We Can Heal Our Country by Nurturing Families

In the spring of 1965, a little-known assistant secretary of labor, policy, planning, and research in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson issued an explosive report that would prove to be both controversial in the moment and unquestionably correct half a century later. The report became a lightning rod. The Left, led by radical feminists and others, decried his emphasis on the two-parent family. Moynihan, who later became a US senator, was hung out to dry by the White House, with Johnson quietly abandoning the ideas in the report after delivering a speech in favor of it when it was first released. 

Six decades later, the state of the family that concerned Senator Moynihan is now much more dire. Though there has been a welcome rebound in recent years, the percentage of children who live with two parents has plummeted since the 1960’s. What’s more, as documented often here at the Institute for Family Studies, social science shows us that our communities flourish best when children grow up with a mother and father present in their home. As Brad Wilcox has demonstrated in his book, Get Married, children who grew up in stable families are less likely to end up in poverty, more likely to get a college degree, and less likely to end up in prison. Neighborhoods that feature these kinds of families are less likely to experience violent crime. Melissa Kearney, in her book, The Two Parent Privilege, comes to similar conclusions. 

Today, conversations about the shape of marriage and the priority of the family are often lumped together under a convenient label of “culture wars,” and conservatives who have something to say about these things—or worse, something to do about them—are labeled “culture warriors.” I’ve even heard some evangelical leaders dismiss the fight for families as mere “culture wars.” Yet consider what Kearney writes: 

Over the past 40-plus years, American society has engaged in a vast experiment of reshaping the most fundamental of social institutions—the family— and the resulting generations of data tell us in no uncertain terms how that has played out for children. The data present some uncomfortable realities:... Two parent families are beneficial for children... Places that have two parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.

Strong families are the bedrock of flourishing societies. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this link in his Democracy in America. He saw the family as an important mediating institution:

Of the world’s countries, America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness . . . the American draws from his home the love of order, which he afterwards brings into affairs of state.

As America continues to have important conversations about the health of our democracy, we should redouble our efforts to renew the family and in doing so renew the American experiment itself. This was one of Charlie Kirk’s most animating passions. He regularly urged young men to find a good wife, get married, and have children. He connected marriage to the health and stability of the nation. It’s a deeply patriotic act to serve our own families, nurture other families, and champion policies that buoy all American families. 

Membership in a church community is not a magic elixir for marriage. Christians get divorced, too. But studies consistently show that couples who regularly attend church are 30 to 50% less likely to be divorced.

Perhaps the institution most equipped to do this work are churches. Here Tocqueville was also observant. He wrote that in America, the “spirit of liberty” and the “spirit of religion” worked together. He believed that religion restrained American appetites or “mores.” Nowhere was this more important, he said, than in religion’s ability to shape the family: “It is in regulating the family that religion works to regulate the state.” In other words, when the church shapes the family, it essentially shapes the state. 

In a 1986 homily, Pope John Paul II essentially affirms this view: 

The family is the first and vital cell of society. In its own way it is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church. The future of the world and of the Church, therefore, passes through the family.

In my own community in recent years, many evangelical churches and pastors have been cowed into silence regarding marriage and family issues by contrarian voices who urge the Church to “stop idolizing marriage,” as if the average church leader talks about it too much. In my experience, both as a pastor and as a church member, I find this charge to be mostly false. Meanwhile, there are crumbling families inside and outside our communities who desperately need the hope and help that only Christianity can provide. Membership in a church community is not a magic elixir for marriage. Christians get divorced, too. But studies consistently show that couples who regularly attend church are 30 to 50% less likely to be divorced.

The best churches are proactive in nurturing healthy family life, with marriage seminars and retreats, parenting classes, and free or low-cost counseling. One large church in Tallahassee, Florida, pairs older married couples in the church with younger ones for coaching, support, and friendship. Another church I know pays for babysitting for date nights for busy couples. There are still others that offer robust marriage and family intervention classes, helping those in their congregations who are on the brink of collapse.

For families to thrive, it takes a community, and there is no better community on earth than the family of God.

The truth is that for families to thrive, it takes a community, and there is no better community on earth than the family of God. We cannot live out this mission alone, in isolation. We need the encouragement, help, and strength of our brothers and sisters in the church.

But Christians can help marriage even outside their own communities. If healthy marriages are a leading indicator of community health, if social ills are downstream from broken families, is not helping to bring relief to the struggling households in our community a social justice issue?

Imagine if every church were to adopt the hurting families in its community by offering marriage counseling or retreats. Imagine if struggling moms and dads could find help from churches in building their parenting skills. What if single parents could find surrogate fathers and mothers? I love, for instance, how the ministry Communio, connects struggling families with churches. 

Of course, renewing families is not the only way we’ll heal America. Pro-family policy is but one ingredient in a healthy society. But it’s an important one. So as we rightly consider the state of our union, remember that healthy families are a way to ensure future generations will enjoy freedom, liberty, and prosperity for the next 250 years. As de Tocqueville said, “The virtues engendered around the hearth are then diffused into the wider world.”

Daniel Darling is the director of The Land Center for Cultural Engagement and the author of several books, including the forthcoming, In Defense of Christian Patriotism, releasing September 30, 2025.