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- [00:00]
A
Foreign hello there and welcome to the Thinking Fellows Podcast. My name is Caleb and the Thinking Fellows is brought to you by the 15:17 podcast network of shows. You can go to 15:17 podcast podcast to see all of our shows there. Just a couple weeks ago we had a podcast celebration where many of you came out and supported our shows with reoccurring monthly gifts. We greatly appreciate that. If you didn't have an opportunity to support us during that time and you would like to now, you can still do that by going to 1517.org donate. If you would like to support us in a way non financially, you can go and review the show on Apple Podcasts and I will leave a link to that there. I am joined by my father Dr. Sky Keith and by Dr. Adam Francisco. Today as we continue telling people what to do, why you should very pretentious of us and today in fact might be our most demanding of this.
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B
This is going to be the most difficult one for me not to get all culture wary on personally.
- [01:17]
A
Yeah, well we'll try not to do it. We'll try to bring, bring some theology into it. But this week is Father's Day and we used to do like Father's Day episodes and we used to feature your book Being Dad Father is a Picture of God's Grace. I think it's good to do that again and I'll put a link to that book in the show notes. But we are going to do a topic we why you should have children. Now I, I think in my own lifetime this has become like very if you were to tell somebody you should have kids. That is our fighting words. And I don't think, I mean I was really, you know, young, but maybe it's been like this my whole life. I don't know. But I don't feel like it's always been like this. And I think statistics tell us that it probably hasn't always been like this. Right. And so we're going to make a case for why you should have children. I think you can make like you said, there's a culture war case to be made, but there's probably, there's I think a pretty strong theological case to have it. I want to put a caveat at the beginning of the show because I know that when conversations about people having kids come up, there are some fringe cases where some people get really hurt by this. Like, like a, a, an imperative to people who medically can't have children. I think are people I, I don't want to say we're like telling you to go fight the good fight. Right. People who are not at a, like, un.
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B
Unmarried people.
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A
That's probably not your imper. You probably have a step before this.
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B
It's funny, I took that one as a given. But maybe we should say that I.
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C
I do think we need to be a little careful on the Ish. Well, yeah, careful is okay. On the issue of people who are. Is barren or stereotypes or whatever, because some people just can't for, as you say, medical reasons.
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A
And, and I've maybe seen them even.
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B
Treat that very harshly.
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C
This is not about them. You know, this is, you know, they're, they're normal people, but they just can't have children.
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A
So this topic comes up.
- [03:34]
C
Can't have children.
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A
Because a lot of people who can choose not to, and not only do they choose not to, they're very vocal about why more of us should make that choice not to.
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B
That's beautiful. Adam really failed then because he has four.
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A
You have four.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And you're fostering. So six. Six in the house right now.
- [03:59]
C
A little story, though, on the contention of this issue. So this would have been 2002. Ish, I think my wife and I recently had been married for two years at that point. We were in England at an evangelical theological college at Oxford University, Wycliffe hall, and newly married, and we're getting to meet people there. And I remember in the common room, somebody asked us, you know, asking us about how long we've been married and are you going to have children and so on. And I remember we said, either I or Rachel said something, yeah, well, we want children, we want three, four, whatever God gives us. And interestingly, this is somebody working towards ordination in the Church of England said they were aghast at that. And they said it was something like, don't you worry about the effect that would have on the environment in terms of carbon footprints, as they used to talk about it. I don't know if that's still a thing.
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A
And then.
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C
And like, no, they said, but what about the, the burden on the, the.
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A
State.
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C
The, the cost to the taxpayers, what they were getting at? And that was the first time for me where I encountered that sort of thing. And it was coming from an evangelical at a relatively speaking conservative evangelical theological college. That's when it taught me that, oh, this is a, this is a. Actually a real issue. And it's gotten much, much worse in present.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Caleb's point, though, I think that that attitude was much more prevalent in the UK and Europe than it was in the States. 20 years ago and has come over to the States now. So I think in a lot of ways we're having the discussions here in America that were being had in the UK and Europe 20 years ago and are still prevalent there as well.
- [05:54]
C
It. I mean, right now we're living in weird times because of coven and all that, but I. There's the cynical part of me that wants to respond to the European or go back and say, hey, let's go take a drive through Birmingham or. Or Luton.
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B
Yeah.
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C
See how that's working out for you with your, like, 98 Muslim population.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Who's gearing up to. To make a majority of the voting sector in your. Your society. Good luck.
