← Them Before Us
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- [00:02]
Katie Foust
Welcome to Them Before Us on American Family Radio where we strive to put children before adults. Our goal is to educate the public on a child centric perspective of marriage and family and represent the rights of children on policy matters. Now here's the host and founder of Them Before Us, Katie Foust.
- [00:21]
Josh Wood
Welcome to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host, Katie Foust, founder and president of Them Before Us here with my executive director, Josh Wood. And we're going to talk about, uh, some exciting news, you know, in our marriage and family world and some trending headlines. But as always, we start off with a little bit of Bible time. Uh, I have the delight of having my second child home from college and she does a great job of reading the Bible first thing in the morning. Her first thing in the morning is like three hours after I wake up. So it's a nice mid morning, like connect with God. So we were reading, let's see, she is in.
- [00:56]
Katie Foust
I love a swipe at her mid morning. She's a college, She's a college kid.
- [01:02]
Josh Wood
She's a college kid. We'll, we'll give her a little 8am Wake up time. No problem. So she's on the couch, she's reading. You know, I come over, I bring the cat and I'm like, read out loud to me. And she's in first Corinthians and she reads this passage from chapter four that says, for if. So, you know Paul's writing to the Corinthians, right? These people, he planted the gospel with them. It began to grow and now he's checking back and they're just like renegade, rebellious K kids. Okay? So he's talking about them and speaking of like longing for them to return to the truth, like asking them why they went astray. And he says, for if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. And I thought about how we don't have a whole lot of positive images of fathers in scripture. Most dads in the Bible have some kind of pretty epic failure in life. Even if at one point they did something wonderful or they had, they were faithful during some part. I mean, you can look at David, a man after God's own heart, who had so many kids with so many women that he was not able to, or unwilling to adjudicate some of the problems between them or the patriarchs who ended up, you know, being polyamorous or polygamous and then the fallout from that. And, like, it's just hard to find men who were fathers, I think, especially where you. They talked about their fatherhood or their connection with their kids. That was healthy. But here what we have is a picture of Paul doing it right, being a spiritual father. Somebody that's checking in with his kids, his spiritual children, exhorting them, correcting them, but also encouraging them later. He's like, how do you want me to come? Do you want me to come with gentleness or do you want me to come, you know, with. With anger and. And wrath and punishment? And it's just like when you were a kid, I'd say, do you want
- [02:58]
Jen
to pick up your shoes?
- [02:58]
Josh Wood
You know, when they're really little? And, you know, if the kids said no, we'd say, well, you can do it with a swat, or you can do it without a swat, but you're going to do it, right? Like, you can do it, like, gently and because you're choosing to, or we are going to bring corrective behavior to you. And swatting was very infrequent in our house because we did have that loving relationship. But they also knew that we would enforce the boundaries that we laid down for them. And that's what real love is. But what I love about this is Paul says, look, you got a whole bunch of tutors out there. There's all kinds of people that can give you some good advice here and there. But you've got a father and imitate me. And man, I will tell you if. When we look at so many of the problems, some of which we're going to discuss today in the radio program, of the social fabric fraying and coming apart, you could, if you had to choose one. Cause it is probably absent fathers or fathers that are disconnected or abdicating their leadership, their shepherding, their provision, their investment in their own kids. And if this is God's design, is for every child to have a dad in the home that he can imitate, right? A mother in the home that she can imitate. We're all going to imitate somebody. How incredible to have that close proximity with one person that loves you more than anybody else, that resembles you in some way, that's been there from the very, very beginning for you to be able to imitate. And so I just want to encourage all the parents out there, be the kind of people that you want your children to become, because they will imitate you for better or for worse, right? They're going to imitate you.
- [04:32]
Katie Foust
And I think you get so much. There was a kid this just this past week that I kind of found out, I put the pieces together that they did not have someone to imitate. They did not have an example. They came from a broken home. And it does completely change how you view their action and activity. I guess context creates compassion a lot of times. And like you said, so much of our social fabric, the culture of this country and the fraying that occurs is due to that. I mean, it is a lack of examples. And, man, the hard part is, even when you have a mom and a dad in the home, sometimes they're not great examples. But when you do it structurally, when divorce becomes we're throwing parties at the death of a family, people celebrating getting split up or doing single mom by choice stuff, where by design or by choice, you're immediately removing that person completely where they're not even a bad example. There is no example. Gosh. Yeah. I think you can trace so much of our. Our challenge and problem back to that and the point you made about the Bible. I've thought about that often. I'd love your perspective. There are a lot of. Really, maybe there feels like sometimes there's a lack of great insight into marriages in the Bible. Strong married husbands, strong married fathers or mothers and getting an insight into that. And I do wonder if that's because, you know, to your point where you're supposed to look to Christ or to understand that it's always going to be challenging. But I'd love your perspective on maybe why you think that is.
