CHILDREN HAVE NEEDS

Despite what you’ve been told, children require more than just “love and safety.”

Children are wired for daily, ongoing connectivity with their mother and father and they are most likely to receive it when their parents are married. Marriage offers the most stability in a child’s home and the best chance that both parents will be permanently involved in their lives. Children born to cohabiting couples are 96% more likely to see their parents split by the time they are 12 compared to their peers with married parents. Research “increasingly shows that family instability undermines parents’ investments in their children, affecting the children’s cognitive and social emotional development in ways that constrain their life chances.”

Being raised in the home of their married mother and father gives children a biological connection with both parents who are, statistically, the people most likely to protect, provide for, and be permanently attached to their kids. It also gives children direct access to their heritage, genetic information, and generations of extended family. Biological connection is a foundational component of a child’s identity.

Children also need dual-gender influence. “Parenting” is a misnomer. There is only “mothering” and “fathering”, each of which bring unique, irreplaceable benefits to a child’s development. Women tend to focus on a child’s emotional well-being and attend to children’s immediate needs while men tend to emphasize discipline and risk-taking. Children need both contrasting, inherent traits. A dual-sex union also provides healthy male/female role modeling and establishes a template for their own future relationships.

Because of the stability, biological connection and male/female influence that marriage provides, children raised by their married parents are drastically less likely to live in poverty, become teen parents, have problems with the law, use drugs, be physically or sexually abused, and drop out of school. Research reveals that the place where kids are most likely to be “safe and loved” is in the home of their married mother and father. For children, that’s the the true “safe-space”.

Them Before Us believes that adults should sacrifice their desires in order to protect children’s needs.