A new study shows what many of us have known all along: Close family relationships during the teenage years helps kids grow up to be adults who thrive in their communities.
Researchers at Columbia University tracking more than 7,000 people for two decades found teenagers with strong family connections were more than twice as likely to have rich social networks as adults.
The study showed young people from close-knit families grew up to have more friends, stronger marriages, and deeper community ties. They felt less lonely and more satisfied with their relationships.
When parents invest in their children during the crucial teenage years, kids learn how to build healthy relationships that last a lifetime. And while there are exceptions, the study underscores how safe, stable, nurturing families are more likely to help teens grow into adults who connect well with others. It’s a valuable investment that pays dividends for generations.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
“Babies aren’t a tool for adult validation,” and other messages society seems primed to hear.
Recently, singer Meghan Trainor posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed, teary-eyed, and holding a newborn for skin-to-skin contact. The woman who carried and birthed the child, however, was nowhere in sight. Trainor and her husband used a surrogate.
Of course, as images go these days, this one is preferable to men pretending to be postpartum, having just bought a child via the surrogacy market. But that just shows how disordered our society is about marriage, sex, and babies.
Many people, including many Christians, consider surrogacy a harmless and helpful technological advancement. People want babies, and more babies are good, the thinking goes. All the while, a blind eye is turned to the severe moral problems inherent in the mechanics of surrogacy, including the commodification of children and the desecration of the maternal bond. Not to mention, the system is so underregulated, pedophiles and child abusers have been able to acquire victims.
Thankfully, more are learning the truth about this practice and this industry. As Katy Faust of Them Before Us put it in response to Trainor’s post:
Thousands are finally speaking up against surrogacy. The tide is turning. We’re grateful your baby is here, alive, and loved. But we won’t pretend the method was harmless. No child should be created through a system that turns women into means and babies into products.
That system is enabled and protected by the 2015 ObergefellSupreme Court decision. Severing marriage in law from the intrinsically biological realities of male and female also severed the connection between children and those whose union creates them. Marriage is presumed now, both in culture and in law, to be an institution of adult feelings. Kids are accessories.
As Faust told The Colson Center:
Across the globe 38 countries have legalized gay marriage. Exactly 0 of them have simultaneously strengthened children’s claim to their own mother and father. All of them have either abolished or significantly weakened the idea that children belong to the two people responsible for their existence.
This week, Faust announced the formation of a coalition of leaders and organizations called Greater Than. Advocates of same-sex “marriage” campaigned on the promise of marriage equality, posting memes of equal signs across social media. Greater Than proclaims the hard truth that children are treated as less than when they are deprived of mom and dad. As Faust described,
Greater Than is a coalition of pastors, parents, influencers, policy makers, theologians, lawyers, students, and normie Americans who are all speaking with one voice. What are we saying? “Don’t touch the kids.” Marriage does not exist as a tool for adult validation. It is God’s Plan A for child protection, and we intend to retake it on their behalf.
Rather than seeing kids as truly equal and deserving adult protection, the dangerous combination of abortion, surrogacy, and redefining marriage reduces them to one option among many, as a means to fulfill adult desires. Legally, just as Roe v. Wade deprived preborn children of their right to life, Obergefell is depriving children of their right to their mom and dad. Just as a culture of death enables the holocaust of abortion, a culture of sexual autonomy enables the commodification of children. As pro-lifers have done for decades now on the issue of abortion, so the Greater Than coalition is committed to the legal and cultural work necessary to protect children.
Join the movement. As the Greater Than website puts it:
The line has been crossed. The cost is our kids. It’s time to fight back—with truth, courage, and conviction. It is our responsibility to give kids their identity, security, and childhood back.
Copyright 2026 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.
From left: Rep. Robin Lundstrum, Attorney General Tim Griffin, and Sen. Alan Clark discuss the SAFE Act during a press conference on Tuesday, August 12. Rep. Lundstrum and Sen. Clark were the lead sponsors of the measure in 2021.
On Tuesday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision letting the State of Arkansas enforce a law protecting children from sex-change procedures.
This decision is a victory for children and for common sense.
In 2021, Arkansas became the first state in the nation to pass a law protecting children from sex-change procedures. The Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act prohibits doctors from performing sex-change surgeries or giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors. Unfortunately, the law has been tied up in federal court since 2021 — but Tuesday’s court decision lets the State of Arkansas enforce this good law.
Over the past five years, it has become clear that the medical “consensus” regarding transgender procedures on children has been largely manufactured by pro-LGBT activists.
Men and women have come forward with chilling testimony about how they were rushed through gender transitions as children without knowing the procedures’ risks, consequences, and alternatives.
Sex-change procedures, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones can leave children permanently scarred, sterilized, and at risk of serious health conditions.
Doctors do not know the long-term effects that these procedures might have on people.
The judges pointed out that children who use puberty blockers are at greater risk of low bone density.
The court noted that “risks for minors using cross-sex hormones include changes in cholesterol and blood thickness, blood clots (increasing stroke risk), and infertility.”
The judges also cited evidence that sex-change surgeries carry risks and can lead to lifelong regret.
All of these findings underscore just how dangerous these procedures are.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin celebrated the decision, calling it “the culmination of many years of tireless and skillful legal work by this office. I am grateful for the excellent work done by my Solicitor General team.”
When U.S. District Judge Moody blocked the SAFE Act in 2021, we said we believed a higher court ultimately would overturn his decision. It took four years, but that is what happened on Tuesday.
The SAFE Act is common-sense legislation that protects children. It received overwhelming support from the Arkansas Legislature, and most voters in Arkansas support the law. It looks like our federal courts do too.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
