July 29, 2026 Written with the assistance of AI The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made significant changes to the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program, signaling a shift in both funding priorities and program expectations. In July 2025, HHS released a new policy notice reaffirming that the TPP Program's primary purpose is to reduce teen pregnancy through medically accurate and age-appropriate education. The policy also stated that federal funds should not be used for content that HHS believes encourages, normalizes, or promotes sexual activity for minors or falls outside the program's intended purpose. The guidance further emphasized parental rights by requiring grant recipients to provide advance notice and opportunities for parents to opt their children out of certain program content. Then, in 2026, HHS terminated dozens of existing Teen Pregnancy Prevention grants, stating that many no longer aligned with the department's priorities. At the same time, the agency announced a new funding opportunity for organizations to replicate evidence-based programs that reduce teen pregnancy through medically accurate, age-appropriate education while helping adolescents develop healthy decision-making skills and clarify reproductive life goals. HHS is now placing greater emphasis on programs that encourage abstinence-until-marriage, uphold parental involvement, and avoid content the department considers promoting sexual activity among minors. The newly released federal guidance for grants for what is called Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) is providing grantees bonus points for applications that include clear abstinence-until-marriage instruction with a marriage-centered approach. From the Federal Notice of Funding Opportunity: Abstinence Education Marriage-centered sexual risk Avoidance Approach (Up to 10 bonus points) Applicants may receive up to 10 bonus points for proposing a program model that advances a marriage-centered approach to sexual risk avoidance education by promoting healthy marriage and family formation as optimal contexts for long-term flourishing, while maintaining an instructional focus exclusively on abstinence until marriage. To qualify for these bonus points, applicants must: Certify that grant-funded educational activities will only provide educational content related to abstinence education. Provide curriculum materials, implementation plans, or other documentation demonstrating alignment with this marriage-centered sexual risk avoidance approach.

From The Institute for Family Studies by Lyman Stone and Peter Foreshaw Brookes July 2026 Go to IFS to download the free report by clicking here. Introduction And Executive Summary Of the approximately 700 million people who have lived in America since 1600, and the over 690 million since 1776, about 80% were born here. We may be a nation of immigrants—but throughout our history, the true source of our growth has been in family and fertility. As our country celebrates its 250th anniversary, this report takes stock of how we got here and what the future may hold. Unfortunately, given that U.S. birth rates are now below 1.6 children per woman, the answer for how we reached our current scale and strength as a nation—families raising their own children—points to a dour conclusion: without a new birth of family life in America, the greatest days of freedom will indeed be behind us. Whether our family tree has been a branch of the tree of liberty since its earliest days as a sapling, or was grafted on in living memory, the future of liberty for all of us depends on the future of family. In this report, we present fresh estimates of fertility for every state with available vital statistics back to 1917, and—as a special feature in celebration of our nation’s 250th birthday—we also produce birth rate statistics for one of the nation’s original mother-colonies, Massachusetts, going back 365 years. Beyond this new release of data demonstrating when and where American family formation has plummeted, we also use results from a new survey of over 4,700 Americans to explore how American cultural norms around friendship and celebrity families may shape fertility. If American fertility is to recover, new cultural norms around friendship and family life may be an important element. Finally, informed by the available evidence on fertility and family policy, and in light of the new evidence on family culture, we outline a plan to raise American birth rates back to where they belong, and where most Americans say they want them to be: 2.4 children per woman. Major Findings New historical data show that the U.S. is now in its third historic period of extended below-replacement-rate fertility. Importantly, this current period of decline is already longer than previous declines, has fallen to lower lows, and is more widely shared around the country. The new data we present on historic American fertility stretches further back into our history at a higher level of quality and reliability than any previous vital statistics-based reconstruction of U.S. fertility. U.S. population growth has abruptly slowed down in recent years, driven in large part by fertility rates collapsing to record lows. If fertility rates continue their recent decline, U.S. population will peak around 351 million and begin declining in the 2050s. If fertility rates stabilize, population will peak around 366 million and begin declining in the 2080s. Desired family size has not declined nearly as much, and as a result, the gap between actual fertility rates and the number of children Americans report desiring is rising to high levels. Even as the total fertility rate has plummeted below 1.6 children per woman, surveys continue to show Americans incorrectly think they will have about 2 children each and aspire to have 2.4 children each. Peer culture is a key factor associated with fertility. Having very helpful versus relatively unsupportive friends can increase desired family size for young Americans by nearly an entire child per family and can increase couple intentions to have another child by about 10 percentage points (an increase of about a third). Celebrity culture shapes fertility: fans of celebrities who have more kids themselves want to have more children as well. Comparing family size among admired celebrities to individual aspirations, an admired celebrity having one extra child may increase an individual’s desired family size by as much as 0.15 children. If policymakers wish to reverse the birth rate decline, they will have to consider a wide range of out-of-the-box policy proposals, including a generous baby bonus. However, this need not break the bank: generous baby bonuses worth five or six figures can be paid for with less than 1% of the federal budget; in fact, they’re cheaper than recently proposed child care or parental leave expansions. Massive increases in the generosity of family policy do not have to be fiscally reckless. Beyond financial supports, policymakers and concerned private citizens should consider interventions aimed at fostering a more family-friendly culture. Based on our findings about friends and celebrities, we outline many ideas for policies that could strengthen and generate family-friendly-friendship. The Underwhelming Expansion "It appears the British Americans have doubled their numbers in every period of twenty-five years from their first plantation. A rapidity of population not to be paralleled in the annals of Europe! It has never been equaled since the patriarchal ages. This rapid population of the Americans arises, partly from the great accession of foreigners, but principally from the natural increase of the inhabitants. The reasons, why the Americans are more prolific than the Europeans, are, that they are less luxurious in their manner of living, and the means of supporting a family can be more easily obtained. For the last reason the Americans are induced to marry earlier in life, and consequently their families of children are more numerous.” – Edward Wigglesworth, 1775 In 1775, just a year before our nation’s birth, a Harvard professor named Edward Wigglesworth published a short tract called “Calculations on American Population.” It was the first true demographic projection of our young nation and documented that the American population was doubling every 20 years, primarily due to births, not immigration. From this, Wigglesworth produced a forecast of future American population. The figure below compares his forecast to the actual history of American population. Figure 1. U.S. Population 1600-2025, actual data from Census Bureau compared to Wigglesworth’s projection From 1775 until the late 1800s, American population growth met or exceeded Wigglesworth’s forecast. About that forecast, he wrote, But to anticipate [the American] population and improvements, at the close of the twentieth century, overwhelms the mind with astonishment! At that time, should their future population be as rapid as their past, the Americans would amount to ONE THOUSAND TWO-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILLIONS! The continent extending back to the south-sea, affording them new plantations; and the diversity of climates and soils, inviting the introduction of all the various productions of the other quarters of the world. (emphasis original) The infectious enthusiasm with which Wigglesworth anticipated over a billion Americans contrasts sharply with his British colleague, Thomas Malthus, who would pen his gloom-and-doom Essay on the Principle of Population a few decades later, presenting a future of starvation and suffering. The American Wigglesworth saw exponential population growth as a sign of a heroic future for our country and people, while the old-world Malthus just saw people as more mouths to feed. Why did America undershoot expectations? Why didn’t we keep up with Wigglesworth’s forecasts? It wasn’t a lack of immigration—in fact immigration rates were higher in the 19th century than in Wigglesworth’s day. Rather, it was a decline of fertility. In the late 1600s, American fertility rates were at least 5.5 and perhaps as high as 7.5 children per woman—far above birth rates in England, which ranged from 3 to 6 children per woman. As a result, while perhaps as many as 140 million people have immigrated to the United States since 1776, at least 550 million have been born here, a ratio of 4 births per immigrant. Even in the era of mass migration from 1840 to 1925, births outnumbered immigrants by more than 4.5 to 1. In fact, it has always been the case that America is a family business of those born here—and that business likes to get some extra growth by incorporating new families through immigration, too. We are first and foremost a nation of families, and secondarily (though importantly!) a nation of immigrants. Yet today, fertility has fallen sharply. The next page’s figure tracks American total fertility rates in the long run. Figure 2. U.S. Total Fertility Rate and Cumulative Cohort Fertility, in children per woman, 1800-2025 Whereas in 1800, birth rates by age implied an average family size of seven children per woman, today the average young woman can expect to have fewer than 1.6 children. Annual fertility rates can be very volatile, and so we also show birth rates summed across women’s reproductive lives to estimate completed fertility. As can be seen, while completed fertility is less volatile, across the decades it very closely tracks the total fertility rate prevailing at the time a given birth cohort of women was around age 25. The correlation between actual births per woman near the end of a cohort’s reproductive years and the total fertility rate prevailing when that cohort turned 25 is 0.96—nearly a perfect association of the two. Where the total fertility rate goes, completed fertility tends to follow. Of course, back in the 1800s and before, many of those children who were born did not survive. The figure below uses the same fertility data as above but removes births of children who likely died before age 15. Figure 3. U.S. Total Fertility Rate and Cumulative Cohort Fertility, in children per woman, adjusted for child mortality rates, 1800-2025 Americans had many children, it’s true—but half of them died before age 15. Rates of child mortality in England in 1800 were likely even higher, and fertility lower. So, while America’s fertility advantage was still very real, the truth is that most people in the early days of the American experiment did not raise 7 children to maturity. They typically raised between 2 and 4 children. Moreover, the U.S. has seen three separate episodes of below-replacement fertility once we also account for the true replacement rate determined by child mortality: from 1933 to 1941 during the Great Depression, from 1972 to 1989 during a period of rapidly rising contraceptive uptake and abortion rates, and from 2009 to today. If the correlation between total fertility rates and completed fertility rates continues to hold up in the future, completed family sizes will plummet to new lows. Finally, it is worth asking what kinds of families Americans actually want. The figure on the next page compares surviving fertility rates to survey-reported