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B
Yeah, I. I think it's an. It's an interesting discussion, and I'm. I'm very much shocked at where we are now. For a long time, this United States population held out on this one and was doing pretty well. But we've seen a pretty dramatic change in what they call the fertility rate over the last decade. Um, it's kind of funny. When Covid hit, I kind of walked around saying, well, there's gonna be a big old baby boom. People are gonna be locked up at home. And there just wasn't. And it. It was actually really surprising to me that they're just. On the whole. Wasn't. In fact, I think the divorce rate is what went up, not the rate of people having babies.
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A
I, you know, just to. The reasons I. I've heard and seen are things starting like what Adam did. I. I used to see this one 5 years ago More frequently than I do now, but the environment I've seen.
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B
That's an interesting argument because. So all of the programs that people want the government to enact that would, quote, unquote, counteract man caused climate change. You know, take tax money. And one of the struggles with the. The lower birth rate now is that collection of taxes.
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A
Yeah.
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B
There's. There. You're running governments that have a lot of government programs that pay for X, Y and Z are forecasting huge deficits.
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A
Because of lack of replacement.
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B
Because of the lack of replacement rate of taxpayers. And so you can also sort of make the argument that it's more environmentally friendly to pack, in Adam's case, eight people into one house than it would be to pack a single couple or a couple with one time into that same house.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Or even into a condo. I mean, the energy consumption in an. In a house of atom size with eight people in it is much lower per person than it is in any Other situation.
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A
Right. So that's one I've seen. I've seen the state one. But in the United States, you see a little less of that because we don't have, you know, at the moment, you know, a socialized medicine program and some other programs that they, they have in Europe are just not as big. I, I do see more the most, like the fastest growing that I see is the personal harm to or risk that you're asking women to take. I see that one popping up more frequently that we shouldn't. You know, women should be able to choose more and not be forced by culture or society into taking a risk for having children when they, you know, they may not want or benefit that or their life may be better without them. I see economic reasons, especially my generation, a lot, and I think when they poll them, a lot of people say they cannot afford to have kids. If the polls are worded like that. I think it's kind of like, do you think you can afford or not? They don't put a price on that. A lot of, A lot of people in my generation say that it's because they can't afford to yet. The one I see amongst already married couples, like a lot of this is single people or dating people projecting reasons why they wouldn't want to. The one I see amongst married couples that frustrates me the most is finding each other time together. Time to build our relationship.
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B
Time to find out who you are.
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A
Yep. I don't. I've heard that one. I don't know who my spouse is yet. We've only been married for two years and they were dating for nine before that. Right.
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C
So forgive me, but that's so stupid. Um, so dumb.
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A
So I hear that one a lot.
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B
Adam's like, I've been married for 20 some odd years and I still don't know who she is.
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A
Um, and then the other one I've heard is like, I don't want to harm my kids the way I was harmed by my parents.
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B
So don't.
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A
Yeah, so. And I haven't figured that out yet. So I hear that one too. Those are the most common. So, so now laying that those are out there, maybe we don't do those one by one, but maybe we just make some positive cases for this, maybe address some of these. I think the affordability one is pretty addressable. I think most people, it's. I couldn't afford to continue to travel to Europe every eight months and have.
- [10:54]
B
Kids versus, you know, there is the perception out there though, that it is More expensive. Even if you just take it on the getting married side, there is a perception out there that it's more expensive to be married than it is to be single. And I think if you ask some economists to crunch the number. Numbers on that, and I'm sure they have this, that would turn out to be just flatly not true.
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A
I mean, when I got married, my income literally like doubled overnight.
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B
Normally your income doubles. Your rent goes in half.
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A
Right.
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B
The food expenses. It's much easier. In a weird way, it's cheaper. It's not like per dollar cheaper to buy food for more people, but it is cheaper, you know, per capita, I think, is what you would say.
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C
And you get to go to Costco.
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B
Yeah. So like, for instance, if my wife and I live in this giant house by ourselves, and it's not giant, probably by standards, but it's giant for us. And you know, many times when we cook, we're cooking for two people. That's actually in a lot of ways harder and more expensive than it is to, I mean, like per steak, let's say per piece of chicken.
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C
Yeah.
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B
To cook for a family. So bulk discounting, it's just all.
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A
It's actually the argument.