- [06:14]
Josh Wood
Yeah. You know, probably just because it's the story of the main story. And I think that there's awesome, like, sub stories that we can pull out of it. But ultimately the story is, you know, you major on the majors and the major is Christ came to redeem. Right. He made everything. We fell, he redeemed us, and now he's restoring it. And so there isn't the specifics that I think I would like to see in a lot of Scripture as it relates to some of the questions that we're asking today, some of the places that humanity is going wrong. And a lot of times you do have to go back to those general principles rather than those concrete examples. But then I think how much more important for us to be those living examples for our kids. You know, I was telling Miriam this morning that I worry about being faithful to God to the end. I worry that I'm going to fall away. There was a popular Christian band. There was a song that came out, you know, if anybody's like 40 or 50 and you were a Christian as a kid. It was called Testify to Love. It must have been, like, one of the top five Christian songs, you know, for as long as I will live I will testify to love I'll be a witness in the silence when words are not enough with every breath I take I'll give thanks to God above Okay, so it's this wholehearted devotion to God. So that band just came out and, like, rebranded it as an LGBTQ affirming song. And I thought, you know, when we were kids, I mean, I wasn't a Christian as a teen, but I remember this song after I became a Christian. You would look at these people, you would look at D.C. talk or, you know, these kinds of artists and think that's what really following God with all your heart looks like. Well, two out of the three DC Talk guys are very, very lost morally, and it's just hard to be faithful. And so I told Miriam, I'm like, I'm looking. I look for the people that have been faithful to the end. And I watch them, I imitate them, right? I want, I want. I need a Paul, somebody that I can imitate. That shows me what perseverance to the end looks like. So those absence in Scripture, it just means I pray that we get to be that living example for the people that are following in our steps.
- [08:17]
Katie Foust
Well, it does strike me too, there are pretty. We do have some examples of great mothers and great fathers. Fathers and mothers who are sacrificial, who persevere. And in some ways, even more so than the great examples of husbands and wives. Again, Paul gives us great exhortation around those roles. But it is interesting to me that we get through mothers and fathers and through our relationship with Christ and God the father, the pictures of these things, even if it is broken, which reflects the brokenness that we have here on earth.
- [08:54]
Sam
Mm.
- [08:56]
Josh Wood
It's interesting because, you know, we think about our marriages or our mothering or fathering as a picture of Christ, and it absolutely is, but it's actually the opposite. Like, that is the true and we are the shadow, right? He is the true husband, he's the true father, and we are the reflection of that. But that reflection is really important. That reflection, probably other than a total revival in our country reflecting the biblical reality of marriage and parenthood, is the. That will save the nation as it relates to life giving procreation, but also as it relates to stability and health for the children that come from those unions. So on that note, I want to talk about this new metric that our nonprofit then before us just published this week. And it is a national scorecard where we examined all 50 states and evaluated their marriage and family laws not based on whether adults got something that they wanted, because most of the laws that change or are adjusted at the state level as it relates to marriage, family, parenthood, reproductive technologies. It is driven by adult desire, adult identity, adult short term gains. And when that happens, it's kids who pay the price. So we spent a year looking at every state of the union evaluating, combing through their laws and looking at every state not based on whether or not they passed laws that adults like, but whether their marriage and family statutes reflected the needs and the rights of children. And so that just dropped today. So, Josh, you want to tell us a little bit about the children's rights scorecard that we just published?
- [10:39]
Katie Foust
Yeah. This was, man, the culmination of really well over, I'd say it's going on two years from idea to now delivery and make a point within each state. I mean, you could have really faithful warriors for the kingdom and for children working in states where those efforts are all defense. I mean, you picture them just totally in the trenches. And so this is not an indictment on the Washington Policy Center. Sorry to throw Washington State under the bus, but Katie, what score did they get?
