Children – Family Council

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.

Humans Were Meant to Be Here: Guest Column

Sep 9, 2024Shane MorrisCurrent EventsChildren, Family, Marriage

We are a blessing to be preserved, multiplied, and redeemed.

For a long time, if you encountered a writer warning about declining global birth rates, it was a safe bet you were reading a right-leaning or Christian publication. But that appears to be changing. In the last couple of years, mainstream news outlets seem to have caught on that the problem civilization now faces is not too many but too few babies, and some are sounding the alarm. Recent stories in The Spectator, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all clearly describe why a shrinking and aging society is a bad thing and try to identify the causes behind this population “bust.”

The fear of a population “bomb” haunts mainstream psyche greatly due to Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, where he famously declared in the opening line that, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” and predicted mass starvation due to overpopulation.

This of course never happened, and in fact, global food production vastly outpaced population growth, making it easier than ever to feed everyone. Facts aside, the baby-banning ideology persists.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post editorial board ran a response to the surge of critical comments they’ve received on stories about declining birth rates. As anyone familiar with the comments section under controversial (or really any) articles can imagine, a litany of bad arguments had been unfolding. One commenter wrote that, “Endless growth—whether that’s of the population or the economy—is an unachievable fantasy.” Another declared, “Now is the time to reject growthist ideology for good.” Many cited climate change, overcrowding and, of course, running out of food as reasons to encourage lower birth rates.

The Post did a surprisingly nice job of refuting these. It pointed out that having more young and creative minds is precisely how mankind has enjoyed an unprecedented technological boom over the last two centuries: “Ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints,” and have “liberated much of humanity from misery.”

Imposing population constraints on developing nations would also, it said, “amount to a kind of environmental imperialism,” denying to poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America precisely the opportunities for growth and improved living standards that richer, western countries have long enjoyed. And, they added, there is simply no evidence it would help the environment:

Productivity growth can take the world in directions that are benign for the physical and social environment. Growth can mean less pollution, more forests and better health.

Of course, the real reason The Post caught flak from many of its readers wasn’t environmentalism or economics, but something better described as a “mood” instilled in the popular imagination by books like The Population Bomb and in a host of sci-fi movies. It’s a sense, seemingly shared by more today than ever before, that humans are bad, that our activity is inherently exploitative, and that the world would be better off with fewer of us.

In this way of thinking, people are a disease on the planet—a species whose inventions have allowed us to bypass the checks and balances of natural selection and multiply out of control. In short, we don’t really belong here; not in such high numbers. And a large reduction in our population could only be beneficial.

But what if human beings are good, actually? Not in a moral sense, but in the sense that we’re meant to be here? What if this world was specifically designed to support us and thrive under human stewardship? What if the way we continually defy the doomsday predictions of writers like Ehrlich through innovation and discovery shows that we are more than just another species devouring resources?

This, of course, is exactly how the Bible describes human beings. And it’s why, despite the race’s fallen condition, Christians view human life as a blessing to be preserved, multiplied, and redeemed; and the human mind and spirit as resources more inexhaustible than any material we consume.

We bear a certain resemblance to our Maker in that we can, in our limited and creaturely way, also create. Which is why a lack of new humans is not good news, and why I’m happy to see that some mainstream publications are starting to realize this—even if The Population Bomb still haunts their comments sections.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.