- [12:15]
B
This is all perception. This is all what people have been convinced. I. I'll say this is. And then this is culture warriors. I'm going to try to get. And then I'm going to go on. I actually did this in Sunday school class on Sunday a little bit. Then I think we should go on to the theological reasons. I think we have a whole, just even within Christianity, you know, have a whole generation of, I, I guess you'd call them the baby boomers. That on the whole, convinced my generation and younger, so Xers, millennials, Z. Z's that they needed to wait a very long time to get married and thus wait a very long time to have kids. So they would, you know, it's wait till you're out of college, then wait till you get a good job, then wait till that job has given you a good enough salary, and then wait till you've saved enough money to buy a house and then get married and then wait three or four years till you guys know each other and then have kids. Right. And there's some like, on the moral, Christian side of that, you know, if you're also teaching them to remain abstinent until they get married, you're now, now asking them to remain abstinent. Let's say they become physically. Let's even say if you take it to 18. Right. Sexually available, quote unquote, for more than a decade.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You're talking and asking them to stay abstinent during that time.
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A
18 till your early, early 30s, more likely 15 or 16 till your early 30s.
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B
And on that just seems highly unlikely in my opinion. And my experience working in student services in university would tell me that it is highly unlikely. And then beyond that, you're really the bigger problem here is you're setting them up to look at their life in terms of them being the center of it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The whole world and every decision that is made is made on how it will affect the them and their sort of aspirations for their career, specifically their career, not even their aspirations for family and kids, but specifically for their career. And then focusing all of those decisions around finances as the final arbiter of whether something should be done or not done is how is this going to affect the finances. And I think as Christians, that's really not our main priority. I mean, it's, it's certainly, I'm not telling people to be bad stewards of the gifts that God has given them, but at the same time, you know, that's not the basis upon which we make decisions.
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A
Right.
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B
At least generally it shouldn't be. And that's sort of the, one of the big issues that I have with this now. This is, this has been also, I think, something that has come over from culture into Christianity and into sort of. I don't mean Christianity doctrinally, but I mean, it's like practice has come from culture into sort of Christian culture. And I think it's really harmful in a lot of ways. And so what you're seeing now is you're seeing seen a resurgence of a Christian culture that is going against this in things like the quiverful movement, you know, which goes to the extreme other side. You know, it, you know, I, I've heard, heard you say that one of the arguments against having kids is what it does to a woman's body. I think that's a little silly. I don't, you know, I know the.
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C
Body was kind of designed to have kids.
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B
Yeah. And I know that can affect, and it can and does affect it adversely and all that.
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A
People, there's complications of risk. Right.
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B
But I think the flip side of that is on sort of this quiverful side, people still haven't kid upon kid upon kid upon kid upon kid, when it really is, you know, risking the life of the mother with every child. I think that's not smart either. I mean, one of the reasons, one of the Big reasons that your mom and I stopped having kids is because with her last two pregnancies, she in with your sister, she was rushed into emergency surgery both times after them. And it just was horrible. Like, I don't even know what to say about it. And it really was. We just, we talked about having a fourth. It really was a big. Was a big factor, right?
- [16:37]
A
No, no, no. There's. There's definitely some real things. I just, like we were saying, those get extrapolated out to everybody. Right. So it's like, because there's a risk nobody should ever do X or very few people should do X, this is where science and technology gets scary. Maybe only these people with these genetic traits should do X. Right. Because they're at lower risk or whatever it is that that can get scary on the. I mean, so if we're going to flip here to making positives, and we can certainly use our positives and then address some of these as we go through, you know, one of the, the earliest, the. The first. If we want to talk about job. Right. Everybody's been get, you know, you. You say career focus. Your job has in many ways become the focus, the end goal of life. Your career defines you. It becomes your ontology. None of these other things come in factor. If we just want to go to Job. The first job that man is really given, one of the first jobs God gives him is to be fruitful and multiply.
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B
Well, yeah. And one could argue it's a command.
- [17:49]
A
Yeah, it is a command.
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B
So I think I said in the last episode how the reading for last Sunday was the Tower of Babel connected to Pentecost. And my pastor, Bob Hiller, really focused on the fact that the people who decided to settle in the valley and build the tower, you know, stopped in that valley because it was a fertile land and they thought life would be easy there, which actually had gone against the command of God after the flood to once again be fruitful and multiply and, comma, populate the entire earth. Yeah. And for a Christian to see sort of populating the entire earth as an evil thing, as being sort of influenced by secular society on that, it really flies in the face of God's command in Scripture.
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A
Well, I think it's interesting I just pulled up again.
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B
Let me just give the caveat. I'm not referring to people that can't.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Which is a result of the fall.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which is a result of the fall and the consequences that sin has on bodies.
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B
Talking about people who refuse to.
