emma Waters, Delano Squires, Rachel Sheffield and Robert Rector declared:
The state of the American family is in crisis, with a low marriage rate, a low fertility rate, and an epidemic of broken homes. Without the formation and stability of families, America will not survive.
The report offers three policy proposals to bolster the family unit.
Though critics might dismiss using policy to support traditional marriage and the family, the approach echoes another teaching from Aristotle. Laws teach and, thus, can shape culture. Though, of course, culture influences politics, the law also powerfully molds societal views of right and wrong.
As legal scholar Hadley Arkes has observed, many Southerners opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which, among other things, prohibited racial discrimination in private businesses open to transactions with the public. Many Northerners supported it. By 1966, three-quarters of Americans in both the North and South had come to support it. The law taught the public moral truth.
However, while the law is often necessary in this task, it is not sufficient in and of itself; a topic discussed in the new report but not framed as a policy recommendation that would have a greater cultural impact on restoring the family. The state should encourage religiosity, especially Christianity. The law cannot make anyone a Christian, but it can and should promote religious involvement without penalizing it. In particular, the state should foster church participation.
After all, as the report demonstrates, religious people are more likely to marry and marry earlier, have more children, positively influence their children’s social development, and less likely to divorce. Religion is critically important, given trends shared in the report, especially the fertility rate, which hit a record low of 1.6 births per woman aged 15 to 44 in 2023. That number is well below the 2.1 replacement level.
Civilizations that marry less also bear fewer children and, eventually, die off. As mentioned in a recent Breakpoint, early Christianity’s explosive growth in the Greco-Roman world is partly due to young men attending church to find spouses and have children. Church communities facilitated marriage, family formation, and new life. In light of the impending holiday, consider the life and witness of St. Valentine.
Appropriate public policies and laws will protect sacred spaces and the rights of citizens to attend church freely and exercise their faith in the public square. At the very least, the state should not demonstrate hostility to faith, like Colorado has done repeatedly, or tolerate the disruption of services, such as what happened recently in Minnesota. The state must ensure justice for religious communities that have experienced violence and hostility, such as the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania, Mother Emmanuel Church in South Carolina, and Covenant Christian School in Nashville, among others. The return of Sabbath “blue laws” wouldn’t be the worst thing, either.
If the family is the pillar of civilization, the institutions that nurture and reinforce it deserve defense and support. Heritage’s policy suggestions are promising and should be supplemented by efforts to protect and encourage the one institution that can most effectively point men and women to marry and be fruitful. There is no greater hope for the family than the Church.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico.