Recently, New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof called out his fellow progressives around the issue of privilege. Kristof noted that while his colleagues are fond of talking about how certain groups of people in our country have certain unfair privileges, there’s one particular privilege that they almost never mention.
The notable thing about this unmentionable privilege is that there are decades of social science research that prove just how much of a privilege it truly is. In case you haven’t guessed yet, the privilege in question is being raised by two married parents.
Watch the full LifeChat: The Unmentionable Privilege of Two-Parent Families
First off, I want to applaud Kristof’s courage in speaking this inconvenient truth. While his fellow progressives have spent decades trying to discount the importance of marriage for the well-being of children, Kristof has publicly proclaimed that it’s impossible to ignore the undeniable evidence that children who grow up with their two married parents do better across every measure of child well-being.
As a result, he’s getting a lot of negative comments on his article, which is odd. You would think that people would want the best for children, right?
If you found something that helped children avoid poverty, school failure, incarceration, crime, and drugs, you would think that everyone would be happy about it, which of course begs the question as to why some continue to tear down the institution of marriage despite its enormous benefits for children, adults, families, and society.
But that’s the topic of another LifeChat. For now, I want to briefly cover why this matters so much for the Pro Abundant Life movement that Care Net is leading.
In other words, what does two-parent privilege have to do with abortion? If you have followed Care Net for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard us talk about being not only pro-life but Pro Abundant Life. What that means is that it’s important not just to save the life of the unborn child, but also to make sure that the child has every opportunity for an abundant life.
One of the most critical ways in which 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 the New York Times is saying that this matters greatly and deeply to children, then certainly 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 to unmarried women, and our two national surveys found that women who had abortions and the men whose partners have had abortions agreed that the father of the child is by far the most influential in a woman’s decision to abort or not.
The breakdown of the family leads directly to more abortions. Accordingly, we want to ensure that all of our work ties back not only to God’s design around the sanctity of human life but also to God’s design for the family, as reflected even in the birth of Christ himself. Indeed, the two pillars of a Pro Abundant Life perspective are God’s design for 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 in the last chapter of the first book of the New Testament. In His grace, God laid it all out for our movement right there in the gospel of Matthew. Moreover, these two principles are linked.
The evil one knows that one of the surest ways to pull anyone away from God and from their call to discipleship is to destroy the family.
After all, if a child has an absent or negligent earthly father, the idea of a loving heavenly father will seem far-fetched or even scary to them. But when children are raised in loving two-parent families, not only is there a significantly lower chance of them being aborted, but they will be far less likely to engage in the risky sexual behavior that leads to unplanned pregnancies and abortions later in life.
In other words, marriage is an intergenerational abortion prevention tool. Again, I want to applaud Kristof for his courage in writing about how important marriage is for the well-being of children. And I want to re-emphasize just how important it is that the pro-life movement focus on this reality as well. Indeed, we must be Pro Abundant Life, amen? Until next time, may God bless you daily as you serve Him faithfully.