family size ideals, both general ideals (i.e., answers to questions about the ideal size of a family), and personal ideals or desires (i.e., answers to questions about what individuals want for their own family lives). As can be seen, fertility rates have tended to move in the same direction as stated fertility preferences over time: the correlation over time between general ideals and total fertility rates is 0.85, while for personal ideals and fertility rates, it is 0.94. In recent years, large numbers of surveys have been conducted, especially online, and online surveys in particular have tended to produce unusually low estimates of desired fertility. Even so, the gap between actual birth rates and survey-reported desires is the highest it has been since the early 1970s, and approaching levels not seen since the Great Depression. In other words, fertility is not just falling—it is falling further below the number of children Americans report wanting. Figure 4. U.S. Total Fertility Rate and survey-reported family size ideals and desires, 1930-2025 In this report, the first edition of a new annual research report at the Institute for Family Studies’ Pronatalism Initiative, we present brand-new survey data about American family culture, as well as newly digitized data about the history of American fertility, in order to venture some Wigglesworthian hypotheses about the future of the American family. More importantly, we offer some suggestions on how our country can get back on course towards the fulfillment of its historic promise of growth and abundance. Fertility In The 50 States Birth rates vary appreciably around the country, and in fact, not all states even share the same trends in recent years. But Massachusetts first mandated that births be registered in 1639, though compliance was sporadic until 1841, when a reinforced law was passed. Modern genealogical databases have digitized these records, and we extracted a wide range of vital statistics data from Massachusetts annual vital statistics reports after 1840. In combination, these sources can be used to infer fertility rates for Massachusetts with relatively high reliability back to 1660. Figure 5. Massachusetts Total Fertility Rate, 1660-2025 Massachusetts had high fertility during the Puritan era, but fertility was already declining by 1720 and had entered a steep decline by the 1760s. It then stabilized at around three children per woman throughout the 19th century, before falling again in the 1920s and 1930s before the Baby Boom. Today, Massachusetts’ birth rate is around 1.35 children per woman—one of the lowest in the nation, and on par with rates observed in Europe. Massachusetts is far from the only state with a unique trend in fertility. The figure below shows trends for states which have, historically, had some of the highest birth rates. Figure 6. Total fertility rates for selected high-fertility states, 1917-2025 As can be seen, several western states have historically had the highest birth rates, especially Utah, Idaho, Alaska, and South Dakota. Mississippi and New Mexico have also historically had high birth rates, though, today, New Mexico has below-average birth rates, as Hispanic fertility rates have fallen rapidly. High fertility in the frontier states has long been an area of academic research. Recent research suggests that land availability for farmers may be part of the reason for this, but high marriage rates may be even more important. Figure 7. Total fertility rates for selected low-fertility states, 1917-2025 The set of states with very low birth rates is perhaps unsurprising: eastern, urbanized states. The District of Columbia has almost always had a very low total fertility rate. But even less totally urbanized states like Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts seem to have had low birth rates for a very long time. Even before accounting for child mortality, New York state had below-replacement-rate fertility in 1929, before the stock market crash that set off the Great Depression. The two figures above also clearly show that American fertility was declining from 1917 onwards, which suggests the Great Depression may have intensified fertility decline but did not cause it. Whereas some states have persistently had relatively low or high fertility, other states have seen major changes, as shown in the next figure. Figure 8. Total fertility rates for selected falling-fertility states, 1917-2025 The states in the figure above all had relatively high birth rates, vs. the national average, from 1980 to 2000—but today are all below the national average. Thus, whereas California was not a low fertility state in the latter 20th century, it is today, with a fertility rate of just 1.42 children per woman in 2025. Likewise, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico have seen their total fertility rates plunge. Interestingly, so have Oregon and Illinois, states with somewhat smaller Hispanic populations. In those states, fertility rates are especially low in large urban areas. Figure 9. Total fertility rates for selected less-declining-fertility states, 1917-2025 Then there are, of course, states where fertility rates have seen a less negative trend, as in the figure on the prior page. North Dakota has famously seen its fertility rates move in a more positive direction than national averages, presumably due to the fracking boom fueling high incomes, high male employment, and ultimately higher marriage rates. Less remarked upon is how states like Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee have largely bucked the trend of rapidly falling fertility and kept their fertility rates comparatively stable. Finally, it is worth assessing American regions by their contemporary rates to get a sense of the overall geography of American family. The figure below shows the map of total fertility rates in 2025. Figure 10. Total fertility rate by state, 2025 Around the country, just one state still has fertility rates high enough to be near or at the long-run population-stability level: South Dakota. Every other state is below, and some are far below. Along the West Coast, in New England, in Illinois, and in Florida, fertility rates are very low. Only in the upper South and the Great Plains does some vestige of the old American family culture still remain for reproductive-age people. But what of women who are no longer reproductive age? How does completed fertility vary around the country? Technically, women might continue having children into their 50s—but in practice, over 90% of births for recent cohorts have occurred by age 40. Thus, cumulative fertility rates experienced by women who were 40 in 2025 can give us a very strong sense of where in the nation small, completed family sizes might already be emerging. Total fertility rates are currently much lower than cohort fertility rates, which generally implies that future cohort fertility rates are likely to decline vs. present cohort fertility rates. Figure 11. Cumulative cohort fertility rate by state for the cohort aged 40 in 2025 For women who are in their early 40s today, in much of the middle of the country and the South, actual fertility is near or just above replacement rates. But in the Northeast, and to some extent the West Coast, near-completed fertility rates really are very low. For women who turned 40 in 2025, cumulative Massachusetts fertility rates point to a completed family size of just 1.6 children per woman. Based on U.N. data, that’s lower than completed fertility for similar cohorts in over 200 of the 237 countries for which data exists. This low fertility rate is on par with many Eastern European countries. Eastern European women born in the mid-1980s came of age during the fertility collapse of the 1990s and 2000s after the fall of Communism. Apparently, family life in Massachusetts is about as successful as family life just after the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus, the state of American fertility can be summed up in simple terms: not good. A nation once propelled to unprecedented heights of power by its rapid demographic expansion now rests at a fraction of its historically anticipated population because birth rates have crashed. While immigration has continued, falling fertility rates are a global phenomenon and such skilled migrants as do exist will be in demand by many countries. Reliance on migration for population growth is not a credible strategy in the long run. If current trends continue, American population may peak within the next few decades and then enter interminable decline, as we will lay out in greater detail below. The State Of Family Culture Today In each annual State of Fertility report, we will present new data on cultural and social forces shaping American fertility. In this one, we ask a simple question: how is American friendship shaping American fertility? A growing body of research has suggested that the digital revolution may be reshaping American fertility as iPhones and social media and pornography replace social life, spread new ideas, and alter the landscape of American relationships. The 2026 State of Family Culture Survey asked a range of new questions of Americans ages 18 to 50 and specifically explored how their social influences and friendships shape their fertility behaviors. We asked respondents how many children their three best friends had (excluding family members and romantic partners), as well as the sibling with which they have the closest relationship (if they have any siblings). This allows us to estimate the average parity of the respondent’s close social ties: up to three friends and a close sibling. Moreover, we then asked respondents how their social ties would react if they had another child. They could select from four different “positive” options (i.e., “My friends would offer to help me with my new baby,” or “My friends would cook meals for me after the baby was born”) and from four different “negative” options (i.e., “My friends would worry about my career,” or “My friends would not invite me to socialize as much”). We assessed how these and a few other social variables shaped desired family size (the number of children respondents said they’d be happiest having), as well as intentions to have any more children conditional on not yet having reached desired family size. In other words, we measured how friendship dynamics shape overall family size desires, and then, separately among respondents who hadn’t yet achieved their desires, how friendship dynamics shape their concrete intentions to achieve their goals. Figure 12. Children desired among under-30s and share intending children among couples interested in having more children, by religious attendance, children among social ties, and supportiveness of friends It is well known that religiosity is closely related to fertility desires and outcomes. Indeed, as can be seen in the figure above, religious attendance predicts higher desired family size among Americans under 30 (~2 children for never-attenders at the mean of control variables, vs. 2.7 for others), and also predicts higher intentions to make progress towards desired fertility (50% for regular attenders at the mean of control variables, vs. under 40% for others). But the associational effect of helpful friends is similar to or larger than the effect of religion. Since the estimates shown are from a model including all presented variables, we can be fairly confident that the linkage between helpful friends and fertility is separate from the effect of religion: it’s not just that religious people have more helpful friends. For Americans under 30 with the bottom 10% least-helpful friends (i.e. those scoring -2 or less), desired family size is around 1.7 children per respondent. For those with the top 10% most helpful friends, it’s around 2.8 children—helpful friends are associated with an entire extra child in desired family size. When it comes to intentions to have more kids among couples who ideally would like more, there are similar effects: only 20-30% of those with unhelpful friends intend to have more children, vs. 40-50% of those with the most helpful friends. Indeed, passive social influences from peers matter, too: simply having more friends with kids is associated with desiring more children. Again, while we can’t rule out reverse-causality (people who want kids may seek out friends with kids), most people form their friendships well before they start having kids, and our results are similar if we only include sibling child numbers. Our results are also unchanged if we include controls for the number of siblings respondents had (i.e. family culture of origin) and are also unchanged if we exclude nonreligious individuals (i.e. a possible source of confounding selection), or if we limit it to just childless respondents under 30. Moreover, we find that the average family size of peers has twice as much of an effect on an individual’s family size desires as their number of siblings in childhood. Other questions we asked about parent-child relationships and extended family ties had little or no association with fertility desires. For example, we find no association at all between an individual’s number of cousins and their family size desires: big families do not intrinsically create kids who grow up to have big families. Closeness to extended family, and even stronger relationships with parents, are not strongly associated with differences in family size desires. Rather, fertility desires are more about peer culture than family culture. Another topic we surveyed also points to the importance of peer and popular culture: publicly admired figures. We asked every respondent to report a public figure whom they most admired and why. We then collated these reports and identified how many children each figure was publicly known to have based on public celebrity or Wikipedia pages. We find that each additional child born to an admired public figure predicts higher desired family size for the survey respondent. The effect is about as big as we find for an individual’s number of siblings, suggesting mere celebrity fandom is almost as important as origin family size. Notably, these effects are larger for women and more statistically credible. Celebrity family sizes are about as influential for family size desires as the number of siblings. Women in particular appear to have family desires meaningfully associated with the family sizes of celebrities they admire, which again suggests that popular, peer, and public culture shape family size desires at least as much as family of origin or religion. Notably, having lots of peers with kids does not predict actual intentions to have kids among couples whose ideals exceeded their current parity (i.e. those who might be open to intending more kids). An admired celebrity’s number of children also has only a small and statistically weak association with actual intentions. Figure 13. Children desired among under-30s, by sex and number of children of most admired public figure To shape behavioral intentions, it is not enough to passively have friends with kids or to admire an influencer with kids—prospective parents need peers who are genuinely helpful and supportive, not just those who demonstrate big families. Demonstrative exposure to family life shapes aspirations, and those aspirations might have various knock-on-effects, but behavioral intentions among individuals whose aspirations exceed their current family size require more than just a pro-family public culture. They require peers who show up to change diapers. Moreover, given the apparently large role of social ties in shaping fertility behaviors, the idea that the digital revolution might be reducing American and global birth rates by reducing the extent to which Americans are exposed to family life is entirely plausible. The Future Of The American Family Given what we have shown thus far about American fertility trends, and given the range of cultural norms shaping fertility, we next consider the possible range of futures for American demography. To start with, it must be noted that existing population forecasts, such as those produced by the U.N. Population Division, the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Trustees, the Office of Management and Budget, or even the Census Bureau, are often too cautious and uncreative. These forecasting bodies adopt two sets of unrealistic assumptions. First, they tend to adopt a very standard, yet unjustified, approach to forecasting net migration: a fixed, flat future net migration rate. This assumption itself is unjustified for at least two reasons. First, under President Trump, net migration has already fallen to near-zero rates, and this is likely to continue through his presidency—and he is unlikely to be the last restrictionist president of the 21st century. Second, in the very long run, immigration is very likely to decline due to declining global birth rates and ongoing changes in immigration policies. Falling fertility means there will be fewer excess young people looking to emigrate from their homes, and more countries competing to get them as immigrants, and so the default assumption should be that any given country’s immigration rate will tend to decline over the 21st century. Our assumption about migration is simple: net migration remains only a few hundred thousand people per year during the Trump Administration, then rises through the mid-21st century to around 1.5 million, then gradually declines until it is just a few hundred thousand again by 2100. The second unrealistic assumption in most public forecasts relates to fertility. Other forecasters tend to assume various degrees of fertility recovery in the long run (except the latest CBO forecasts, which are more realistic), even though no such recovery is guaranteed. To rectify these issues, we produce three new population projections using a cohort-component model of the same type that other statistical bodies would use, except that we assume that over the next century, immigration cannot remain permanently at a high positive level, and we model different fertility trajectories. Our fertility assumptions (Continuation, Recovery, or Revival) for these scenarios vs. public projections are shown below. Figure 14. Historic and projected future fertility, 1915-2100, by source of projection The Social Security Trust Fund (OASDI) does consider a scenario where fertility is stagnant at 1.6, but they do not even countenance the possibility that fertility might continue to decline. The base scenario for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid budget planning assumes a rapid fertility increase similar to what we call our “Revival” scenario. On the other hand, the UN and the Census Bureau more-or-less straight-line birth rates at recent levels, while CBO, almost alone among the forecasters, offers a plausible scenario where fertility falls, then recovers a bit as women delaying fertility rush to make it up. CBO’s scenario is similar to our “Recovery” scenario—but no forecaster has had the political capital and resolve to actually tell the American people what will happen if fertility keeps falling. We do so here. In the next figure, we show what will happen to American population if, as in our “Continuation” scenario, fertility drops to 1.35 by 2050 and 1.15 by 2095; or, at the other extreme in our “Revival” scenario, what will happen if fertility rises to 2 by 2050 and 2.1 by 2060. If something like what CBO expects, or what we term a “Recovery” scenario occurs, then population growth will continue at a low level until the 2080s. The U.S. may continue to barely eke out a slow pace of growth well into the 21st century. Growth would be far lower than it has been for most of our history. Edward Wigglesworth’s ghost would be infinitely disappointed in us, but the American experiment would not go into reverse for some time yet. Figure 15. Historic and projected future population, 1940-2100, by source of projection But if current trends in fertility rates continue and if births keep getting postponed later and later, then population will peak in the mid-2050s and then go into relatively rapid decline. In this scenario, the latter 21st century will see America in demographic—and therefore economic and political—retreat. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that there are ways to avoid this outcome, and to make the Recovery scenario more likely—perhaps even to achieve the trends we list as a Revival, i.e. a return to replacement-rate fertility or better. How To Restore American Family Growth There are five major reforms which, in combination, could restore the fortunes of American fertility. Beyond these five major reforms, we describe three key cultural domains where, if Americans want to see population revival, the culture will need to change. Pronatal Policies Reform 1: American Birthday Accounts President Trump launched a small savings account seeded with $1,000 to give emerging adults a leg up in his “Trump Accounts,” passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill. The Heritage Foundation has proposed a larger investment intended to mature upon marriage. These ideas are good starts. But the most complete proposal in this regard is a recent proposal in Finland called Vauvasampo. Adapted for the American case, this proposal is simple: every child born as a U.S. citizen in 2026 or any future year would have some amount of money, perhaps $15,000, invested in their name, which we call “American Birthday Accounts,” in honor of our 250th year of independence. Beneficiaries could not touch these accounts until they have a child; that is, until they are the legal and custodial parent of a related child born in the United States or under U.S. jurisdiction abroad, and coresiding with that child or else deployed on U.S. government business. At the first birth (or, if preferable to avoid risks of early child abandonment, at the child’s 1st birthday, if still coresident and full custodial), they would gain access to, say, 50% of their account’s value, and the residual 50% would continue growing. At the second birth, 75% of the fund’s remaining value at that time could be claimed. At a third birth, all remaining funds can be claimed. Assuming funds are invested in something like a mutual fund, a $15,000 investment could easily lead to a married couple receiving a baby bonus worth $100,000 for a first birth, with smaller additional payments for subsequent births. Recipients could be permitted to cash out their benefit over multiple years if they preferred, and any new funds gained through subsequent births would be added to this continuing fund. This baby bonus money could be counted as income, which means that part of its cost would be directly recouped through interactions with means tested programs and income taxes: beneficiary families at both very low and very high incomes would receive smaller after-tax-and-benefit returns. All families of any income would be eligible, but in practice the real benefits would be most generous for middle-income married families, subsidizing fertility the most for working- and middle-class families. Because only children born in the U.S. would be eligible for the investment, concerns about subsidies for children of immigrants would also be alleviated: it would be essentially a subsidy only for U.S.-born individuals to have their own children. Because married couples would be eligible for each parent’s baby bonus, the benefit would effectively double for married couples. To avoid creating subsidies for teen pregnancy, fund accessibility could be set aside until parents reach an appropriate age (perhaps 21 for a first birth, and a slightly higher age for subsequent births). Bang-for-buck, American Birthday Accounts are the single best way to get more babies born in stable families than almost any other policy imaginable. In the long run, since many individuals will have fewer than 3 children (and many will be childless, thus leaving many funds unclaimed), those unused funds can be reinvested in the program to create a rolling national family trust fund, which would render the program zero-cost to taxpayers after the first eligible generation had completed their childbearing. Even without that reinvestment, the budgetary cost for an investment of $15,000 to $20,000 per child would be between $45 and $80 billion per year. For comparison, U.S. public schools spent just under $19,000 per year per student in 2021, so this program amounts to the public investing just one year of schooling worth of public resources into children’s future family life. Assuming American fertility responds to cash incentives the way fertility has responded to cash incentives that we studied in other countries, these American Birthday Accounts would likely boost fertility by between 20 and 40% for the cohorts eligible to receive the benefit. If reproductive-age Americans today already had such accounts, birth rates would be somewhere between 1.9 and 2.2 children per woman—essentially at replacement rate. Reform 2: Child Caregiver Credits When a family has a child, they face new expenses. One parent may also stay home from work. The result is that after having kids, families save less. Childcare, diapers, and work disruptions cause parents to approach retirement with fewer resources than they should have had based on their human capital. In dozens of countries around the world, this problem has been addressed through care credits. These credits have a simple principle: if a person has a child under the age of 5 at home, for the purposes of future Social Security benefit calculations, they should be “credited” as if they were still working at their income levels 1-3 years before birth, adjusted for inflation. This gives stay-at-home parents (especially mothers) slightly better retirement benefits, reduces the harms that women especially face from employment disruptions, and helps recognize that parents are doing the real work of keeping Social Security solvent by raising future payers. While we cannot estimate exactly what effect this change would have on fertility, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that a four-year care credit of this sort could plausibly boost the Social Security benefit by 1% to 3% for a mom who took five years off work to have two children. For a mom who took 15 years off to have four children, care credits might boost her social security benefits by 5-10 percent. Converting