Every child deserves more than food, shelter and protection. Children also need a stable family structure, love, stability, identity, belonging and, very importantly, the opportunity to know where they came from.
For most of human history, marriage and family were understood as the committed relationship between a man and a woman who raised their children together. Although no family is perfect, this family structure has provided a stable foundation for generations of children.
Today, however, marriage and family’s definition has changed dramatically. Family is increasingly understood as something adults can define according to personal preference, while children’s needs can become secondary to adult desires.
That raises an important question:
What does a child have a right to receive from the family structure into which he or she is born?
Research examining family structure has consistently found important associations between stable married-parent families and positive outcomes for children. At the same time, from a Christian perspective, the importance of a mother, father and children is consistent with God’s design for marriage and family.
Truly putting children first, would mean looking at family structure – not primarily from the perspective of adults—but from the perspective of the child.
Children Need More Than Protection - They Need Family
Children depend upon adults. Children do not choose who their parents will be, whether their parents marry, nor whether their parents remain together or whether they will grow up knowing both sides of their biological family.
Because children have so little control over these circumstances, adults have a responsibility to consider what will best support their well-being.
One important question is whether children benefit from having both their biological mother and biological father actively involved in their lives.
Research on family structure
Research on family structure has found that children living with their married biological parents tend, on average, to experience better physical, emotional and academic outcomes than children in a number of other family circumstances. Research has also identified the importance of maintaining stable marriages, except in situations such as serious and unresolved marital violence.
This does not mean that every married family is healthy or that every child raised in another circumstance will struggle.
It means something much simpler:
Family structure matters.
And when we talk about family structure, we should not forget the people who have the least voice in the discussion—the children.
Why Marriage Matters to Children
People often describe marriage today as a private relationship between two consenting adults
But marriage has historically had another important social purpose: providing a stable framework in which children can be raised by their mother and father.
As Jennifer at Them Before Us argues, marriage has implications that extend beyond adult relationships because children are affected by the stability—or instability—of the family in which they grow up.
This is why marriage requires us to look beyond adult fulfillment.
A lifelong, committed marriage provides children with the possibility of growing up with both parents in the same family, while also connecting them to their biological heritage, extended family and personal history.
Of course, marriage does not guarantee a healthy family.
People can fail. Parents can make harmful choices. Sometimes, children need protection from their parents.
Nevertheless, the failure of some marriages does not mean that marriage itself has failed as an institution.
Rather, it demonstrates why healthy, committed marriages are worth supporting.
The advantages of a Stable Mother-and-Father Family
Researchers have spent decades examining the relationship between family circumstances and children’s well-being.
One National Library of Medicine review cited in this article notes that children living with their married biological parents have consistently demonstrated better outcomes across physical, emotional and academic measures. It also concludes that healthy marriages should be supported, while recognizing that serious marital violence is an important exception.
Among the outcomes associated with stable married-parent families are:
• better academic outcomes
• enhanced emotional stability
• fewer behavioral difficulties
• lower risk of substance abuse
• greater family stability
• stronger parent-child attachment
• improved prospects for healthy relationships later in life
These findings do not mean that children from other family structures are destined to fail.
Rather, they demonstrate why society should be cautious about dismissing the importance of family structure.
If one family structure consistently gives children important advantages, shouldn’t we be willing to talk honestly about them?
Why Biological Parents Matter
There is another dimension to this discussion that is sometimes overlooked: biology.
A child is not simply a blank slate placed into a family.
Every child has a biological history.
A child may one day begin asking important questions:
Who do I look like and where did my talents come from?
What were my biological parents like and what medical conditions run in my family?
Where did my family come from?
Ultimately, who am I?
Knowing your biological parents can provide valuable information about your ancestry, medical history, family relationships, and personal identity.
Surveys and personal accounts show that adopted people and donor-conceived people often want to know their biological origins. For many, that desire goes beyond curiosity; biological connections can shape a person’s sense of identity and belonging. The Them Before Us material cited in the original article also emphasizes this connection.
None of this diminishes the love that adoptive parents can provide.
It simply recognizes that love and biology are not interchangeable things.
An adoptive parent can love a child deeply, yet that love may not answer the child’s questions about their biological origins.
Both realities can be true.