- [11:13]
Josh Wood
O F? Maybe not F minus, but F. So
- [11:17]
Katie Foust
does that mean that the conservatives or the child protectors in Washington state are failing? No, because it's kind of all relative. Amidst the culture that you're living in, how are we how first off, objectively, what's the state of it? But man, we do know, and we can probably both speak to some heroic efforts that have gone down, you know, still as a loss in these states where they're at least getting the perspective of children out and they're raising, you know, the consequences of these policies to say the kids are going to be the victim and yet they still pass. I remember just last year we did a ton of work with the state of Massachusetts, maybe it was a year and a half ago, and they passed a whole new bill that one of the big parts of it was it allowed a woman to sell her own child through what's called genetic surrogacy and give away your kid. Name your price. I mean, absolutely horrific bill. And the local policy center in Massachusetts did a wonderful job fighting. And I think it passed, like overwhelmingly. I mean, we totally lost. Does that mean that their bad grade is a result of the Family Policy Center? Absolutely not. No. But it does at least give those policy centers. And this was our goal. Those legislators in that state, if you're a legislator, you know, one, send them this scorecard. You can find it@thembreebeforeus.com send them this and say, here's a good idea of where we could begin to see reform. We're going to break it down by section. And you can actually click in see the specific score for that section and see and what if I wanted to begin to change things? Where would be a good place to start?
- [12:57]
Josh Wood
You can go to thembeforest.com and resources and you'll drop down that map and it'll take you to our children's rights scorecard. And there's an interactive map. And so you can see that Mississippi has a B minus, Texas has a C. Florida has a B minus. Colorado has a D. Washington, California, of course, Washington D.C. and Maine, we have F's. Hawaii does too. Then you get little golden Child, Nebraska here with an A minus. And when you click on one of the states, we'll click on Nebraska and it'll tell you, it'll give you a little tab at the bottom. It says, what do we say about parentage? Do they allow the state to say mother and father? Or have they scrubbed those gender specific words from their parenthood statutes? What's their rules about surrogacy, artificial reproductive technology? What have they said about marriage, the definition of marriage? What are the constraints around easy divorce? And you can click through and look at all the different states, how they compare. And what this does is allows ordinary citizens to just see what's happening in their state. But for the very good people on the ground who are concerned about righting the wrongs of marriage and family, about all the ways that we have commodified children, harmed children, destabilized their homes, wrecked their identities, like subverted their development because we valued adult desire above their natural rights, this is a tool for local law lawn makers to say, no more, let's improve this score. We've always had great ideas, great statistics. Another thing we have on that site is the stories of kids who have been impacted and affected by these bad parentage laws or reproductive technologies so that people know who they're advocating for. So go to thembeforeus.com click resources. Take a look at our Children's rights scorecard. Share it, share it so people can see how you can better protect children in your state.
- [15:02]
Katie Foust
Welcome back to Them Before Us on American Family Radio.
- [15:05]
Josh Wood
We're back at them before U.S. radio. Thank you for joining us Again, we're so grateful that you give us some of your time on the weekend to think about children, to think about marriage, to think about family, to think about all the ways that we can in our own personal realm, but also in politics in general. How can we center the child in these conversations so that we create an entire society that is stronger because our kids are stronger? Now, one big part of that is the question. We've touched on this a lot at them before US Radio, and that is the fact that we're not having children. We are experiencing a birth dearth. It is not just America. Even though our numbers have just slowly notched down lower and lower every year, we're at about 1.56 children per woman. You need 2.1 just to, like, for stasis. But this is not a problem just in America. This is something that's happening globally. It's a phenomenon that's affecting 70% of the, you know, 70% of the globe, most of the developing nations. The only place that has above replacement rate in terms of fertility is a few poor countries in Africa and Asia. There's only two countries in the world that are developed or not impoverished that have positive fertility rates, and that's Israel and Mongolia. So you can look across Asia, Europe, North America, South America. Everybody's plagued by the same problem, and that is, we're not having children. We're not having enough children. It is one of the greatest threats to the human species maybe we've ever experienced. So, Josh, there's one article that we wanted to focus a little bit on. Louise Perry, who is a friend of ours and does incredible work. She wrote the Case against the Sexual Revolution, detailing how sort of the modern feminist notion of sex as liberation and marriage as some kind of patriarchal jailhouse for women is actually totally wrong. She spent a lot of time talking about the birth crisis and the factors leading into it. And she wrote an article at the Wall Street Journal this week and really just said, we don't know. There's all kinds of theories as to why birth rates continue to plummet. And she says it's complicated and we're just not sure why.