these benefits to their net present value at time of childbearing, and using that to infer fertility impacts, only implies a fertility increase of perhaps 1% or 2%, but ensuring basic fairness for parents is a benefit in its own right. Reform 3: End Marriage Penalties Nearly every means-tested program in America creates marriage penalties one way or another, and this discourages family formation. Policymakers must establish a simple principle: getting married should never cause anybody to lose a benefit. In practice, this amounts to suggesting that the U.S. should adopt fully individualized tax and welfare programs. Sweden, Canada, and the U.K. have all changed from joint-filing to individual-filing systems in the past, and in all three cases, fertility rose sharply afterwards. The reason is simple: household-filing and household-benefit systems have a strong tendency to punish marriage for working-class people. If switching to an individual system is a bridge too far, policymakers should simply go through existing tax and benefit programs, line-by-line, and remove marriage penalties, especially in Section 8 housing benefits, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, WIC and SNAP nutrition programs, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, interest deductions for mortgages and student loans, FHA loan eligibility rules, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. We are unable to provide a specific effect estimate for how marriage penalty elimination might influence fertility, since the academic literature does not currently contain standardized effect estimates for either how marriage causally shapes fertility, nor how marriage penalties causally influence marriage. Nonetheless, we believe that these effects could be substantial. In Sweden, Canada, and the U.K., a switch to individualized tax systems was associated with about 0.05-0.15 more children born per woman. Reform 4: Build Family Housing Now American young people face a housing crisis. There has been zero increase in residential square footage per capita in 25 years according to federal data. New houses are shifting heavily towards small apartments. Home prices have skyrocketed to many multiples of young adult incomes. America must build more family-suitable houses. The federal government can encourage this by adopting an extremely simple program: allocate municipalities and states alike a fixed sum per bedroom of housing completed each year. A moderate portion of existing block grant funds could be repurposed and reallocated on the basis of bedrooms being constructed, justified by the simple notion that places building more housing and thus anticipating more population growth really do need and deserve more block grant funding to prepare for a more populous future. Places refusing to build housing can make do with the federal funding they currently have. Reform 5: Institute Family-Impact Budgeting At the structural level, Congress and state legislatures must begin to undertake “family budgeting.” Legislators must ask not only how a bill might impact revenues and spending, but how it will impact marriage and fertility. Every bill that receives a cost score should also be scored for how it impacts incentives to marry and have children, giving legislators a constant reminder that their choices have consequences for the physical survival of the nation, not only of its financial accounts. In combination, we believe instituting these reforms could raise U.S. birth rates to at least 2.1 children per woman and perhaps as high as 2.4 children per woman if marriage effects prove to be substantial. Family-Friendly Cultural Norms Norm 1: Enlist Celebrity Culture Our survey results imply that enlisting celebrities to promote American family life may work—celebrity fertility really is associated with the fertility of fans. Governments interested in boosting fertility should consider enlisting the support of celebrities popular in their jurisdictions, or perhaps even finding a way to obliquely encourage those celebrities to marry and have more children. While we would not endorse or recommend such a policy, it is empirically possible that paying Taylor Swift a billion dollars to have children might produce more children in society than spending the same money on child tax credits, if her choice sways her wide fanbase. More broadly, to the extent that social and cultural elites set the tone for family life, large tax breaks for parenthood at high incomes (of the sort which France implemented through its family quotient system) might stimulate elite fertility, thus, creating downstream cultural spillovers to fans and followers. Outside of government, it would be worthwhile for churches and community actors to consider the social role of parents and families: are they nudged into the back pew, their children sequestered in Sunday school where they can’t bother anyone? Or are parents full participants in community or church leadership—with their children at their side? Norm 2: Encourage Supportive Friendship Helpful friends make a difference. The first thing governments can do to support more supportive friendship is to ensure that informal care arrangements are not punished. Liability and negligence laws and enforcement norms should not punish parents for leaving children with friends. Safe-harbor and Good Samaritan-style liability protections, as well as “free range parenting” laws may be advisable. More broadly, governments could consider creating “civil godparents,” that is, legally recognized roles for specifically designated friends or kin of parents, giving those friends broader in loco parentis rights to care for children. Likewise, hospitals could modify antenatal and postpartum care such that nurses making postpartum visits encourage new parents to call friends to come visit the hospital, or prenatal care includes efforts to help expecting parents produce a list of friends they can call to help. This method of “legitimating the request” may help parents overcome embarrassment to ask for help. Beyond this, governments often confer status through public campaigns—blood donation and organ donation is almost entirely motivated by appeals to conscience and moral status. Governments could emulate these campaigns for care donation: watching your friend’s kids. This approach would effectively confer honor and status on the individuals who do the helping. Further, local municipalities could experiment with subsidies and liability protections for small, designated play areas in coffee shops, grocery stores, and restaurants, where parents can socialize amid productivity. While the government cannot mandate supportive friends, it can create conditions where parents and their friends get helpful nudges into helpful behaviors. Needless to say, the kind of supportive friendship described here can only be nudged by government—but they can be supported by book clubs, mom groups, churches, running clubs, pick-up basketball leagues, and other social groups. They can celebrate one another’s family additions, create schedules for babysitting, drop off meals or DoorDash gift cards, and help each other in any number of ways. Norm 3: Promote Real-Life Socializing Simply having more friends with kids matters for fertility, but a key driver of having more friends with kids is simply having more friends. Indeed, the average number of children in an individual’s social circle is strongly correlated with their average number of close friends: individuals under 30 with fewer than 4 close friends average around 0.7 children per friend; whereas those with 5 or more average around 1-1.3. And yet, the number of close friends Americans have is in persistent decline. Moreover, Americans are spending less and less time together with their friends. These changes are part and parcel of a long-term decline in American social lives. Reversing this decline must be a central part of any project of cultural change. Schools can certainly restrict mobile devices during school hours and at extracurriculars as one step, and should also consider expanding recess time. Limiting how many assignments require devices, reducing solo-homework assignments, and instead assigning group projects requiring in-person collaboration, may also be a useful avenue. Expanded public funding for public sports and athletics fields alongside higher usage fees charged to pay-to-play teams, alongside reduced liability for volunteer coaching and informal play, could help restore neighborhood sports and reduce the all-consuming professionalization of travel sports. Policymakers should also at least consider more creative options: reinstituting Blue Laws requiring business closures on Sundays might help create more in-person community, for example. And what about “Digital Blue Laws”—laws which impede access to non-essential digital services on certain days or at certain hours? Could such laws be implemented? One possible vehicle might be to charge excise taxes on data usage on Sundays, or excise taxes on digital advertising expenditures on Sundays, essentially encouraging platforms to nudge users offline at those times. Laws around existing physical spaces could be tweaked as well—would higher taxes on alcohol sold for home consumption alongside lower taxes on alcohol sold in bars and restaurants lead to more spontaneous friendships? Would raising taxes on restaurant delivery while reducing taxes for in-restaurant dining create new communities? Could expanding the supply of quality park shelters and other bookable spaces be part of a broad “in-person friendship agenda?” The exact pathway to restoring American friendship is not clear, but policymakers should consider bold experiments. Conclusion American population growth has already slowed dramatically and is likely to grind to a halt or even go into reverse in the relatively near future. Some current workers may see population decline before they reach retirement, if current trends continue. This is a serious problem and is not the family future most Americans desire. Unfortunately, tackling this decline is not just a problem of fixing one or two small issues—fertility is shaped by innumerable factors, including many cultural and social norms governments may struggle to change. Nonetheless, if policymakers will consider policy changes equal in magnitude to the size of the problem we face, Americans need not have anything to fear. Demographic decline is a choice, one that our nation’s leaders can choose to avoid, if they will invest in the future of family. Perhaps, with luck, at our 350th anniversary, we might finally reach Wigglesworth’s billion. Editor's Note: For Data and Methods, author information, and references, please download the full report HERE.

June 24,2026 By Scott Phelps, Adapted from a live presentation with the assistance of AI. At the Turning Point Education Summit held at the Marriott Lincolnshire, Scott Phelps shared an important message about the cultural trends shaping our nation—and why Christian educators have a critical role to play in reversing them. Scott expressed his appreciation for Turning Point Education and its work supporting Christian schools through classical education rooted in what is good, true, and beautiful. He also recognized Hutch Hertzberg, Turning Point Education’s Chief Education Officer, and praised the conference as a meaningful gathering filled with strong speakers and shared purpose. During his session, Scott focused on three major trends that he believes must be reversed if society is to flourish. 1. The Non-Marital Birth Rate The first concern is the high rate of children being born outside of marriage. Scott noted that in America, 40% of children are born to unmarried mothers. He emphasized that this trend is not healthy for children, families, or the culture as a whole. Strong families are foundational to a stable society, and marriage provides the best context for raising children. 2. Declining Marriage Rates The second trend is the continued decline in marriage. For the first time in American history, most adults are unmarried, and marriage rates are at an all-time low. Scott described this as a serious cultural concern, noting that marriage is a cornerstone of a healthy society. Strengthening and encouraging marriage, he argued, must be part of the solution. 3. Falling Fertility Rates The third trend is declining fertility. Scott pointed out that more young people today are expressing little or no desire to have children, and fertility rates in America continue to fall. He described this as evidence of a civilization in decline and stressed the importance of helping young people see the value and beauty of family life. A Message for Educators Scott’s message to educators was clear: Young people need to hear that marriage and family are good, life-giving, and worth pursuing. Educators have an opportunity to encourage students to aspire to marriage, children, and family formation—not simply as personal goals, but as essential building blocks of a flourishing culture. As Scott concluded, this work is not done alone. It is done in partnership with organizations like Turning Point Education and with educators who are committed to shaping the next generation with truth, purpose, and hope.