Children Benefit From Both a Mother and a Father family structure
Children often benefit from the different strengths and perspectives that mothers and fathers bring to parenting. These complementary strengths provide another reason to consider the mother-and-father family structure.
Mothers and fathers are not identical.
In most cases, they nurture, communicate, protect, discipline, and interact with their children in different ways.
That does not mean that every mother or every father behaves the same way.
It means that, in general, children can benefit from experiencing both motherhood and fatherhood within a stable family structure.
Research and developmental literature have examined the ways fathers and mothers contribute to children’s emotional, social and behavioral development.
When children experience both, they gain from a broader range of parental relationships and experiences.
The question, therefore, is not whether a single parent can love a child.
Of course they can.
The question is whether children benefit from having both a mother and a father when circumstances allow.
The evidence suggests they do.
What Has Happened to the Traditional Family?
If the mother-father family has historically been so important, why has society changed its understanding of family so dramatically?
There are several cultural pressures worth considering.
1. The Rise of Radical Individualism
Modern Western culture places a very high value on personal freedom, self-expression, and individual choice.
Freedom matters.
But freedom without responsibility can carry consequences.
When people make personal fulfillment their highest goal, they may begin to see lifelong commitment as restrictive rather than protective.
Marriage may then be viewed as optional, temporary or simply one lifestyle choice among many.
Family itself can become defined primarily according to adult preference:
“Family is whatever I choose it to be.”
That approach may make sense from an adult perspective.
But children cannot choose the family into which they are born.
Therefore, we need to ask a different question:
What happens when adult freedom conflicts with a child’s need for stability, identity and belonging?
2. The Decline of Biblical Sexual Ethics
Another significant cultural change has been the decline of biblical influence over sexual ethics.
Beginning particularly in the twentieth century, traditional boundaries surrounding sexuality, marriage and family increasingly came to be viewed as outdated.
Sexual relationships became increasingly separated from marriage and lifelong commitment.
As these boundaries changed, the definition of marriage changed as well.
Marriage was increasingly understood as an institution primarily concerned with adult love and personal fulfillment rather than an institution ordered toward the joining of husband and wife and the raising of children.
Consequently, many people began to view the traditional family as just one of many possible family arrangements.
From a Christian perspective, however, this represents a departure from God’s design rather than simply another stage of social progress.
3. Education, Media and Entertainment
Culture does not shape itself only through laws.
It is also shaped through education, entertainment, television, movies, social media and the stories we repeatedly tell ourselves.
Young people are exposed to changing ideas about sexuality, identity, relationships and family from an early age.
Over time, people can become accustomed to what they once considered unusual and dismiss what they once considered morally significant as a matter of personal preference.
Media can also influence how marriage and fatherhood are perceived.
When marriage, fatherhood and traditional morality are repeatedly portrayed as outdated or burdensome, young people may begin to see the traditional family as merely one lifestyle option rather than an important foundation for raising children.
When Cultural Change Affects Children
This is where the discussion becomes particularly important.
Adults can make choices for themselves.
Children, however, live with the consequences of those choices.
The original article cited statistics showing a substantial decline in the percentage of children living with their married biological parents over several decades, as well as research connecting family circumstances with children’s economic mobility. It also cited research concerning the instability associated with cohabiting relationships.
These statistics should cause us to pause.
If family instability affects children, then we cannot treat changes to the definition of family as though they affect adults alone.
Children are affected by the decisions adults make about marriage, reproduction and family.
That is why children’s interests deserve a central place in this conversation.
God's Design for Marriage and Family
As a Christian, I believe the discussion cannot be separated from Scripture.
The Bible presents marriage as part of God’s design rather than merely a human invention.
Genesis describes the creation of man and woman and the establishment of marriage. Jesus later reaffirmed this design when He referred to God’s creation of male and female and the joining of husband and wife.
Throughout Scripture, family relationships are treated as significant.
The Bible also repeatedly warns about what happens when people reject God’s truth and determine their own standards.
“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” — Judges 21:25
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” — Romans 1:25
“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world.” — Romans 12:2
And Paul warned that people would eventually seek teachers who tell them what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3).
These passages are not specifically predictions about modern family policy.
However, they do provide a biblical warning about a culture in which personal preference becomes the ultimate authority.
For Christians, God’s design does not become obsolete simply because culture changes.