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A
Yeah. So Genesis, that command is interesting because it starts both ways of this. And God blessed them. And the first time you see the phrase be fruitful and multiply, God is actually commanding the animals, yeah. To be fruitful and multiply. Fish of the sea, birds of the air.
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B
We all know the animals are like, all right, we. We've got it.
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A
But it starts with God bless them, saying, be fruitful, multiply. And then a couple verses later, 28, same thing goes to man immediately after they're created. And God blessed them and said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over these other things that are supposed to multiply. Fish, put birds, heavens, every living thing that moves on the earth. And so it's part of occupying the creation and being set free into this creation. God has been. Is that it is not just going to be you alone in that creation.
- [19:54]
B
You see, And I don't want to make too much of this, but you see, sort of in Matthew 28, when Christ is ascending, then he gives the command to go out into all the world, right? And to teach them everything that I've baptized them and to teach them all that I've commanded you, what we call the Great Commission. You see a very similar thing here. I mean, originally, we're supposed to be fruitful and multiply and populate the whole earth, right? And then Christ comes, the earth is populated, right? And the command is. That command doesn't stop, number one, because Christ re quotes that for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, right? So he refers to that whole, whole thing. Then as he's ascending, he's giving this. This blessing or this command from a different perspective again. Now, this is in relation to the Gospel too.
- [20:49]
A
Yeah. Now you are. So Christians are set back into the world that they were placed to. To. They were set in originally to. To not to be fruitful, multiply and to occupy, to create, to subdue to. To build into a livable world. And. And then not just one livable valley. Yeah, not just one livable valley. And then they're set back into the world to now go preach to that world, right? The good news that Christ has died for them. A world that has fallen, a world that was supposed to be filled with life and is filled with death, is now given Christ. And so children are part of that, Right. If you don't have children, you're not going to be sending anybody else into the world to go proclaim that gospel of Christ.
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B
You certainly Won't be preparing anybody to go into the world and proclaim that gospel after you're dead.
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A
Correct? Yeah.
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B
And so I also think there's an immortality sort of project in place with people not wanting to have kids. Is it's almost this idea that I'm going to live forever. Yeah. And so nothing else matters.
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A
There's a.
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B
There's a lot of lack of foresight in here. That everything in this life is fleeting. From dust you were made, to dust you shall return. And that while you're here, the calling that you live in is first you're called to be a Christian, and then as a Christian, you're called to serve in your various vocations. Those first vocations that you're called to serve into are husband or wife, and then father and mother whenever possible. I mean, Luther very much talks about this in his explanation to the sixth Commandment thou shalt not commit adultery. In the large catechism, he refers to in his time, the deplorable. He talks about how in the time that the Ten Commandments were given, or in the older times that the Jews had the habit of marrying young, and that this was very important. And he says in our deplorable time, these practices are despised. And that we wait too long to get married. And he's sort of saying a lot of the same things that we're talking about now and how important it is for the sake of the gospel, too, that you have children, that you have a family that whenever possible. And how it's a sad thing when it's not possible. It's not a thing to delight in. And the reason for this has to do with the purpose that you're here to live in your vocations while you're here. And that. That is. That is in a lot of ways a setup for the furtherance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've said this oftentimes. I think evangelism and slash evangelism, apologetics to the world are very important. I think. I think we do have a call to go out into the world and share the good news of Jesus Christ with people that have never heard it. I just think that. That evangelism starts at home with your own family.
- [23:56]
A
There is no world if all those people stop having children. You and then those other people. There's literally no. There is no world after that. And we kind of. We love to view the world as only the one that's far away. You know, if. If not having kids is the ideal, that means those people very Far away should not be doing that either. And then there's no, there's no world.
- [24:17]
B
And even, even on a secular side, you can say that, right? And even in America now, even if you take into account immigration into the United States, we're below replacement rate. And people say, well, that means that every married couple has to have, you know, two point whatever kids. It's actually not that it's every, it's every family now has to have like three plus kids because of all the people that aren't getting married and that are getting married and aren't having kids. And so that sort of replacement rate deals with the entire population. But the reality is the burden is going to fall on those people that are sort of committed to having families.