June 17, 2026 By Scott Phelps - Executive Director of A&M Partnership 1. Why is marriage part of the definition in abstinence education? Well, this is a very important point, and this goes to the very center of everything that we do. I like to say marriage isn't part of our message, it's the heart of our message. Marriage is at the very core of everything that we're teaching in an abstinence education program. And if marriage isn't at the center of your program, you're missing the boat completely. If marriage is the safest, healthiest context for sexual activity to occur, how come you're not teaching that to kids? That's why we believe it's central to the messaging. Now, some examples of why this is important. Without marriage as the center of your message, your message is subjective and incomplete. For example, here is a quote from a book called "The Art of Loving Well," published by the University of Boston Press. It's an anthology with lots of good character stories in it. However, listen to what they say in the preface. "The third theme is that sexual relationships are a big deal and should never be taken lightly. Momentary satisfaction outside the context of a mature and deeply intimate relationship usually results in someone getting hurt." Hmm. A mature and deeply intimate relationship, then, is their standard for sexual activity to occur. What's the problem with that? The problem is it's highly subjective. It's fully, completely subjective. What does that even mean? And if I'm talking to young people in high school, and I'm saying, "Hey, listen, make sure that you reserve sexual activity for a mature and deeply intimate relationship," can they have that? Can they think they have that? Their response to that might be, "Yeah, we've been going out for three months. We're very much in love. We're going to get married someday." It's not uncommon for high school students to believe that the relationship that they are in is mature and deeply intimate. Absolutely. And so, if your abstinence message is don't have sex unless you have, what's the word, a mature and deeply intimate relationship, they might be like, "Yeah, check mark, I have that." Your abstinence program has just green-lighted sex for those high school students. Do you see the problem there? So, marriage is fundamental to the message that we're teaching our young people. It doesn't mean they have to do it, but they should have the opportunity to learn that the safest, healthiest option available to you is reserving all sexual activity for the context of marriage. That's my job as an educator, is to teach that message clearly. It doesn't mean they have to do it, but they should get to learn about it, and they should learn about it with clarity. 2. The majority of America is not saving sex for marriage, so how is your abstinence message relevant? I get this question a lot, actually. And it's so weird to me because it seems like that's an argument in favor of a program rather than against it? In other words, the fact that most people aren't doing it doesn't mitigate against teaching it. It's for teaching it. It argues for teaching it. If kids are doing failing in math class, do you just stop teaching math? No. You redouble your efforts to make sure that you do a good job teaching math. You don't abandon it. It's the same thing here. If kids haven't learned about the benefits of abstinence until marriage, you don't just stop teaching it. You do a better job teaching it. When people tell me kids won't listen to an abstinence until marriage message, you tell me nothing about the kids, you tell me everything about yourself. What you're actually saying is, "I'm not smart enough to figure out how to teach this to my kids." That's what you're really saying. Because in my experience, kids respond extremely well to this message. They're hungry for it. They eat it up. If you provide a clearly reasoned, positive presentation on the benefits of abstinence until marriage and instruction on preparing for a healthy future marriage, kids are like, "Give me some more of that stuff." They're looking for that. And just because a lot of people aren't doing it is no argument against teaching it. It's an argument for teaching it. 3. Many parents are concerned that their students are receiving too much information regarding sex. We completely agree with that. We think sex education has gone off the rails. So much of what is being pushed on our kids in classrooms, in schools in America is crazy stuff that has no place in the classroom. We're absolutely dedicated to helping schools see an alternative way to talk to young people about these things. We don't need to be teaching them all kinds of crazy gender identity, sexual orientation, abortion. There are all kinds of topics that should be out of bounds in the classroom. What the public-school health education program should be about is what is the safest, healthiest option available for you when discussing sexual activity? And the answer is abstinence until marriage. Teaching young people to reserve all sexual activity for the context of marriage is factually, objectively provably the safest, healthiest option available. And schools should be focused like a laser beam in health class on communicating that message. They shouldn't be promoting contraception. They shouldn't be promoting alternative lifestyles. They shouldn't be doing all kinds of the crazy that they're doing right now. What they should be teaching is, "Here's what is the safest, healthiest option for you. Let's help you learn what that is so that you can do that." We believe that schools need to focus on that message. 4. "Students need to know all the information that's out there, otherwise they're just going to get their information from the internet." How do you respond to that? Well, actually, that is the problem. Our kids are getting way too much information from the internet. They're getting so much information, most of it bad, that they don't even know where to begin. They've got so many different inputs coming at them, on the internet, through social media, even in their classroom. There's a lot of information coming at our kids regarding sex and gender identity and sexual orientation, all this crazy stuff that they're just like, "I don't know how to make sense of it all." We believe that what young people need is a clear message on the safest, healthiest option for sexual activity to occur, and that's in a marriage relationship. It doesn't mean they have to do it, but they should get to learn about it. And we find that when we are able to provide young people with clarity in this area, they're like, "Oh, thank you. Thank you very much, by the way." Why? Because they're living in a very murky, gray, confusing world. When you provide clarity, it's a breath of fresh air—it's a bright yellow rope that they can grab onto in rough waters. They're like, "Oh, thank you for giving me clarity." What is the clarity? Choosing to reserve all sexual activity and childbearing for the context of marriage is factually, objectively, provably the safest, healthiest option available for you. Again, you don't have to do it, but you should get to learn about it. And when you have the opportunity to learn about it, now you can actually do it, if you want. So I'm a big fan of teaching young people abstinence until marriage, wedded to the success sequence, which teaches young people: get an education, get a job, and then marry before having children. I think these two messages woven together are what our young people need to learn about. Follow the success sequence and wait until marriage for sexual activity and childbearing. That's a very healthy message. It's a very rewarding message that when kids hear it, they're all about it. Yeah, they respond very well. 5. What about students who don't want to get married? This is a great question because your program is teaching abstinence until marriage, and what about the kids that don't want to get married? What about them? Well, that's a legitimate question, and the reality is there are some kids who don't want to get married, and so we address this very clearly. And what we say in our teaching of young people on the subject of abstinence until marriage is, "Hey listen, you may want to get married, you may not want to get married. People have different feelings, different thoughts, different opinions. And these different feelings, thoughts, and opinions do tend to change over time, so don't rule anything out. But it's totally okay if you're not thinking about getting married at this point." What we want you to understand is that the message that we're communicating regarding abstinence until marriage has really good principles that can be applied to your life, whether you want to get married in the future or not. Our programs are character-based. We're talking about respect, responsibility, self-control. Character qualities that are beneficial for everyone, whether you get married in the future or not. So, the principles of abstinence until marriage apply to everyone, clearly. And so we're super clear in saying, "Hey listen, if you want to get married in the future, great. The things that we're teaching can really help prepare you for that. If you're not wanting to get married in the future, that's okay, too. These principles are still super helpful." And you never know. Sometimes people who really want to get married don't, and people who don't really want to get married end up getting married. You just don't know. So have an open mind, have an open heart, think through the principles that we're teaching very clearly because they can be super beneficial for you either way. 6. How can we be sure that our school is teaching abstinence education? This is a very good question. It's really important to know what your school is teaching, and it's not enough to ask the question, "Hey, are you guys teaching abstinence?" I don't believe there's a school in America that will say we don't teach abstinence. The question is, what does that mean? Abstinence education properly taught is abstinence until marriage. And the reason why I say that is only then is it objective. If you're only talking about the term abstinence, that can mean a lot of different things, and many schools use it to mean a lot of different things. It's not uncommon for a school to say that they teach abstinence while they're promoting a lot of other stuff that you don't want your kids to learn about. Abstinence until marriage is a clear, objective standard that we need to teach our young people. And if you want to make sure that your school is teaching that message clearly, you need to ask to see what the material is that they're using. You need to be able to evaluate it for yourself and look to see, does it teach abstinence until marriage, or is it a typical sex education program that covers a lot of stuff you don't want your kids learning? And yes, they've thrown in the word abstinence as a fig leaf to do a covering over the whole thing. So be careful. Check with your school, ask to see the material, and make sure that it's something that you approve of for your students. 7. What about the kids who have already been sexually active? This is a great question and one that I love to answer. So, I will address the question this way. What is the safest, healthiest, best message for a student, middle school student or high school student, who's already been sexually active? It isn't to keep going. It's important that we who are educators, parents, people who work with young people, understand that the best message for sexually active teens is, "You don't have to keep doing that." This isn't a message about what have you done in your past. It's a message about what will you do today and the decisions that you make going forward. We find that young people who have been sexually active in the past find this message to be refreshing and helpful. Do you know, years ago, they stopped doing this survey, but years ago, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy used to do a regular survey of teens, and it would ask them if they were sexually active and how they felt about their decisions going forward. And do you know that consistently year after year, about two-thirds of sexually active teens said they regret their decision. They wish they would have waited. So, we understand that. We understand that teens who are sexually active tend not to be super excited about it, and they're looking for guidance, they're looking for help. They're looking for a pathway forward in life. What we want to tell sexually active teens is, "Hey, listen. Just because you've already done some stuff doesn't mean you have to keep on doing that. Now that you have the opportunity to learn these things, you can make a new decision for your future." And I'm telling you what, teens who have been sexually active who really hear and receive the abstinence until marriage message and get on a new track find it to be so refreshing and rewarding. I love the opportunity to share this message with young people, and my experience is that they respond very well to this message, whether they've been sexually active in the past or not.

June 3, 2026 This article was written with the assistance of AI, adapted from a recent podcast episode transcript from the Real Alex Clark Podcast, America’s Kids Are Falling Behind: A Way Out For Teachers & Parents with Dr. Hutz Hertzberg. Hutz Herzberg - CEO of Turning Point Education on the Real Alex Clark Podcast Something feels deeply off in American education right now — and more families than ever are starting to trust that instinct. Kids can't read. Boys are falling behind at alarming rates. Teachers are burning out and leaving the profession. AI is reshaping how students learn. And many parents are quietly asking a question they never expected to ask: What is school actually doing to my child? Dr. Hutz Herzburg, Chief Education Officer for Turning Point Education, recently joined Culture Apothecary to tackle all of it head-on. With decades of experience leading schools, universities, and educational organizations, Dr. Herzburg offered a frank diagnosis of what's broken — and a genuine vision for what comes next. Why Can't Kids Read Anymore? It's not one thing, says Dr. Herzburg — it's everything compounding at once. A distracted generation raised on screens. Teaching quality that has declined steadily for decades. And a curriculum philosophy rooted in progressive thinking that dates back to the early 1900s, one that has gradually moved American education away from the classical model that once produced some of the most literate, capable citizens in the world. The result? High schoolers reading at a third-grade level. Math scores at historic lows. And a generation that, in Dr. Herzburg's words, cannot truly be free — because freedom requires the ability to read, reason, and think independently. Boys Are Being Left Behind One of the most urgent issues in modern education is the struggle of young men. Dr. Herzburg argues that schools have tried to teach boys like girls — expecting them to sit still, stay quiet, and absorb information passively for hours on end. That's not how boys are wired. Classical education, with its emphasis on active learning, nature, exploration, and hands-on experience, offers a far better fit. Turning Point Education has even developed a two-year father-son curriculum called Iron Works, combining physical activity, Bible study, and practical life skills to help boys grow into strong, grounded young men. Schools Are Spiritually Formative — Whether You Realize It or Not One of the most sobering points Dr. Herzburg makes is that there is no such thing as neutral education. Every classroom teaches a worldview — and in most public schools today, that worldview is actively hostile to faith. Christian teachers face enormous pressure to stay silent, keep their heads down, or leave altogether. And many are choosing to leave, taking with them the last flickers of light in an increasingly dark system. Research cited in the conversation puts it in stark terms: only 4% of Americans currently hold a biblical worldview. The school system, Dr. Herzburg argues, has played a significant role in that collapse. A Growing Movement Fighting Back The encouraging news is that parents, pastors, and educators are waking up. Homeschooling is booming. Classical schools are multiplying across the country. Churches are rediscovering their historic role in holistic education. And organizations like Turning Point Education are equipping the people on the front lines with tools, community, and courage. Join the Conversation This Summer Turning Point Education's 5th Annual Educator Summit — themed Courage in Our Convictions: Cultivating Clarity in Chaos — takes place June 16–19 in Lincolnshire, Illinois. It's built for public school teachers, Christian school educators, homeschooling parents, pastors, and school board members. Featuring 28 speakers including Dr. Al Mohler, Riley Gaines, and George Barna, it's designed to both encourage and equip everyone who feels the weight of this moment in education. Tickets are just $50 — and with code ALEXCLARK at turningpointed.com, you'll get 30% off. Meals are included, and discounted hotel rooms are available at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort.