Children's Rights Should Come Before Adult Preferences
This brings us back to the central question:
What does a child have a right to receive?
Children deserve love, protection, stability, and the opportunity to understand their identity and biological heritage whenever circumstances permit.
Ideally, they should also have the opportunity to know and be raised by both their biological mother and father.
This is why organizations such as Them Before Us have made children’s rights and family structure a central part of their advocacy. Their stated mission is to promote a world that puts children first.
That idea deserves serious consideration.
Children should not simply be viewed as the result of adult choices. They are people with their own interests, needs and rights.
What About Adoption?
It is important to make an important distinction here.
Saying that children ideally benefit from being raised by their biological mother and father does not mean that adopted children are somehow less loved or that adoptive families are inferior.
Absolutely not.
There are circumstances in which biological parents are unable or unwilling to raise their children.
In those situations, adoption can provide a child with something profoundly important: a loving, stable and committed family and still within the family structure of mother and father.
Adoptive parents can provide tremendous love, make great sacrifices, and offer guidance and security.
In fact, the willingness of adoptive parents to step forward and raise children who cannot be raised by their biological parents is something that should be respected and supported.
At the same time, adoption does not erase biology.
An adopted child can be deeply loved by adoptive parents and still have questions about his or her biological family.
These truths are not contradictory.
Children can be grateful for the family who raised them while still longing to understand the family from which they came.
What About Reproductive Technologies?
Modern reproductive technologies have created possibilities that previous generations could never have imagined.
IVF, sperm and egg donation, surrogacy and emerging reproductive technologies can allow adults to have children in circumstances that would previously have made biological parenthood impossible.
But technological possibility does not automatically answer the ethical question:
Just because adults can create a particular family arrangement, does that mean the arrangement is necessarily best for the child?
That is a question worth asking.
When reproductive technology separates a child from one or both biological parents, adults should consider the child’s interests alongside their own desires.
Again, the child cannot choose.
Adults make the decision.
The child lives with the consequences.
That is why adults must put children’s interests first.
Putting Children First
If we truly want to protect children’s rights, we need to begin by recognizing something simple:
Children are not adults.
They are dependent, developing human beings who need adults to make wise decisions on their behalf.
That means we should support:
- stable marriages
- responsible parenthood
- strong relationships between fathers and their children
- and, strong relationships between mothers and their children
- preserving children’s biological connections whenever possible
- adoption when biological parents cannot provide a safe and stable home
- policies that genuinely put children’s well-being first
We should also remain willing to discuss difficult subjects honestly.
We do children no favors by pretending that every family structure produces exactly the same outcomes.
Nor do we help children by treating every adult preference as though it automatically creates a corresponding right to parenthood.
We must consider children’s needs independently of adult desires.
Children Should Come First
Children have no say in the circumstances into which they are born.
They do not choose their parents, whether their parents marry, separate, or divorce, or whether they will know their biological mother and father.
They simply enter the world dependent on adults to love them, protect them, and make wise decisions on their behalf.
That is why the conversation about marriage and family should not begin with the question:
“What kind of family do adults have the right to create?” Does Family Structure Matter?
It should begin with another question:
“What does every child need in order to thrive?”
Children need love, stability, protection, identity and belonging.
They need parents who are willing to sacrifice for them.
Whenever circumstances allow, children benefit from having the opportunity to know and be raised by both their biological mother and father within a stable, committed marriage.
No family is perfect.
But acknowledging the imperfections of families does not mean we should abandon the ideal.
Since God designed marriage to promote human flourishing, protecting and strengthening the family is not merely about preserving an old tradition.
It is about protecting the next generation.
When we put children first, we begin to see family, marriage, and parenthood differently.
Ultimately, this conversation is not about what adults want.
It is about what children need.
Further Reading:
- By Pretending Surrogacy Is A Right, Adults Deny The Rights Of Children
Growing up with gay parents: What is the big deal? (National Library Medicine) Excellent article with a lot of important information about the unique role of mothers and of fathers in childhood development!
Designer Embryos and Kids Born From the DNA of Throuple Parents: Understanding the Depraved New World of EPS and IVG What society once naturally recoiled from—designer babies, artificial wombs, and the termination of disabled children—is today the source of misguided compassion.
- God’s Design For Family: The Best Outcomes
