Child Welfare – Family Council

CDC Data Shows Fertility Rate in America at an All Time Low

Apr 15, 2026Jerry CoxFamilyChild Welfare, Church Ambassador Network, Family, Life

Public health data released last week shows the fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low last year.

Over the past 20 years, the number of children born each year in the U.S. has dropped significantly, and the total fertility rate in the U.S. is well below the replacement rate — meaning America’s population is declining.

The CDC’s latest statistical data shows births in the U.S. declined by 1% from 2024 to 2025 — reaching record laws. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by the year 2030 there will be more deaths than births in America. The CBO suggests bolstering the U.S. population through immigration, but even at that, it believes America will stop growing by the year 2056.

Back in 2024, Pew Research Center found nearly half of adults under 50 in America don’t plan to have children. That’s a sharp change from 2018, when 61% of adults under 50 said they planned to have children someday.

Last fall, Pew also released a survey showing that most Americans believe it would hurt the U.S. in the future if fewer people have kids. In other words, most Americans understand that the U.S.’s declining birthrate is going to be a problem in the future.

All of this underscores how our society seems to view children as, at best, an accessory, and, at worst, a burden.

Society doesn’t treat children like they are a blessing from the Lord. Instead, people have been told that children will somehow stop them from doing what they want.

The truth is, children are good for society. We’ve seen in other countries how low birth rates hurt the economy, contribute to labor shortages, and make it harder to care for the elderly.

In 2020, a Chinese Communist Party official admitted the country needed to do more to raise its birthrate in order to “meet labor demands.” The situation in China has only gotten worse since then.

But more than just being good for society, children are a blessing. Children are an incredible responsibility, but they’re also an incredible joy. As John Stonestreet once said, “Every person bears the image of God, so whenever families produce children, they mirror God to the world. Sure kids are sometimes irritating, but they’re often hilarious, and they always remind us that life isn’t about ourselves.”

That’s a message more Americans should take to heart.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Strong Families Give Kids Long Term Benefits

Feb 13, 2026Jerry CoxFamilyChild Welfare, Children, Family

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.

Children Are Greater Than Our Desires: Guest Column

Feb 6, 2026John StonestreetMarriageChild Welfare, Children, Commercial Surrogacy, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Surrogacy

“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 Obergefell Supreme 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.

The Colson Center is proud to join this list of 43 (and growing!) organizations and leaders. The Greater Than website features answers to difficult questions, opportunities to get involved, and the latest news and information about this pressing problem.

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.