- [24:54]
A
Anyway, I think you brought up vocation and I think first article gifts from God and marriage and family are, you know, we like to say the building blocks of every society. Very true. Also the building blocks of every vocation, right? Those that is the closest vocation you'll ever have, those are the people who will be the most dependent on you and whom you will be the most dependent on. But even if we were to build outside of that into communities, those are groups, you know, communities start as groups of family which come and live together in places which then becomes so many families that governance appears and things like that. But even things as simple as most of the jobs you do that we have in society, grocery stores, food supply, farming, shoemaking, selling goods, distributing goods, all of these happen because there are people to distribute to, because there are people to feed, because there are people to clothe. Um, and, and thus as that need continues to not just clothe yourself, but other people, we have to keep up that workforce, the production force, the distribution force and things. If you, if those things stop, and this is the thing that from a secular argument you can make is if one of those levels of production stops because there are neither people to service nor people to service, those in need, you're going to have lots of suffering, not just inconvenience, but suffering over this, right? If there are not people to grow food and then there are not people to distribute it, people are going to suffer. If there's nobody to distribute food to, those who used to grow and distribute are going to suffer. And so vocationally, this is part of the dependence that not only will your kids have on you, but that as societies as a whole we have on each other. It's part of, it's part of the codependence we have living in groups of People together.
- [26:58]
B
It's part of vocation.
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A
It's part of vocation and it's one of the building blocks of, of vocation.
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B
Adam, any thoughts?
- [27:08]
C
Lots of thoughts. I really like your point, Caleb, about, I mean this is Luther's point and I mean I, let's just say the Christian point that your, your first vocation is in the context of family. I'm wondering what you all think and I don't want to push this because I don't think this is the whole kit and caboodle. But isn't marriage and the act that happens between a husband and wife isn't one of the purposes for all this, the production of children, not the whole thing.
- [27:44]
B
The purpose.
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A
Yeah. One could argue I knew that God.
- [27:48]
B
God made ancillary benefits and motivations, but that the reason that he commands us to cleave to our wife is so that we will be fruitful and multiply.
- [28:06]
A
Yeah, I, I think this gets to some of that self centered. If I, if you were to just take a, you know, we're going to go to lunch after this recording. If we were just to ask, say a couple in the restaurant that says, you know, why what's the point of marriage? Then you're going to hear companionship, love, friendship, support.
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C
Do you need marriage for those things though? No, you don't need marriage to have children, but the ideal environment for children is within the context of a marriage. Right.
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B
You don't need a marriage for the act of producing a child, but you.
- [28:42]
C
I think raising of children.
- [28:44]
B
Yeah. One of the things that we're seeing right now is that you, you, you really do need the best case scenario of a father and a mother to raise children well.
- [28:57]
A
And I think even things now this.
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B
I say that as somebody who because of death was raised by a single parent. Right. And so I, I know what I'm saying here when I say ideally and my mother did a very good, very good job, but ideally, God designed this to happen in a way that was most beneficial to the child and to the kingdom and to the promotion of the gifts and the gospel and those other benefits.
- [29:31]
A
I'm not going to say that there's not companionship and love and comfort and all these other things that come from marriage. And while there are personal benefits to that as to not be a narcissist about just how your life is the most important thing. Those, those things actually also benefit children. A marriage that's got companionship and comfort is a, is better for children than a marriage filled with hate. Right. Or something. Like this. And so of course, these are parts of it.
- [30:02]
C
Yeah. I wanted to ask your dad about this because I know his book. It's been a long time since I've, I read the book, but I believe you at least touched on it in the book or you have done stuff on this. The actual data on how a child growing up in a home where there's both mom and dad actually is. It's largely predictive. I mean, you can predict the success, whatever that might mean of a child or the socialization, I guess, of the child and whether or not they're going to be a psychopath and all these sorts of things. Obviously there's exceptions. Right. But you can, that's their home environment is largely determines where they're going to end up in life.
- [30:44]
B
You can. Scientists. Yeah. Just like statistically. So when you say something like statistically, you have to acknowledge variations. Right. There are, there are really, really bad homes with both mothers and fathers. The children come out of that with all sorts of problems and the whole nine yards. But you can, you can confidently say that if a child grows up in a home with mother and father, and you might even add where the mother and father at least act like they love each other and that the kids are important to them together. Right. I like that.
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C
At least act like it.
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B
Yeah, you can, you can. Or at least try to act like it. Or at least act like they sort of had the same goal of raising the kids. Right.
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C
Yeah.
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B
That they're going to grow up, that they're going to graduate high school, they'll likely go to college, get a job and be okay. You know, in other words, not go to jail, not get pregnant. Pregnant out of wedlock. You know, not get hooked on drugs. I mean, if you want, if you're scared about raising your kids, one of the things that you can say is, you know, try to keep your marriage intact because it's, it's really helpful. It just, it just, it just is. And those are just numbers. You can get mad at them, you can argue with them, you can, you can, whatever. But people track this stuff. Right. Because it's important. One of the things we're facing now is just like a fatherlessness epidemic where many children in the United States are being born and homes where there is no father. I think it's upwards of 49%.