- [17:26]
Katie Foust
Yeah, she does. I mean, sorry for anyone who's hoping we have a silver bullet here, but her main points are this is global. It's not just Western, that every political explanation has a counterexample. So if you want to point to, oh, well, they don't offer enough childcare. Well, you look at the Nordic countries, they do tons of free services. Still not winning in that Regard. Well, they're not conservative enough. Well, they're not. I mean, you go down the list, there's not enough of this, not enough of that. Almost every single one she details in this article has a really compelling counterexample. She talks about, well, is technology playing a role? It's like, well, we kind of saw fertility begin to decline about 200 years ago, so probably not tech. Is it affordability? You do hear that from time to time. But people have had babies in horrible, horrible times. We're so much better off. Our lives are so much better off than any generation before. Even some of the work and economic examples, Well, a lot of people don't know that dads are doing far more childcare and housework than they ever have before. This is now. Are women working more, too? Yes, but it's just very hard to pin down to say this is the problem. Why is this significant? Because you will get from conservatives and from progressives different diagnosis and they want to ignore parts of it depending on their political stripes. So you do get the group saying, if you guys would just offer more benefits, more health care, more whatever, control over the reproductive system, birth control, or hey, we need to just offer IVF in spades, then it would fix it. And you got conservatives saying, hey, we need to just get women to stay home and then they're just going to produce more children, et cetera, et cetera. The truth is that's probably more of a politically tinged opinion and we don't have a real good answer for. You know, the last thing I'll say is Louise also says, unfortunately, our political sciences are probably. Our social sciences are probably politicized enough that I don't know that we're going to get any good data that doesn't have that bend.
- [19:38]
Josh Wood
Well, that's the problem with science is if you already have some conclusions that you're not willing to explore, if you already have some prior ideological commitments that mean that you can't follow the data to its logical end, well, that's going to hamper the actual discovery of some of the root causes of this I've heard. I've listened to several podcasts on this and Louise Perry has done a couple specifically, to me, what makes the most sense of what's going on in the world, but also what I just see in my own world, which is average of four kids, average of four kids. Like these days, if I meet a conservative who is a Christian and attending church, I can almost bet that they're going to say they're going to have four kids. It's kind of become the norm. Some people have more, some have less if they got married a little bit older. I've got plenty of friends though, with six kids, eight kids. I've got a couple friends with 11 kids. And so it's like, I know that there's something about a devout life, a life that values Christ, church community, a personal relationship with God, something about that affects the birth rate. And you can see it anecdotally, right? You just go to a church and there's tons and tons of kids. But, you know, you can also see it in the data. There was a study that came out two weeks ago that showed that the average man. So normally we, we evaluate birth rates based on fertility for women. But this one said a liberal man. Liberal men in general have 0.5 children. Conservative men have 2 children. That makes sense to me, right, that that's what I'm seeing too. Conservative men. And obviously there's a correlation between conservatism and higher religiosity. So I'm like, well, the explanation there is not economic. It's not what kind of benefits you're going to be receiving. It's not as much the woman's education level. It probably is more about the age of marriage. And conservative world says, don't do porn. You know, no masturbation. Channel all of your sexual energy into marriage. And that probably drives younger people to get married younger, which opens the door to having more children. So I think that there's a connection there. But if I had to really nail down, like, what is it? What's the difference? It's the story that we tell about women. It's the story we tell about mothers, it's the story we tell about marriage. And in the conservative Christian world, we say it's good, it's something to aspire to. It's actually something to sacrifice for. It's something that you should prioritize. It's something that is going to bring value not just to your life, but to the community and to the nation as a whole. And that's not something that a lot of women who are more progressive leaning are going to hear.
- [22:30]
Katie Foust
Yeah, I would love to point out the example of. Do you remember the show on MTV 16 and pregnant? There was a big show. They, it gave an inside look into teen pregnancy. And most of these girls obviously weren't partnered up, not married, no support, they had given birth when they're still a child. And they did a study post this that actually you can look it up if you Kind of type in MTV 16 and pregnant study. It actually demonstrably reduced teen pregnancy. They actually equated, I think it was like a 6% drop was only due to this playing everywhere. They did it by like looking up Google searches of areas that had a high viewership of this in the hours after watching. I mean, it was fascinating. What it told me was in the conversation around reproduction messaging, cultural messaging does have a massive impact. And what I, what I hate about the last two decades has been our move toward almost making motherhood and pregnancy a horrendous, scary thing. It's so dangerous for you. And then at the same time moving from abortion as safe, legal and rare into something to celebrate, shout. And actually as a medical necessity because motherhood and pregnancy is so incredibly difficult, threatening to your life that if you don't have access to this, you know, God forbid, who knows what's going to happen to you. And so you kind of have me to the point where you talk about worldview. One specific political party is parking a truck outside their convention offering abortions and vasectomies. That is a cultural message we had. Kamala Harris was the first sitting vice president to ever visit an abortion clinic. I don't think we can underestimate when we make pregnancy scary, when we make alternatives like you have to be on birth control. No, you cannot get pregnant. And then if you do get pregnant, abortion can be your backup birth control. I don't want to underestimate what that does in terms of that cultural worldview. Kind of washing over a generation of young women that. What was that due to our fertility rate?