by Rachel Sheffield @RachelSheffiel2 from The Heritage Foundation blog May 26, 2026 Summary- Birth rates are likely to continue to fall if marriage continues to decline. Parents, schools, churches, and media should educate young people about the importance and benefits of marriage and help young adults prepare to build and maintain healthy marriages. Marriage is the institution that is most likely to produce children and the environment that fosters the healthiest setting for their development. It is therefore, by definition, crucial to the current and future well-being of the country, and restoring it to its proper place will require both cultural change and policy action that is informed by that change. KEY TAKEAWAYS The principal driver of declining birth rates is the fact that fewer Americans are marrying and forming families. The sharp decline in births among women in their 20s today is not being offset by an increase in births among women in their 30s and 40s. Restoring marriage to its proper place will require both cultural change and policy action that is informed by that change. Birth rates in the U.S. continue to fall according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released in April 20261 The country’s birth rates have been declining steadily for more than a decade, and the total fertility rate (the number of births a woman is projected to have over her lifetime) continues to hit new lows. Births in the U.S. are well below the replacement rate—the number of children born per woman that is necessary to replace the current population.2 The data released by the CDC show that the downward trend in fertility continued in 2025. The birth rate dropped from 53.8 births per 1,000 women in 2024 to 53.1 in 2025, and the total number of births declined by 22,534.3 In addition: Teen births fell, particularly among older teens (ages 18–19); Among all age groups of women younger than 30, births and birth rates (the number of births per 1,000 women in each age group) fell; and Among women 30 and older, the birth rate increased or remained steady (in the case of women ages 45–54).4 Some media outlets and scholars say the drop in birth rates represents positive trends. They argue that the decline is driven by falling teen births and by women in their 20s delaying relationships and motherhood to secure more stable lives for themselves and their future families. Proponents of this argument assume that births are being delayed until later in life rather than forgone altogether.5 The reality, however, is more concerning. Although teen births did decline somewhat in 2025, the principal driver of declining birth rates is the fact that that fewer Americans are marrying and forming families. The sharp decline in births among women in their 20s today is not being offset by an increase in births among women in their 30s and 40s. Births delayed by women in their 20s today will likely mean overall lower births by the time these women reach the end of their childbearing years. Teen Births Teen births dropped by nearly 12,000 between 2024 and 2025. The teen birth rate—the number of births per 1,000 teenage women—dropped by 0.1 among the youngest group of teens (ages 10–14), by 0.6 for young women ages 15–17, and by 1.7 for young women ages 18–19.6 While declines in unwed teen birth rates are good news, particularly in the case of minor-age young women, teen birth rates do not have much effect on the overall U.S. birth rate because they are only a small share of births today.7 Declining teen births reinforce overall lower birth rates, but they are not driving the overall decrease in birth rates. To illustrate, even if teen births had decreased to zero in 2025 while all other births had remained steady (no declines among women in their 20s and no increases among women in their 30s and 40s), the overall birth rate would have remained nearly unchanged. Declining and Rising Births Among Women in Their 20s and 30s The largest driver of declining birth rates is the large drop in births among women in their 20s. Declining birth rates among women in their 20s have a significant effect on the overall birth rate because this age group typically bears the largest number of children. Women in their 20s are old enough to have found a partner and married or at least to be at a socially acceptable age to have children. Biological fertility is also at peak or near peak for women in their 20s.8 Births among women in their 20s fell by more than 30,000 between 2024 and 2025. The largest declines in birth rates also occurred among women in their 20s: 3.9 for women ages 25–29 and 3.6 for women ages 20–24.9 Some of the decline in births among women in their 20s, particularly women in their early 20s, is likely due to fewer births to unwed mothers. Declining unwed births is a positive trend. Children born outside of marriage are at higher risk for many negative outcomes.10 Increased Births Among Women in Their 30s and 40s Some of the decline in births among women in their 20s is offset by an increase in births among women in their 30s and 40s. This lends support to the theory that births are just being delayed rather than forgone. However, the increase in births by older women has not fully offset declining births among women in their 20s. Between 2024 and 2025, the birth rate increased by 2.5 for women ages 30–34, 0.8 for women ages 35–39, and 0.1 for women ages 45–54.11 It is not yet possible to know how many births delayed by women who are currently in their 20s will be births that are permanently forgone. However, completed fertility among recent cohorts remains well below replacement, and unless there is a major reversal of that trend, birth rates will continue to fall. Declining Family Formation What best explains the continual decline in births is the fact that fewer adults are marrying and forming families. Marriage and childbearing are strongly connected. Although the U.S. has an exceedingly high nonmarital birth rate, most births still take place within marriage. Births to married couples have declined far less than have marriage rates themselves. Married women have a much higher average number of children compared to their unmarried peers. The average number of children born to married couples has remained roughly steady for the past three decades with modest declines in recent years. Taken together, these trends suggest that declining marriages are the primary driver of declining births.12 The consequences of declining marriage and family formation go beyond shrinking birth rates. Smaller families and fewer people with families of their own mean fewer family members for people to rely on for support over the course of life. More older adults will reach old age without spouses or adult children to care for them, and this will likely entail negative consequences for the well-being of the elderly as well as greater reliance on government health care and social services.13 Declining family formation is also linked to broader social consequences. Americans report rising loneliness, but married adults with children tend to be happier, have greater well-being, are less lonely, and are more engaged in their communities.14 Reasons for Declining Marriage and Family Formation Americans have not rejected the idea of marriage altogether. Most unmarried Americans say they would like to marry someday, but fewer are reaching that goal.15 Society encourages young people to delay marriage, often to pursue personal and professional goals. For some, this means never marrying or having children.16 Educational and career achievement are emphasized, along with personal autonomy and relationship experimentation. For those who do wed, marriage is often viewed as the capstone of adult life rather than as the cornerstone of a life that couples build together. Economic factors also play a role in declining marriage, but these factors have more to do with increased opportunity cost and rising material expectations for marriage than they do with declining economic well-being.17 Policy Recommendations Restoring a culture of marriage is needed to create thriving families, communites, and societies. But birth rates will likely continue to fall if marriage continues to decline. Therefore: Parents, schools, churches, and media should educate young people about the importance and benefits of marriage and help young adults prepare to build and maintain healthy marriages. Reducing marriage penalties in the welfare system is also crucial to strengthening marriages in low-income communities. Marrying can often mean a substantial reduction in welfare benefits, creating a significant barrier to marital formation among lower-income Americans. The Heritage Foundation’s Special Report on the family provides dozens of pro-marriage policy recommendations, including tax credits for married-parent families and investment accounts redeemable upon marriage.18 Conclusion Marriage is the institution that is most likely to produce children and the environment that fosters the healthiest setting for their development. It is therefore, by definition, crucial to the current and future well-being of the country, and restoring it to its proper place will require both cultural change and policy action that is informed by that change. Rachel Sheffield is a Research Fellow for Welfare and Family Policy in the Center for Health and Welfare Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Footnotes: See Table 1, “Births and Birth Rate, by Age of Mother: United States, Final 2024 and Provisional 2025,” in Brady E. Hamilton, Michelle J.K. Osterman, and Elizabeth C.W. Gregory, “Births: Provisional Data for 2025,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, Vital Statistics Rapid Release Report No. 43, April 2026, p. 6, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr043.pdf (accessed May 19, 2026). Rachel Sheffield and Delano Squires, “Crossroads: American Family Life at the Intersection of Tradition and Modernity,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 310, March 4, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/crossroads-american-family-life-the-intersection-tradition-and-modernity. Hamilton et al., “Births: Provisional Data for 2025.” Calculation of the total fertility rate was not released but will likely fall further from the previous year’s historical low. Among a couple of age groups of women over age 30 (specifically, women ages 30–34 and 45–54), the number of total births dropped even though their birth rate increased or stayed steady. Birth rates can increase or remain steady while the number of births declines when the number of women in that age group declines. See Sabrina Tavernise and Jeff Adelson, “The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing,” The New York Times, February 27, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/us-birthrate-decline-women.html (accessed May 19, 2026); Sabrina Tavernise, “U.S. Fertility Rates Drop to Another Record Low,” The New York Times, April 9, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/us/fertility-rates-decline.html (accessed May 19, 2026). Table 1, “Births and Birth Rate, by Age of Mother: United States, Final 2024 and Provisional 2025,” in Hamilton et al., “Births: Provisional Data for 2025.” During the past several decades, the decline in teen births has been accompanied by a decline in teen pregnancies and abortions; the drop in teen births is therefore not simply about more young women getting abortions. See Doris W. Chiu, Isaac Maddow-Zimet, and Kathryn Kost, Pregnancies, Births and Abortions in the United States, 1973–2020: National and State Trends by Age (New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2024), https://www.guttmacher.org/report/pregnancies-births-abortions-in-united-states-1973-2020 (accessed May 20, 2026). Teen births used to be a much larger share of U.S. births. In the first half of the 20th century, teen births were common because people married at younger ages. It used to be that teen births were nearly always to married women. In recent decades, the vast majority of teen births have been to unwed mothers. Births to teenage women declined after the Baby Boom era as the age of first marriage began to increase in the U.S. Teen birth rates stayed flat during the 1970s and through much of the 1980s but began to rise rapidly in the late 1980s and into the early 1990s. The rise in unwed teen births was of great concern to policymakers and other leaders and a social trend that most of the public agreed was problematic. There was a concerted effort to reduce teen pregnancies and births. Teen pregnancies and births have been falling for about three decades and are now at historic lows. See Figure 1, “Teen Birth Rate, 1940–2023,” in Alexandria K. Mickler and Jessica Tollestrup, “Teen Births in the United States: Overview and Recent Trends,” Congressional Research Service Report for Members and Committees of Congress No. R45184, updated April 17, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R45184/R45184.12.pdf (accessed May 19, 2026), and U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Statistical Briefing Book: Youth Population Characteristics: Percent of Births to Unmarried Teen Mothers, 1955–2023,” released October 6, 2025, https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/population/qa01303.asp (accessed May 20, 2026). American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Frequently Asked Questions: Having a Baby After Age 35: How Aging Affects Fertility and Pregnancy,” last updated February 2023, last reviewed April 2025, https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/having-a-baby-after-age-35-how-aging-affects-fertility-and-pregnancy (accessed May 20, 2026). Table 1, “Births and Birth Rate, by Age of Mother: United States, Final 2024 and Provisional 2025,” in Hamilton et al., “Births: Provisional Data for 2025.” These drops are larger than the drop in teen birth rates and greater than the increases in birth rates among women in their 30s and 40s. See Melissa S. Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023). But unwed births are not declining because of higher marriage rates among these women. Rather, more people are failing to marry and to have children at all. Table 1, “Births and Birth Rate, by Age of Mother: United States, Final 2024 and Provisional 2025,” in Hamilton et al., “Births: Provisional Data for 2025.” Overall, their total number of births increased by 19,572, but roughly 30,000 fewer births occurred to women in their 20s in 2025, so the additional 19,572 births among older women still led to a large net decline. Sheffield and Squires, “Crossroads: American Family Life at the Intersection of Tradition and Modernity,” and Roger Severino, Jay W. Richards, Emma Waters, Delano Squires, Rachel Sheffield, and Robert Rector, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 323, January 8, 2026, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/saving-america-saving-the-family-foundation-the-next-250-years. Rachel Sheffield, The Consequences of Declining Fertility for Social Capital, U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee Republicans, Social Capital Project, December 2022, https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/635c69dc-6a5a-467b-b7b0-3ab906fb4a94/the-consequences-of-declining-fertility-for-social-capital.pdf (accessed May 20, 2026). Ibid. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Is Marriage Becoming Irrelevant?” Gallup Poll Social Series, December 28, 2020, https://news.gallup.com/poll/316223/fewer-say-important-parents-married.aspx (accessed May 20, 2026). Rachel Sheffield, “How Modern Approaches to Relationships Decrease the Likelihood of a Healthy Marriage,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3843, November 8, 2024, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/how-modern-approaches-relationships-decrease-the-likelihood-healthy; Steven Ruggles, “Marriage, Family Systems, and Economic Opportunity in the United States Since 1850,” University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center Working Paper No. 2014-11, December 2014, https://users.pop.umn.edu/~ruggl001/Articles/Ruggles_Marriage_2014.pdf (accessed May 19, 2026). Rachel Sheffield, “The Working-Class Marriage Decline: How Higher Expectations and Shifting Norms, Not Wages, Are the Main Cause,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 329, May 19, 2026, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/the-working-class-marriage-decline-how-higher-expectations-and-shifting; Scott Winship, Bringing Home the Bacon: Have Trends in Men’s Pay Weakened the Traditional Family? American Enterprise Institute, December 2022, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/bringing-home-the-bacon-have-trends-in-mens-pay-weakened-the-traditional-family/ (accessed May 19, 2026); Severino et al., “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Severino et al., “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.”

According to recent news reports, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has launched investigations into 36 Illinois public school districts to determine whether sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI) content has been included in classroom instruction for students in grades pre-K through 12. As part of the federal review, investigators are examining whether schools properly informed parents of their right to opt their children out of certain instruction where applicable. The inquiry will also review policies related to access to single-sex intimate spaces—including bathrooms and locker rooms—as well as participation in girls’ sports teams and how those policies are determined. This investigation has become one of the most talked-about education stories in Illinois and has intensified the national conversation surrounding parental rights in education, sex education opt out policies, gender ideology in schools, and school transparency. For many families, the concern is not simply about curriculum itself, but whether parents are being fully informed about what is being taught and whether they are given meaningful opportunities to make decisions for their children. Parental Rights in Schools and Illinois Sex Education Policies Across Illinois and throughout the country, parents have increasingly raised concerns about classroom instruction involving sexuality, gender identity, and related social issues. Questions surrounding parent notification, curriculum transparency, and sex ed opt out rights have become major topics at school board meetings and in state legislatures. Illinois law allows schools to provide comprehensive sex education, while also outlining circumstances in which parents may opt students out of certain instruction. The DOJ investigation seeks to determine whether districts have consistently followed those procedures and whether families were properly notified of their rights. Concerns About Current Sex Education Programs This investigation comes as news to many Illinois families, but concerns surrounding public school sex education have existed for years. Critics argue that some classroom materials and discussions are not age-appropriate and may conflict with the values many parents wish to teach at home. Organizations advocating for reform have stated that they believe much of modern sex education has moved away from basic health instruction and into harmful topics for young people. Supporters of reform say schools should focus more heavily on helping students build strong futures, healthy relationships, personal responsibility, and long-term success rather than introducing controversial topics at increasingly younger ages. A Turning Point for Illinois Schools? The federal investigation could become a major turning point in how Illinois schools approach curriculum transparency, parent communication, and student policies moving forward. Many parents believe schools function best when families are treated as partners in education rather than being excluded from important decisions involving sensitive topics. Looking Ahead The investigation has sparked widespread discussion across Illinois communities and beyond. To view the full list of schools involved, click here. *** This post was crafted with AI assistance.

by Robert VerBruggen, @RAVERBRUGGEN from the Institute for Family Studies blog April 11, 2024 In a brief new paper, sociologists Joanna R. Pepin and Philip N. Cohen highlight a new and worrisome trend: Fewer high-school seniors think they will get married one day, per the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey. Fewer of them think they’d make a good spouse, too. Source: Pepin, J. R., & Cohen, P. N. (2024). "Growing Uncertainty in Marriage Expectations among U.S. Youth." Socius, 10. These trends are important in themselves. As Pepin and Cohen point out, the data may portend further declines in the marriage rate. I wanted to float some hypotheses about why they might be happening, too. First, could declining marriage expectations track the “Great Awokening”—the rise of left-wing sentiment among young people, especially women, in the past 10 years or so? The MTF data show growing liberal identification among young women (rising from about 20 to 30% in the past decade), and other evidence suggests liberals are less likely to marry, so it would make sense for declining marriage intentions to be bundled with these larger phenomena. I downloaded the MTF data for 2012 through 2022 (except for 2020, which, as Pepin and Cohen warn, is a bit wonky) to take a look. Here’s the share of each sex saying they think they’ll get married, divided by self-identified political leanings, over time.1 If changes in political identification entirely drove the trend above, separating the data this way would make the lines completely flat; or, if self-identified liberals were drifting anti-marriage, the change would be concentrated among them. Unfortunately, because not every respondent is asked every question, many of the individual points here are based on small sample sizes, creating some awkward lurches.2 But taken as a whole, this shows declining intentions for women even within political ideologies, while the trends for men are a bit flatter. It also, of course, affirms the premise that self-identified liberals are less likely to say they think they’ll marry. So politics could be part of the explanation, but these results are frankly more boring than I hoped. As for young people’s opinions about how great of spouses they would make, does the trend reflect changing views of marriage, or is the rise and fall simply an illustration of Millennial narcissism? Jean Twenge has famously shown that narcissistic personality traits rose among the young until about 2008 before declining with the economy. Looking at the trend above, my first thought was not “ugh, those Gen Z-ers hate marriage” but rather “wow, we Millennials were full of ourselves back in the day.” I’m no psychologist, but from the MTF data I can affirm that, unsurprisingly, people who think highly of themselves in general also tend to believe they would be fantastic spouses. Combining that whole period, only about a third of respondents who thought they were “far below average” in intelligence also thought they’d be “very good” spouses, versus about 60% of those who thought their smarts were above or far above average. Similarly, only 4% of kids who thought they’d make poor workers also believed they’d be very good spouses, versus 69% of those who thought they’d make very good workers. I don't want to make too much of this quick-and-dirty number crunching. Marriage expectations also go along with high regard for oneself as a spouse, so Pepin and Cohen are correct to see a connection: 61% of those who think they’ll get married, but only 24% of those who think they won't, believe they’d make very good spouses. And, after all, someone who accurately thinks he’s smart and a good worker might entirely reasonably think he’d be a good spouse for many of the same reasons. But these questions pick up something more than objective reality—specifically, a healthy dose of pompousness—seeing that about 60% of these kids thought they were at least slightly above average in intelligence, while not even 10% thought they were below average. Ultimately, the uptick in kids saying they don’t think they’ll marry is worrisome; exactly why this is happening is an open question. I wouldn’t launch a federal initiative to inflate Gen Z’s egos just yet—but maybe we should all send the young adults in our life a copy of Brad Wilcox's new book. Robert VerBruggen is a Manhattan Institute fellow and IFS research fellow. 1. The spectrum is collapsed to liberal, moderate, and conservative. Radicals are grouped in with liberals, and none/don’t know with moderates. 2. For example, in 2022, only 711 people answered whether they thought they’d get married, which in the chart gets divided into two sexes and three political ideologies each, with only 42 conservative women, a mere one of whom didn’t think she’d get married.