- [32:26]
C
This is what I was hoping you'd talk, speak to, because I hear it a lot and I don't know how is this just a point people are making because they're trying to Push the, like a religious view of marriage or something? Or is this like, something like sociologists are gonna, Is this the sort of data sociologists are gonna, they're gonna have.
- [32:46]
B
All of this stuff memorized anymore. But it's just even say, you say the 80 percentile. So 80% of incarcerated individuals grew up in a home where there was no father. 80% of sexual offenders grew up in a home where there was no father. 80% of high school dropouts grew up in a home. And it's higher than 80. I'm using 80 as a low sort of bar. 80% of addicted drug users. 80% of women who have children out of wedlock. I mean, on, on, on, on, on, on. 80% of people with diagnosed mental disorders.
- [33:22]
A
And our society often promotes this. I mean, in, in a lot of cases, you know, again, not every case, but in a lot of cases of divorce with children involved, the parent that gets the least amount of time allotted to raising the children is the father.
- [33:39]
B
But a lot of influence comes come from dads. Right?
- [33:42]
A
And so we even lower the prioritization there when that happens.
- [33:49]
B
Well, and it's, it's true in the church too. I go to, I don't do as many speaking gigs as I used to, kind of by choice. But you know, when I'd have these discussions in church, and Adam knows this, especially in if you're in a sort of mainline denomination, it doesn't have to be our denomination, you're in a mainline denomination, you've inevitably noticed that through the years the population in your church on Sunday morning has gotten older, not younger or not stayed the same. Right. So in other words, you've noticed that you may have been raising generations of children in the church, but as the years go by, many of those children are leaving the church, if not the faith, and leaving forever. There's been a lot of work done on this, but one of the. And church's response has been contemporary worship services, church growth movement, youth groups, activity planning. Activity planning. And I'm not denigrating all or any of that necessarily, but the one thing that sort of hasn't really happened is to sort of focus on keeping more dads in homes with their kids and keeping more men involved in the church. And the data on that is striking. If a father is sort of the lead influence in the spiritual life of a child, as that child grows up, it is highly likely that that child will persist in that same faith into their adulthood and will raise their family in that same faith. I mean, highly, highly likely. Like in the 90th percentile will persist in that faith. Now, that is shocking. I mean, it almost says that if you focused on just that and did a pretty good job changing that, that many of the programs wouldn't matter as much, and that we sort of have the programs because it's very difficult to deal with one of the core issues and that. That we've taken men out of the role of the family and subsequently out of the role of the faith life and subsequently out of the role of leadership in the church. And subsequent to that, we're just losing generations of children in the church, and we almost. It's not that we're okay with it, but we are okay with it enough that we sort of throwing up our hands that we don't know what to do about it. Yeah.
- [36:17]
C
And what. What gets my goat. I don't know what that phrase means, but I think I know is how we came. You can't talk about this in the public arena.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah.
- [36:27]
C
You know, after the shooting down in Uvalde there, I, you know, I heard these commentators, you know, who are speaking into their. Their. Their echo chambers, if you will, about fatherlessness and how. And all this. But in the public arena. So I think at. At certain places I've worked where, if you're talking about social issues, you really can't talk about the crisis of fatherlessness because there's so many folks there who are single mothers, for example, and you'll.
- [36:57]
A
Make them feel that their. That their life is worse than somebody else's. That's. I've found that, too, with people who, say, were raised in, you know, a home with just a mother or in a divorced home where they spent little time with their father. Right. Is you. You have to be very careful of implying that somehow their existence is lesser than yours as somebody who grew up with a mom and dad. So what you're not trying to say is that you're less. You don't want to look at somebody based on these statistics and go, well, friend of mine, you are more likely to commit a murder than me because I have a dad.
- [37:31]
B
Right.
- [37:31]
A
That's not.
- [37:32]
B
I mean, but this is acknowledged. It's. It was the. The Patrick Moynihan Report that came out in 1965. They did a study of.
- [37:40]
A
I don't.
- [37:40]
B
I mean, it's wording is the report. Report the Negro Family and the Case for National Action. Now, that's probably not the politically sensitive way to say that today.
- [37:51]
C
Not at all.