- [25:01]
Josh Wood
Well, I, you know, I think about my daughters, my 22 year old and my 20 year old. My 22 year old got married at 21, so almost a year and a half ago. She's almost 23 and my 20 year old is currently dating a sweet boy and definitely thinking about and having conversations about what the future looks like. And so everywhere that my daughters have gone, there's been a lot of positive reinforcement for choosing to get engaged early and get married, married early or being in a serious relationship as a 20 year old. And people checking in.
- [25:31]
Sam
How's it going?
- [25:32]
Josh Wood
Oh, he seems so sweet. Is he going to visit soon? Like, what are you guys thinking for the future? Oh my gosh, that would be so great if it ended up working out. Lots and lots of positive reinforcement. And I remember my 20 year old was at a party of a friend's house who was very liberal, very, very liberal. And she was talking with one of the women there, it was a, it was a party populated with lots and lots of very well educated lesbians. And so, you know, they were Typ Seattle Evening difficulty. This is what we do, okay? And you know, one of these women is like, tell me where you're going to school, what are you studying? And you know, she's sharing a little bit. Oh, this would be an incredible career path for you. You should try this, you should do this. And Miriam goes, oh, yeah, I might like that. I think I could see a career in this. She goes, or I just get married. I have tons and tons of babies. And this woman was horrified. She's like, do not do that. You cannot do that. Don't waste. She literally is like, don't waste your life. Don't give your power to a man. Do not allow yourself to be caged in so young. There's so much more to do in life. I mean, if you're going to do that, like, don't do it now. I mean, can you imagine? I like, of course you're going to reject marriage and motherhood if you grow up in a world where that's all the messages that you hear. So to me it's not a huge mystery. It's you become what you behold. You know, what are you seeing, what are you hearing, what are the voices around you encouraging and what are they discouraging? And I think there's a lot of places in the world where the world, religious or non religious, is discouraging women from prioritizing marriage, from having children, and they're encouraging them towards things where there's more immediate gratification, but not necessarily the long term sweetness and benefit of having kids?
- [27:22]
Katie Foust
Well, it makes you wonder what is that going to do to our society in a generation when we have significantly more people nearing the end of life who really chose what may have been short term, more what. I don't know what you'd say. Fun, maybe not fulfilling. I mean, I have four kids, all under 8 years old. There are nights when I go, holy smokes, that was not fun. That was hard. I mean, check in with me in a few hours during the kind of, we call it the power hour, where it's like post dinner, bath time, bed, it's a hard hour. I'm like, I come off of calls all day and now I'm bathing three children, putting all to bed, doing books. Sometimes like, gosh, it's hard. But you chose this other, in between this, this 10 or 12 year period you have where you should be having children, where Your bodies are made to have children. Maybe it's a 15 year window. Well, I check in with them in 20, 30 years. What happens when maybe they only have one child or maybe they have no children, when no one at work cares? I mean, I heard someone say the other day, just always remember that if you pass away they will post your job on Monday. Like they, it's, they just don't care. Like it's a. Ultimately you're trading your value. You may be very valuable to them, but it's not a family. They're not going to be at your bedside. And so what is it going to do to our cultural conversation and psyche? What are those people going to be voting in or supporting at that point? I think it could really change the country, to be honest.
- [28:58]
Josh Wood
I remember when my kids were little, when they were a little older than yours were and I was taking a road trip to see my mom in Portland. It's about a three hour, three and a half. Well, with kids it's like a four hour drive. And I, I remember I was, I was gonna see my mom, but I was also gonna see a high school friend who had a very high powered job and she had a lot of money and she looked fantastic. I mean she was spending so much money on like skin care products and she yoga like a crazy woman and she looked, I mean she had like an 18 year old body and I had like dumpy frumpy mom body with thrift store clothing and my broken down van and I was on, I was like driving down I5 and I could, my son in the seat behind me started throwing up and I pulled over in the pouring rain in Seattle to the shoulder of the freeway and I managed to like catch most of it in my hand before, you know, and so I'm like throwing it at like my last three wipes, trying to get us clean, ready to go. And in that moment on the side of the road with all of my kids, kids, you know, some of which are like, I have to go to the bathroom, can I get on Now I thought, did I make the wrong decision? Should I have gone? Should I have gone the single, childish, childless route so that I too could be freshly home from a work trip to Copenhagen where I was drinking cocktails, you know, on a rooftop bar with a bunch of powerful people. It seems like I'm like, gosh, this is, is not glamorous or this is, I'm tired. You know, we don't have a lot of money. Now 15 years later, my life, I was just Telling you before we recorded the dawn is Breaking, you know, I was just talking about how my, I have three out of four home now and it's great. Like we went through challenge challenging seasons with all four, but right now it's just fun. Like there's no downside to having any of my kids here. They're managing their lives, they're doing great things, they're, they're integrate projects, they're working hard. You know, they're, I don't have to like babysit them. I don't have to, you know, I can make them food, but they can make themselves food. It's like all, we can sit around and play cribbage and we can go to Costco and shop for fun things together and we can laugh at Instagram reels and it's just, I just get to watch and it's like, man, it was a short term death, but the long term payoff is so incredible. And my childless friend doesn't have this life. It's still high powered people and her body still looks great, but she doesn't have the fullness.
