Imagine a farmer who only liked planting, and never bothered to harvest anything. Spring after spring he would scatter seed throughout his fields, and crops would grow all summer, but when fall came, he would either mow all his crops down to stubble or simply abandon them to die during the winter.
“Don’t be silly,” he would say, “It’s an old-fashioned notion to think that the purpose of planting is to actually harvest anything. Just plant for the fun of it!”
Our society is not much different.
After several decades of sexual and social revolution have persuaded us that unrestrained sexual conduct is central to liberty, we’ve ended up convincing ourselves that the most intimate of human relationships can be treated as essentially sterile. It’s there for you to have your fun, and then children are an option—or, to use a popular word nowadays, a “choice”—after the fact.
Indeed, for far too many men, children are not the hoped-for culmination of a sexual relationship—they are an annoying consequence of it. And because of that, children aren’t properly cared for when they arrive.
Remember that in a recent article, I explained that various aspects of the contemporary push for sexual freedom doggedly focus on maximizing autonomy for adults while turning children into commodities. Abortion is one of the most extreme examples, allowing the sexually libertine to dispose of their children like trash. But the bar for men doesn’t just rest at the level of “not killing your children.”
Men have a responsibility to protect and provide for their children as they are growing up—and to do so within the institution of marriage. Marriage prompts men to keep the end goal of fruitfulness in mind and to face up to the responsibilities that come with children.
New data published by the Institute for Family Studies corroborates exactly this—married fathers are unequivocally more likely to be a part of their kids’ lives. According to IFS, 89% of married fathers live with their kids, contrasting with a meager 40% of fathers who never get married.
Simply having a father in the home is vital for raising children, as fathers are the ones from whom children primarily learn to submit to authority.
But it doesn’t just stop at a mere presence in the home; a father who’s physically present but doesn’t interact with his children is little more than a distant policeman. And once again, marriage scores a resounding victory—married fathers spend an average of 8 hours per week with their kids. For fathers who never get married, guess what the average is? A minute 0.6 hours—that’s 36 minutes—per week.
The comparison isn’t even close.
Fathers who shoulder the responsibilities of marriage are statistically more involved in their kids’ lives.
Yet, too many in today’s world downplay the importance of marriage—according to other recent data, only 60% of American adults think it’s important for unmarried couples to legally marry if they have a child. It’s becoming more and more acceptable to bring children into the world absent the natural context in which they were intended to be nurtured.
Ultimately, though, this is unsurprising—given the fundamental misunderstanding of sexuality that many in today’s world have bought into. It’s sterile, for your own enjoyment, and children are options for you after the fact.
Then, should you choose to have children, marriage is still just an option for you. Never mind the fact that such a relationship is designed to produce children, and such children are designed to be brought up in a family headed by married parents.
If we would only obey the Bible’s instruction that marriage should be honored by everyone and fear the Bible’s warning that God will judge those who are sexually immoral (Heb. 13:4)— our nation’s children would be better off for it.