by Brad Wilcox, @BRADWILCOXIFS | David Bass from the Institute For Family Studies blog August 9, 2023 Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless. Is that statement surprising? In an age that prizes individualism, workism, and a host of other self-centric “isms” above marriage and family, it may well be. But the reality is that nothing currently predicts happiness in life better than a good marriage. This truth is borne out yet again in new research from the University of Chicago, which found that marriage is the “the most important differentiator” of who is happy in America, and that falling marriage rates are a chief reason why happiness has declined nationally. The research, surveying thousands of respondents, revealed a startling 30-percentage-point happiness divide between married and unmarried Americans. This happiness boost held true for both men and women. “Marital status is and has been a very important marker for happiness,” researcher Sam Peltzman concludes. “The happiness landslide comes entirely from the married. Low happiness characterizes all types of non-married. No subsequent population categorization will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people.” Continue reading at Unherd . . . .

by Katy Faust, @ADVO_KATY from the Institute for Family Studies blog February 22, 2024 At the age of 34, I was a stay-at-home mom with four young kids living in one of the nation's most expensive cities. I had left a job I loved at age 25 to devote myself full-time to our family of now-six living on a pastor’s salary. Not only was I always tired and sometimes stressed, things were financially very lean. We were on utility discount programs, I shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill, and I was a master gleaner of just-about-to-go-bad produce at rock bottom prices. Around that time I reconnected with a high school friend with a brainy husband who decided she wasn't going to have children. “Kids are such a drain, and if I left my job, I’d never regain that lost ground. Besides, the world is overpopulated anyway,” she remarked while sipping a latte I could barely afford. As I recently shared, there was one moment on the side of a freeway when I was catching my 4-year-old’s vomit in my hands in the pouring rain when I wondered if I had made the right choice to not only prioritize marriage, but motherhood. The avalanche of data in Brad Wilcox's newest book, Get Married has the answer. Per usual, Wilcox’s research is unassailable. He's not just the guy I go to looking for precision stats on the number of women who initiate divorces or answers to granular questions about cohabitation. He's the go-to for outlets like the New York Times and The Atlantic as well. So when it comes to the numbers, Wilcox is right. What do the numbers tell us? An increasing percentage of young adults (ages 18-40) think education (64%) and money (75%) are more critical to fulfillment than marriage (32%). Wilcox also explains the why behind those numbers. A swelling percentage of people who would have already married in previous generations now largely see wedlock as a portal to “boredom, forgone job opportunities, the burdens of parenthood, oppressive gender roles, and being tied down.” They are rejecting marriage in an attempt to “maximize their freedom, wealth, and fulfillment—especially when they are in their twenties.” Get Married spends several chapters explaining why those conclusions are totally wrong. The data is clear that “marriage and family life are often more important for our sense of meaning, direction, and happiness than the degree on our wall, the place we punch a clock, or our ability to maximize our autonomy.” In one don’t-even-try-to-argue-with-the-findings-study, Wilcox reports: the odds that men and women say they are “very happy” with their lives are a staggering 545 percent higher for those who are very happily married, compared to their peers who are not married or who are less than very happy in their marriages. When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with your work. Ok. Marriage it is, then. After all, filming and editing those DINK videos is easier with two. But Wilcox doesn't let you off the hook there. He spends an entire chapter, “The Parent Trap,” making it clear that you should not only Get Married, but Get Pregnant. First, the numbers again. Wilcox cites a Pew poll that found “more than half of adults agreed that having a job or career they enjoy is “essential” to living a fulfilling life. But only about one in five felt the same way about having children.” He points to the exact “pervasive cultural forces” articulated by my high school friend who elevated her career over motherhood: No kids… means more freedom, more fun. In other words, individualism plus hedonism. But childlessness is also being elevated now not just as an obstacle to professional success or an expression of selfishness but as the moral choice in a world where children are depicted as a threat to the environment. Is a childless life more “free”? Certainly. Is it more “fun”? Maybe… if you favor casinos over karaoke-style carpooling with the pre-teen crowd. Is it good for the planet? Nope. (But that's a subject for another article.) Freedom, fun, and environmental fanaticism may sound great in your 20s or 30s, but Get Married has reams of stats connecting the rise of the single, childless life with loneliness, meaninglessness, and sadness. If it's fulfillment you're after, Wilcox makes clear that it’s time to have some kids. For example, he notes: Childless Americans are more likely to report that their lives are lonely, and less likely to report that they are meaningful and happy. Nearly 60% of men and women who do not have kids report they are lonely, some, most, or all of the time, whereas parents say the same only 45% of the time. Parents are more likely to report their lives are meaningful, “noting that they find a great deal of meaning in spending time with family.” 82% of parents are “very happy” or “pretty happy,” compared to 68% of their childless peers. Childless men and women are more likely than parents to say their lives are sad, most or all of the time. I’ve heard it said, “if someone can't accurately diagnose the problem, don't listen to their answer.” Wilcox understands the problem. That’s why we must heed his solution. If you want a fulfilling life, you should not only get married, but get pregnant. That's certainly how my story unfolded. My kids are now 14, 16, 18, and 20. The little society that my husband and I built is bursting with laughter, joy, and meaning. Loneliness? What does that even mean? My childless friend on the other hand seems to ever be hunting for fulfillment: following the latest trendy diet, in search of another gripping book, waiting for the next interesting work project. Her career peaked years ago, so she's now planning to retire at 50. She's lived in grand homes all across the world, wears Dolce and Gabbana glasses, and has a personal trainer. She's also told me that when her husband leaves for a couple weeks on a business trip or to visit his ailing father, she gets sad. The childlessness that seemed so liberating when she was sipping that latte 12 years ago has revealed itself as a meaningless void. The dominant problems in our society are not primarily material. They are relational. The solution is to form and create the most durable relational bonds known to mankind—the marriage kind. The parenthood kind. Read Wilcox’s new book. Then, get married, get pregnant, and be happy.

by Cody Wubs from A&M Partnership February 15, 2024 The season of singleness can be one of the most life giving and joyful parts of our lives. I heard it put like this one time if you aren’t content in singleness then you won’t be content in marriage. No matter what stage of life we find ourselves in we have had a season of singleness. It can be lonely and dark at times, but it can be exciting and joyful too. It really comes down to a person's mindset with singleness. It is no different to how one approaches life in general. How one decides to respond to life’s circumstances can impact their mindset and it may not change the situation, but it can change one's perspective. Although movies about singleness aren't topping the charts and books usually don't end in singleness, it is an important season in every person's life. A person's perspective behind it can greatly affect their future relationships. Here are four ways I have seen myself grow in how I view and approach singleness in a healthy way. 1. Being single doesn't mean we are alone. Wanting to be married is a good thing. We were designed for it. But before we are married, we will find ourselves single. We aren’t meant to be alone. The Bible states in Genesis 2:18, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper for him.” From the beginning we are meant to do life together. Who we do life with is going to be different for us throughout our lives. Each season brings a different community. While we are married, we will have our spouse to love and support us but while we are single we have friends, family, or roommates. We need to find a community of people that we can trust and that will embrace us for who we are. We need to have people that will challenge us and encourage us. Community looks different in different seasons. 2. Being single allows us to be free to pursue life unencumbered. Think of a time when you wanted to do something or a friend wanted to spend time together or somebody asked for help, and you were there right away. My guess is that this was when you were single. When we are in a relationship or married, how we use our time changes. So, while we have ample time on our hands being single, pursue what matters in life and what you love to do wholeheartedly. Travel, sing, do art, play sports, exercise, volunteer, find a job you love, build strong friendships, care for your family, etc. whatever it is go and do it. Each and everyone of us are designed with specific gifts and talents to be of great benefit for this world. 3. Being single gives us time to grow. While we are single, we can grow in areas such as self control or self discipline, and learn who we are on our own. There can be an unnecessary amount of pressure surrounding the need to be in a relationship, especially for the younger generation, or rushing to get married. Just because everybody else is doing it doesn't mean you have to do it, sometimes the relationship you want isn’t the right one for you. It is also okay to wait and be patient as we seek our spouse. The stages of life happen in different seasons for everybody, being patient is key. There are many emotions and feelings with dating. We need to be wise to consider both ours and the other person’s heart when we pursue a relationship. Growing while being single can look like processing past relationships and taking time to heal from past hurt. It is wise to be self aware and evaluate if you are emotionally ready before jumping into a relationship. If you do not take the time to grow on your own, relationships could cause more hurt. You are trying to get to know the other person as well as showing them who you are. When we embrace singleness we are able to pursue friendships and approach dating with wisdom. In singleness, we are free of pressures that come with dating, the biggest one being physical pressures of being intimate. The best and healthiest way to engage in sexual activity is marriage. The biggest benefit when abstaining from any sexual activity till marriage will be in getting to know someone better without clouding your judgment and connecting yourself to someone physically. It will also help in guarding your heart from heartbreak and help in making an informed decision if this person is someone you want to marry. 4. Being single doesn't mean you can't be content. Some people will never have “til death do us part”. That doesn't mean their lives are less fulfilled. We are not made complete or whole by somebody else. Your girlfriend, boyfriend, or even spouse doesn’t complete you. We are a completely whole person inside and outside of relationships. If we weren’t complete or whole that would mean for much of our lives, we were half of a person. The whole concept of being made complete by somebody else is emphasized so much in society. We need to stop this mentality. Looking at all the ways I have grown in seeing singleness as a positive season, I have seen my perspective change. My own story of singleness is one that I want to share to encourage and challenge. I personally have never dated anybody as of the writing of this blog. Although there are times when I feel lonely, I have never felt empty. I want to be married and have a wife to care for and love, but I am content as I wait. Some days can be harder than others but we grow the most through trials in life. I have pursued my passions and joys in life. I still put myself out there and try my best at finding my spouse but it doesn’t always work out. My life is full even without a relationship. Being single has never stopped me from living my life well. It can be true for you too, so go and enjoy life, find your passions, build friendships, travel, explore, and experience life!