Family Values

Common-Good Values, Part 4

It’s no secret: the family has become a pawn in a much larger cultural battle. Conservatives proudly wave the “family values” banner and point their fingers at the Left for destroying traditional families, while progressives commonly argue that conservatives are bigoted and out of step with the times. As the war rages back and forth, and ever more “alternative family structures” emerge, it’s easy to lose sight of the basic, common-sense truth:

The beginning of rebuilding a strong and healthy society starts with the natural family.

What is a“Natural Family?”

The term “natural family” has become something of a loaded term due to its use in conservative rhetoric. Yet the idea it expresses is not particularly difficult to comprehend: a natural family is a family based around the raising of children by their own biological parents. Or, to phrase it a little more colloquially, a natural family is what happens when “the people who make the baby take care of the baby.”

Of course, everyone—including conservatives—realizes that not every child will be able to be raised in this ideal situation. Questions about alternate family structures aside, there will always be orphans and children who were either unwanted or unsupportable. Tragic situations always arise. But that doesn’t change the underlying fact that barring extreme circumstances, it’s always best for children to be raised by their own biological parents.

Everyone, regardless of whether they support legal no-fault divorce or not, recognizes that it’s a tragedy when a family breaks up. Everyone, regardless of their stance on the LGBTQ+ movement should at least be able to agree that biological mothers and fathers are often the people who are most invested in raising their kids well. We know it doesn’t always happen and that circumstances sometimes don’t allow it, but the purpose of society should be to maximize the possibility for every child to be raised well by its own biological parents. Perhaps only the most fervent supporters of alternate family structures could seriously disagree with this policy goal.

The Need for Finding Common Ground

What this means is that, like it or not, the natural family is common ground. Nearly everyone agrees that a lifelong union of one man and one woman is at the very least a (if not the) good situation for children to grow up in. Nearly everyone feels happy when they see a mom and dad at the park playing with their children. Nearly everyone feels a sense of injustice when a mother puts her child up for adoption because she can’t afford it. Whereas there’s a lot of disagreement in our culture about non-traditional family structures, there is near-universal agreement that natural families are a good thing, that they promote the flourishing of society. And that means that society has an invested interest in making sure that the natural family receives maximum support in raising the next generation well.

This will likely be a tough pill for the Left to swallow. For so long the Left has been characterized by a fervent activism for LGBTQ+ interests that it will likely be difficult for progressives to recognize the need to support and defend the natural family. But the need is urgent; marriage rates are declining rapidly and single motherhood—usually accompanied by poverty—is skyrocketing. And with over 50% of American marriages eventually ending in divorce, most children in our society are coming out of a broken or non-existent family. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, this doesn’t look like an ideal situation.

But the Right isn’t guiltless either in this ongoing disaster. While the Conservative movement proudly boasts of supporting the natural family in the face of the non-traditional family structures promoted by the Left, the Right is often blind to the ways in which its own policies subtly undermine the family. For example—most Republicans support an economic structure that actively undermines private business ownership and entrepreneurship for the vast majority of people, opting instead to give nearly unlimited power to large businesses, nationwide franchises, and bloated LLCs. As we will discuss in an upcoming article, this economic structure is a major cause of financial insecurity in our country, and is a major barrier to escaping poverty. An economy in which a family requires two full-time salaries to support itself is not “pro-family” in any conceivable sense of the term. And as our article on the value of human life emphasized, the Right is often guilty of merely seeking to bring unborn children to birth and not providing any support for their upbringing. When it comes to defending and strengthening our families, both Left and Right have been doing a less-than-satisfactory job.

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There are many forces in our society that are undermining the resilience of the natural family. Some of these forces we’ve addressed in previous posts. In the upcoming articles in our series on common-good values, we will examine some other factors that are important in promoting a flourishing society in which every family will be able to support itself and thrive.