- [31:35]
Katie Foust
You're never gonna miss that in, you know, having another child in 30 years, you know, when they come home for Thanksgiving.
- [31:42]
Josh Wood
Great to have you with us. I want you to stay tuned. We have a great conversation with Jen and Sam coming up where they're going to tell you a little bit of the happenings across social media, some of the conversations and comments they've been responding to. You're going to learn a lot. Stay with us.
- [32:01]
Katie Foust
If you'd like to comment on the show, email commentsembeforeus.com hey everyone.
- [32:08]
Sam
Welcome to Here for the comments. A Them Before Us podcast series where we dive into the comments and questions that we get online and we unpack the children's rights perspective to answer those questions. I'm your host, Sam and I'm joined by Jen and we're here for the comments. So for today, I thought it would be fun to dive into a post that I made on X recently because I was doing what most people do and I was scrolling on TikTok and I saw this post and it was so upsetting. It was about this girl who it clearly in the video she had like lost her dad. But she posted an old video of her and her dad together and like her dad meeting her baby for the first time and these really sentimental moments and in the background like the, the voiceover is basically just saying how much you miss that person. And like, you know, I love my dad, my dad's still here. And so, of course, it just got me in my feels about, like, I don't want to look forward to that day. Like, this is such a sad thing. And then I'm scrolling her page and, like, a few scrolls down, she's talking about how she's a proud single mom by choice. And for those who don't know what that means, it's not like, oh, I left this abusive man and now I have to be a single mom. And I'm proud of what I did. Which, you know, okay, that's different. What she did is without any kind of dad in mind. She was single, but she wanted to have a kid. And she just decided one day, why do I even need to wait until I'm married? Why do I need to wait until I pick out the right father? So she just went and basically used ivf, got a sperm donor, a person who donated. Actually, they say donated, but he got paid to drop his sperm off and never meet the child that it produces. And she created this child knowing that they will never get that relationship with their dad. So I thought it was just so much cognitive dissonance where it's like, you are missing your dad, you have that bond with him, that relationship that formed you, and you're gonna create a child who will never get to experience that. It was, like, so mind blowing. So wanted to hear your thoughts on that, Jen.
- [34:14]
Jen
Josh wrote an article that talked about the importance of biological connection for particularly within the LGBT community. Was what the point of the article was. That's what it studied. But this is another great point. Like we always talk about, we are not condemning adults because of their personal identities or relationship choices. As an organization, we might have some preferences and things we believe are good to do, good for human flourishing from. From our different backgrounds as staff, but it's not about this lady's identity. This has nothing to do with her being lgbt. But see, deciding to be a single mom or a single dad by choice, I'm going to go purchase all the materials, create a child in a lab, do all of the IVF stuff that we know is ethically wrong, all of these processes that are so bad within the IVF process, and then guarantee my child doesn't know his or her dad. And it's like simultaneously knowing the biological connection is so important for yourself. There's a reason she didn't go adopt. She wanted a biological connection. And they hold this in their mind. The adults that are doing these processes hold this in their mind the exact same time that it's not important for their child. Biology so important for me. Biology not important at all to you? Like you're saying it doesn't make sense logically. And in the study that Josh talks about, LGBTQ people overwhelmingly choose to go through the processes that give them a partial biological child way more often than adoption.
- [35:58]
Sam
Wow.
- [35:58]
Katie Foust
So.
- [35:59]
Jen
And it's like you're saying, any adult that's doing this, you're essentially kind of saying you don't think your mom or dad was that important or essential to you because you don't think that person's essential or important to your kid.
- [36:12]
Josh Wood
Yes.
- [36:12]
Jen
Yeah.
