For Children, It’s Not Either/Or. Kids Deserve Both Mom AND Dad.
With our #ANDnotOR campaign, running from May 1st through Father’s Day, we are calling on every adult who cares about kids to help build a culture that protects every child’s right to both their mother and father. This is not just about celebrating moms and dads, it is about affirming the truth that children need them both. Not as interchangeable parts, but as a united, essential pair. Because when mom and dad are both involved, their children are statistically the most likely to be protected and loved.
This campaign is your chance to take a stand. When you support this mission, you are fighting for a future where the rights of children to be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence are not only recognized but fiercely defended.
During #ANDnotOR, if we grow by 50 monthly donors, a $50,000 matching gift will be unlocked to expand this work. That means a new monthly gift of any amount unlocks $1,000 going toward Them Before Us’ work to protect the rights of children.
You are giving for the 50 percent of kids:
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Who have been denied their right to their mother and father.
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Who have experienced family breakdown.
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Who have been forced to do the hard emotional work of navigating adult decisions.
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Whose rights were sacrificed for adult fulfillment.
This Mother’s and Father’s Day, join us in putting them before us.
Why An #ANDnotOR Campaign?
In 2025, we have heard all the slogans.
“Love is love.”
“Love makes a family.”
“Kids just need two parents.”
These phrases sound kind. They sound compassionate. But they are not the truth. And when it comes to kids, truth matters more than feelings. At Them Before Us, we are not here to soothe adults. We are here to protect children. Every child has a right to their mother and father. That is not ideology. It is biology. It is backed by every major body of social science. And it is etched into the heart of every child who has ever wondered where their missing parent went.
When we ignore this truth, we do not just blur the lines. We redraw them in ways that wound kids.
So why do children need both their mother and their father?
“Most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.”
— Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs & Brookings Institution
Biology is not just about matching DNA. It is about identity. It is about belonging. It is about the foundational human question: Who am I? When children are raised by their biological mother and father, they do not have to wonder. They are not left searching. They grow up grounded in their own story—with access to their ancestry, their kin, their people.
But children who are adopted or conceived through sperm and egg donation? Many of them wrestle for years just to find the missing pieces:
- 72% of adoptees want to know why they were given up for adoption.
- 65% expressed a desire to meet their birth parent.
- 94% expressed the desire to know which birth parent they resemble most. – American Adoption Congress Survey
- 64% of donor-conceived adults agreed “My donor is half of who I am.”
- 78% agreed being donor-conceived was a significant part of their identity.
- 81% often wondered what personality traits, skills, and/or physical similarities they shared with their donor. – We Are Donor Conceived Survey
And the ache is not just intellectual. It is emotional. As Dr. Pat Fagan, a child psychologist with decades of experience noticed:
Throughout his thousands of sessions counseling hundreds of families, Fagan observed a universal dynamic. When children witnessed their own mother and father loving one another, they felt like their parents were loving them. In Fagan’s opinion, the mother-father bond is the only human relationship through which someone can experience love indirectly, a love felt exclusively by their child. – Them Before Us, Biology Matters, p27
That kind of love creates a security that no alternative arrangement can touch.
Michael, who was donor-conceived, puts it plainly:
I am eternally grateful for my life, God’s love shown to my mother in answering her prayer, and for all the miracles which had to take place for me to be alive and healthy today. My brother and I were born 3 months early at approximately 26 weeks gestation and weighed about 2 pounds each. However, being 28 years old now and having reflected extensively on growing up as a donor-conceived child of a single mother, I would not advise any other women or couples to conceive a child in this way.
I remember vividly longing for a father as I grew up. It was very specific at times, especially when I would see other children with loving, involved fathers and at other times it was more of a feeling of just knowing some piece was missing in my life.
He is not the exception. He is the evidence.
Men and women are not interchangeable. They are not identical. And thank God for that. Fathers and mothers offer different, necessary, complementary things to their children. And when one is absent, kids suffer in specific, predictable ways:
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Higher chances of delinquency and substance abuse
Yes, some children overcome these odds. But justice demands that we build our systems and our culture around what gives all children the best shot at thriving—not what works sometimes for some kids. And presence is not enough. Children benefit most when their mother and father are both involved and loving each other well. That is where deep emotional security takes root.
Consider Robert’s story:
I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home.
Kids need moms. Kids need dads. That is not discrimination. That is child protection.
Marriage is not just a private contract. It is a public institution—created for one reason above all: to unite children with their mother and father. It is not about validating adult desires. It is about securing child rights. A lifelong, exclusive union between a man and a woman gives children the best odds for stability, identity, and love. That is why societies everywhere have recognized and supported marriage. Not to hand out gold stars to couples, but to safeguard children. A just government’s interest in marriage is protecting children.
As explained in the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
At bottom, civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing.
With their ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land, yet these truths persist:
- Children are the natural product of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman.
- Both a father and mother are necessary and important for children.
- Marriage between one man and one woman is the best way to promote healthy families.
When marriage breaks down, kids often carry invisible scars. Check out these nine stories of children when they learned their parents’ marriage was over:
When I was 11 years old, I came home from Vacation Bible School, and my mother told me she was moving out and divorcing my dad. She knew that I was aware of her affairs. I felt dirty, like I was guilty by association. It made me incredibly insecure when anyone said I looked like her/reminded them of her. It alienated me from that side of my family. — Ava
I was 5 years old when my parents got divorced. To be honest, I don’t recall a moment they sat my sister and I down and told us. We just remember Dad being gone for months at a time before he came back into town and I started my visitation. – Chapman
This is the story of millions of kids who were forced to adapt to adult decisions they did not choose. So no, this is not about either mom or dad. It is not about either biology or love. It is not either or. It is both. Children need both. And we are going to keep telling the truth until every law, every policy, and every heart puts them before us.
This is the moment to choose children over culture.
From now until Father’s Day, our #ANDnotOR campaign is rallying every adult who believes children deserve better. When we fight for children to be raised by both their mother and father, we are not pushing an agenda. We are aligning with biology, backed by decades of social science, and listening to the silent cries of children who know exactly what they are missing.
This is your opportunity to join a movement that puts them before us. By becoming a monthly donor during #ANDnotOR, you are taking a stand for the millions of children who have been denied their birthright. And with 50 new monthly donors, we will unlock a $50,000 matching gift—meaning every new monthly gift triggers $1,000 toward restoring a child-centered culture.
Let’s make this season more than a celebration. Let’s make it a declaration that moms and dads matter. That children deserve both. That their rights will no longer be sacrificed on the altar of adult desire.