- [37:52]
B
That's the title of the report when it came out in 1965. And in 1965, it showed a fatherless rate among African American families of, I think 20, I'm trying to remember, 23%. And the report called for national action to do something about this because it was acknowledged that it was going to lead to a high crime rate and all of these other social ills. And we're now, today, if you kind of take all people, I mean, in African American communities, it's now up in the high 70s and 80s, but even in sort of white communities, you're dealing with high 30s.
- [38:34]
A
Yeah.
- [38:35]
B
You know, and it's just. And it's. And we don't acknowledge the social ills that will come. Come because of that. Or again, like I said, the fact that in the church, the churches are not keeping children in the faith and that there's maybe a correlation there because of this fatherlessness crisis. And if you call it a crisis, it's just like one more crisis, one more crisis. Everything's a crisis. And I get that. And I don't want to call it a crisis because of that. But I do want to say we might want to look at this. And this has a very direct correlation to people not wanting to get married, which has a very direct correlation to people not wanting to have children. And I think if we don't acknowledge it, this is because we've sort of promoted an idea both in the faith and in the society that the self is the center of the universe. We're really fooling ourselves, really. If all you can think about is you, you don't care about what else happens anywhere else. And that is sort of the nature of the sinful person left unchecked without the preaching of the law to convict them of that sin. And as all sin derives from that sin, the God making of self and the preaching of the gospel to free them on account of Christ, there's not going to be a change that happens here.
- [39:57]
A
We have just little time left. Maybe just turn this a little bit. I don't want to make, you know, part of this is statistics and some of the economy of having children. But I, I don't want to make having children just an idol either. An idol? Well, no. Or just a commodity either. I mean, part of this is to say, like, you shouldn't just have children because you're societally obligated to. Children are a blessing. A blessing and something I like. My life is better with my children in it. I love my children incredibly. It is hard to explain and how impactful and life changing it is. For me to watch them accomplish even little changes and feats in their life and to, to see a four year and a six year old become people who question and live in this world and have to deal with that is amazing. And it brings a lot more purpose to everything. So like even your career, you know, when days with work are difficult or frustrating or exhausting, you know the reason you're working is to provide for these little people, right? Or if you're trying to find work, life balance, it's not just about me and my mental health, it's about now. It's about spending time with my kids. If I'm trying to take time off from work to do something, it's to go do something with these people who are, you know, reminds me, you know, shaping, shaping these people, these little people's world with my time.
- [41:32]
B
We were recently talking with somebody about this and they said they, they weren't even sure they'd figured themselves out yet. And I think I said to them there's nothing that'll stop you from the loop of trying to figure yourself out. Then, you know, change into poopy diaper.
- [41:46]
C
I think it was. Jordan Peterson recently said something to the fact that children civilize, help civilize you women certainly help civilize men, but by extension children help civilize men and, or mom and dad in that. Now all of a sudden you've got these sponges who repeat everything you say and copy everything you do.
- [42:05]
B
But also having children reminds you of the values with which you were raised too. So there's a lot to be said of people willing to sort of be agnostic, not involved, even though they were raised in the faith. When they're single or when they're married, no children. Children come along and there's a reigniting that comes in of the importance and the grounding and the salutary benefits of being involved in a faith tradition, especially Christianity and even our form of it, where then that baby is baptized and they're brought into a greater family right as they're born even.
- [42:41]
A
I mean, I'm not saying you can't care about particular problems in the world without a selfish interest, but it sure helps the that direct why I want particular things in my community, my world, my country, whatever, to change or be a certain way even after I'm gone. Not just for me.
- [42:58]
B
I do wonder why people care who don't, who think it's that they don't want to have kids, that they're never going to have kids, and that they're worried about what Happens to the earth in 100, in 100 years. I'm always like, yeah, why, why do you care?
- [43:10]
A
I, I certainly think you have to have, like you won't be here. Well, the only reason to care would be some sort of, you know, worried about my kids ethic, about the way things are supposed to be. But for me it's about particular lives being impacted.
- [43:25]
B
I sometimes want to ask when that happens. I'm like, well, I don't know why you care. Are you worried about my kids and grandkids? I mean, to the answer that it's probably going to be yes. And how much more, how much more would you have the ability to care if you were talking about your kids and your grandkids to be worried about?
- [43:44]
C
This makes me think of just to throw in a little pagan wisdom here. There's a famous speech, funeral oration that a guy named, a general named Pericles gives after the first battle in the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. And they have this huge funeral. Athens has just been whooped. And Pericles talks about how even though they got whooped, how important it is to defend Athens and so on and so forth. But then he goes on and starts consoling the widows and says, don't, you know, grieve for a little bit, but don't grieve too much. And if you are of age, have more children. Because there's no wiser people who come to the voting booth and issues of politics and policy and legislation and so on and so forth, who come to it with the concerns of a parent.