- [36:13]
Sam
She even. You know on that same post where she was saying she was a single mom by choice, if you scroll over, she posted a picture of her and her son, who's a cutie, and she said, this is why, when you know what you want, why wait, I'm blessed to have the most beautiful boy. And why should I miss out on motherhood because I'm single? One, she does have a beautiful boy. He's really sweet. I feel so bad that he has to grow up without his dad. But two, why do I have to miss out on motherhood because I'm single? So your child doesn't have to miss out on his father his whole life. That's why. That's why it's so important. And so again, when you look at this as just, like, what do I want? Why should I wait, you know, what? What are my desires? And you trump that over, like, what would be good for a child? And I think any honest person would say, what is good for a child is having a good relationship with a mother who loves them and a father who loves them. But instead, you went and paid good money to find a father who specifically wanted to abandon their child and didn't care what kind of life that child would live. And I just don't. I can't comprehend why you would pick a dad like that for your kid. Because that's the thing. They say single mom by choice, but in reality, it's not like this child only has a mom. This child does have a dad. He's still out there in the world. He exists. And the problem is, like, that abandonment and keeping him from his dad is where this wound will form. So it's just a sad reality where it's like, you don't. That's just not how biology works. You can't make a kid by yourself. It takes two.
- [37:46]
Jen
Fatherless child by choice. Right. Motherless child by choice is the reality. And you hit it the Nail right on the head. Something we always talk about at them before us. We are not saying that the adults aren't suffering for some of the things that are going on. You know, whether it's inborn, you know, your orientation, quote unquote, it's inborn, or it's a choice, or it's temperament plus environment or whatever. Like those debates. Okay, well, those folks are having feelings and want to express themselves and choosing relationships that don't naturally create children. And so then you have that feeling of like, I desire a natural child and it's, you know, the relationship that I'm in cannot produce one, so don't I have a right to have this? Or people who are not able. There's so many amazing, sweet single people getting later and later. Or maybe they had. They were unlucky in love in the sense of their early widowed or early. Or an early widower, or they got divorced or they're in an abusive relationship and they leave. There's all these things. Yes, adults are suffering and have hard things going on, but you made the point perfectly. The reality is either you suffer and bear it, you have to do something about it to help you stand up under the weight, or you can transfer it to the child. And that is the reality of what she did. Yes, we're glad the child exists. Yes, we're glad the child is safe and loved by Mom. But she took that burden of her feeling lonely and sad and struggling in some ways and alleviated some of that by creating a child who now will uniquely suffer and not know his dad and have a really hard time. But she will feel better. But now she put it on the shoulders of the child. So. Yeah, all right. Yeah, super interesting topic. We see stories like that all the time. We do want to cover something that if you're listening to this on radio. Josh, Katie just covered it also. Or, you know, if you're listening to this on the podcast, this might be the first time you've ever heard of it. But we just launched a huge project this week called our Children's Rights Scorecard. We had our colleagues work together with folks to grade every single state along some criteria about whether or not they're defending or violating the rights of children. My state got an F. I think Florida did a little bit better. Sam, what were you. B minus.
- [40:07]
Sam
Yeah, B minus.
- [40:09]
Josh Wood
F. Oh, boy.
- [40:10]
Sam
Yeah, I already got a B minus, which I was actually really proud of. I. We have a lot of room to grow, but I will take a B any day.
- [40:19]
Jen
So, you know, some of us Have a lot to be proud for. Some proud of. Some of us had a lot, a lot of work to do, you know, getting connected with our family policy centers so we can get after it. But we wanted to cover some of the craziest laws that sort of came. Came up during this research. And so, Sam, will you walk us through some of the crazy stuff that you saw when we were looking up this project?
- [40:40]
Sam
Yes. Okay, so the first one that stuck out to me is there's 13 states that allow commercial genetic surrogacy. And for those who don't know what that means, it's basically where the mom, instead of like you take an egg from, you know, the mom who might be raising the kid later, or from just a donor, you actually just have. Have this woman, it's her own biological child, who is. Who she's gonna basically grow in her womb, and then whenever birth happens, she's gonna hand that baby over to those strangers to raise the kid. But it's her biological child in every way. She's the birth mom and the biological mom. So 13 states allow that. And I thought that was pretty wild.
- [41:23]
Jen
And, you know, I've heard this before. There was a lady who got busted for trying to literally sell her child on Facebook marketplace. I don't know if it was a few months old, baby was a few months old, or what. And so she got arrested and she has facing legal trouble. And people have pointed out, how is that different from what's happening for some states, the only difference is that it has to be signed. That contract has to be solidified before the child is born. Then it's fine. Yeah, after the child is born, you're not allowed to do that anymore. So I guess it kind of follows their logic that if you don't think it's human, you can treat it like a product right before it's born. And then.
- [42:02]
Sam
But it's funny because what do those contracts say? Those contracts don't say, oh, hey, I'm gonna give this Columbus cells over to somebody else. Those contracts are talking about a child even before the child is born. So it's so funny how like, it's. Again, it's a lot of cognitive dissonance where it's like you're talking about a child, but you're pretending it's not a child. So that way legally you can sell it. And this is why we say that, like, surrogacy is child trafficking, because you are paying money to this mother to give her biological child away to a stranger to raise them to do whatever they want with them. Honestly, she doesn't care. She signs the contract, she gets her money, and whatever happens, happens. And so we're very against that. And what was crazy is I was looking into it. There are some states that allow this to happen after the child is already conceived. So like without the plan of doing surrogacy, she just gets pregnant by like a donor or just whatever. And then after that point, she meets somebody who says, hey, I really want a baby. Can you be my surrogate? The baby that you're already growing? Can I just sign a contract and, and have them after they're born? And that's also legal.
- [43:09]
Jen
So yeah, like a man and woman could just get pregnant naturally. She could sell the child. It's crazy. Yeah. I don't know.
- [43:16]
Sam
It's like, it feels like we're not even living in the United States. It's so crazy. The next one that I saw was, let me see here, donor ID laws that actually protect donor anonymity. But these laws, if you read them, they begin by saying that the donor conceived child has a right to know their origins. But then there's a carve out saying that the donor's wishes to remain anonymous actually is prioritized by law. So again, it's like the same law contradicts itself. It acknowledges that these children deserve to know where they come from, but then says even though they deserve that and they have a right to that, what's more important is the adult being prioritized and they don't want to know the kid, they just want to be anonymous and that's what we're going to protect. And so again, just a crazy reality that we're living in.
- [44:08]
Jen
I know. I think in the UK it's mandatory at 18 or 21, the identities of donors gets revealed to the donor conceived child. So that's one step. And we've, I think we've talked about this before, but consider why it has to be anonymous. So many people wouldn't do it unless they could be guaranteed at some level. You're not going to find me and come for me. You know, I'm going to have a family in 10 years and I don't want kids. You know, I don't want the kids that were produced from what I donated, quote, unquote donated to get through college to come and knock on my door. But the reality is there is no anonymity anymore. With 23andMe with Ancestry.com people are submitting their genes and finding cousins and relatives and they're Finding these people. And I don't know if this is an argument for incrementalism or whatever, but I do think it's great to start with things like this, of banning the anonymity. You will get to be known and all those siblings get to know each other right away. And strong social practice of saying, if you're going to go through these processes, you should tell your children they are donor consent so they're not marrying a half sibling later. They're not surprised. All the, all those kinds of things. What else did we.
- [45:20]
Sam
Yeah, no, 100%. Multiple states have laws stating that the courts can grant parentage to more than two adults. So legally you don't just have a mom and a dad. Legally you can have like three parents or four parents because now there's poly parenting. And what kind of psycho universe are we in? Because that is not healthy, that is not normal, that's not okay. Like children should not be exposed to that. They should have two solid parents, their mom and their dad. And then again, if something happens and adoption is necessary, then their adoptive mom and their adoptive dad, that's what children need. So that was crazy. And then there's two more, actually three more, but I'll try to be quick. There's birth certificates in 43 states say that they have to conceal the true parents of the donor conceived children. So like if you. Yeah, that's so crazy. So if you hire somebody to, you know, and you get like sperm or you get an egg from a donor, again you're paying the money, so it's not really a donor. But yeah, your birth certificate will say who the parents that like wanted the child are instead of the legal, like who in reality the parents are. So that's so crazy. So a child will never know where they actually came from because they can't even go to their roots. The birth certificate.
- [46:44]
Jen
Yeah, well, and I see this one too. You say in 17 states, mother and father have been erased from the law and replaced with gender neutral terms. We've talked about that. It's parent one, parent two. And like you're saying parent three, why wouldn't it be parent four, parent five, parent six? When I've talked to people about the definition of marriage and I say someone said the government shouldn't be involved at all. And I was like, so there should be no restrictions on the concept or institution of marriage. Why not? Why not 10 people in a marriage, they don't have a guiding principle. Like they don't have a boundary around any of this. And when they lecture us about the slippery slope is not true. First of all we have 10 years to to point to since Obergefell that it is true and we are seeing these things happen. There's no boundary for them to stop. Well I will just plug where people can go find this so let's see them before us.com go to the resources tab. There'll be a drop down. It says 50 state scorecard. Find your state. You can post an image. You can share it with folks in your state. Join your policy center, your family policy center so you can get connected. Go to GreaterThancampaign.com to overturn Obergefell because that's what started this whole mess. And thanks so much for your research Sam. Thanks everyone for joining us on here for the comments. Hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.
- [48:11]
Josh Wood
The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.