- [44:31]
B
That's right.
- [44:32]
C
They're not just voting for themselves and for the moment, but they're thinking about how this is going to affect subsequent generations.
- [44:38]
B
And well, they're not voting for the world as an idea of the world, but they're voting for a world as a place with people in it whom they love.
- [44:45]
C
Right. Yeah.
- [44:47]
B
And that's wholly, That's a wholly different thing.
- [44:49]
A
I think to get to the.
- [44:51]
B
That's your kind of ideology thing I think we're faced with.
- [44:53]
C
I was thinking that. I didn't want to use the word though, because I've said it too much.
- [44:56]
B
No, I think that, I think that that's one of the things where we face is there's a bunch of passionate people out there that are concerned about this ideology of the thing that they call the world and the future. You know, instead of a world as a place with people in it that.
- [45:13]
A
I love, I think, you know, like even there's. There's Kind of an exchange to go to the first article where you know God. When we see these gifts that God provides in the first article, God uses you to supply certain people with those gifts. He also then uses people to supply you with those gifts. And when you raise kids, you may be supplying them with house, home, food, drink, and when you get old, they, hopefully they will be the ones supplying you with that until the. The end of your days. And to me, that's. That's really, like, when I. We have to, you know, you said, like, the shift has been that the telos of your life is a. Is a career. I think my goal with my kids is that I raise kids who want to raise children. That's like the number one absolutely goal. And the. The reason why is because I want to be around my children my whole life, not just till they're 18 and your grandkids. And when I get. And when I get frail and old, I want to be taken care of by not just a faceless state or. Or hospital or group of people, the people who have a vested interest in me and love me and I want to be buried by people who love me and things like that.
- [46:35]
B
It's always going to be hard, but I think at this point, we can speak for experience from experience. There's nothing better than being in a community of people that you love and that you love as family and that are here. I mean, your kids, Caleb, have the extreme blessing to have in their lives on a daily, virtually daily basis. Their parents, their aunts and uncles, their one set of their grandparents. I know they miss their Minnesota grandparents greatly, but they get to see them on. On zoom and whatnot, and they get to come out and they're still in their lives very much. And then even great grandparents. My mom lives in town here and sees the kids all the time. I mean, that is. I mean, that is the community of faith.
- [47:28]
A
No. Yeah. I mean, if I had a. If I had a greatest fear in life, it's not that my kids will one day do something ethically really bad. It's that one day my kids will just ditch me. That's, you know, my kids, I hope, won't. But, like, if I were worried about something. Right. A lot. Worried about my kids doing something bad. Sure. Worried about my kids, you know, quote, leaving the family like so many people in my generation did to their families is, you know, I think that's a bigger worry. So I think you're gonna be. We want.
- [47:57]
B
Come on, Adam. I see those pictures of your family together. Well, I tell you, holding up those foster kids and everybody's.
- [48:04]
C
Yeah, I mean my oldest, he's, you know, he's, he's a, he's a kind of a thug, you know, wrestler type and he, he makes decisions in his life that are. I wouldn't make those same decisions but when I, and I, you know, I always worry about his future. You know, he's he going to join the Marine Corps and wind up or whatever. But when I see him with a two year old kid who's not. Oh yeah, he's not related to by blood, but he just kind of slips into that role as a nurturing older brother or whatever it is, it's like, oh, I think he's going to be all right. Yeah, he's just.
- [48:40]
B
We didn't get a chance to talk about like the blessings of adoption and that type of thing. But that's all part of this too.
- [48:45]
C
Yeah.
- [48:46]
B
Yeah, that's all part of this too.
- [48:50]
C
Well, Caleb, it's been 50 minutes almost.
- [48:53]
A
Yeah, I think we did it.
- [48:54]
B
We kept all the fathers out there. You're important.
- [48:58]
A
Yeah. Yes. Happy Father's day. Thank you for listening to this episode of the thank you fellows and the why you should series on the 15:17 podcast network of shows. If you have ideas for the why you should, you can send those via the contact form on our website which is in the footer of any page you're on there. You can hit contact and. And we appreciate those ideas as we move forward. Like I said, I think last episode I've got something like 35 episode topics planned, but many of those I'm looking, I want specific guests on. And so as we build up those schedule, we will get to that. I don't think there's going to be a coherent pattern. I'm going to hop around as scheduling and time and available to, to do those. So we thank you for listening. We'll catch you next time. Bye.