Whether you know it or not, you’re in a battle. The battle does not end. It doesn’t stop because you’re busy. I’ve heard it said, “If the devil can’t make you bad he’ll make you busy.”

Maybe you don’t have an hour to have a full-on Bible study with your son. But you can use these four ideas to intentionally disciple him — whether you have ten minutes or two hours. These four ideas are the framework you can use to maximize time with your boys. //

1. Listen: Build the Relationship

The point here is this: connect with your son.

2. Read: Get into God’s Word

Take a moment to read the Bible yourself. Don’t get hung up on which part of the Bible. Make notes about what is significant to you. Then, share your heart with your son. It’s okay not to have all of the answers. You are revealing another world to your child. It does not have to be long or elaborate. In fact, shorter is probably better.

3. Act: Apply the Word

This is the “so what” part. Maybe the verse you’re on is about behavior change. Maybe it’s about service or how to treat your neighbor. Do your best to apply truth in love.

Whenever possible live out what you read with your son.

4 Pray: Talk with God

Close time with your son with prayer, simply talking with God about what you’re learning and praying for, and with your son. Additionally, keeping a journal of prayer requests and seeing together the Lord answer can be a powerful means to see God work overtime.

So, what are the benefits of parenting? The most obvious are the emotional ones. These are hard to quantify, of course, but are certainly detectable in polling.

A new survey by the Institute for Family Studies, for example, found that mothers, particularly married mothers, are more likely than non-parents to report that they are “very happy.” Both married moms and unmarried moms were much more likely than women without children to report that their life has a “clear sense of purpose.” The survey’s authors concluded: “Despite the challenges associated with family life for women—including more stress and less time for oneself—there is no question that marriage and motherhood are linked to greater female flourishing on many other fronts.” Similarly, the regret rate for having children is remarkably low; very few people with children would not have had kids if they had the chance to do things over again. As psychologist Paul Bloom writes, “[t]he love we usually have toward our children means that our choice to have them has value above and beyond whatever effect they have on our happiness and meaning.” //

According to one study of 200,000 men and women in 86 countries, “mothers and fathers over 50 are generally happier than their childless peers, no matter how numerous their offspring.” In other words, children may be a long-term investment in happiness. Putting in the work to nurture a young baby pays off in middle and old age, as proud parents watch their adult children launch careers, have children of their own, and reunite around the family table for Thanksgiving.

At the margins, parenting can come with truly tremendous costs. In the book Better than OK: Finding Joy as a Special Needs Parent, Kelly Mantoan writes about the challenges of homeschooling five children, two of whom have a severe degenerative disorder that requires around-the-clock, hands-on care. Yet Mantoan writes that, through accepting her children’s diagnoses, “I am a stronger, more humble, sacrificial, and faith-filled person than I was before I started this journey.”. //

This is one of the most powerful paradoxes of parenting: the costs and the benefits are two sides of the same coin.

TheAmerican1
10 hours ago
When my son was little, at bedtime, I would scoop him up, throw him on my shoulders, run up the steps, and toss him into bed. We did this for years.

And then one day we stopped. I don't remember the specific date. I suppose it was a matter of him getting too big.

But that's a bittersweet part of parenting. The special things you do with your kids? One day, you won't. There won't be any fanfare. It'll just stop. And all you'll have are memories.

My son's an adult now, and he lives far from us. We see him a couple times a year. Would we like to see him more? Of course. But he's happy and doing well and, most importantly, living a proper life and contributing positively to society.

Not a day passes when one of us doesn't use one of his toddler words -- the unique phrasing or terms that kids delightfully create -- and, thank goodness, we live in an age when he's only a FaceTime call away. So, in a way, he's still with us.

There was an old Army commercial with this tagline: "It's the toughest job you'll ever love." I think that applies to parenting, too. No, it's not easy. It's not supposed to be. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

So, yes, if you are a parent of young ones, I know precisely what you're going through. But as they say, "The days are long, but the years fly by." Yeah, that's spot-on. If you're a parent, you know how difficult it can be. But before you know it, there's your kid turning into a young adult, walking across the stage, diploma in hand, going to college, becoming an adult...

Being a good father is the most important thing I'll ever do.

Because of Scheffler’s commitment to his household above all, his son will reap the emotional, educational, and financial benefits of growing up with his married biological father. As studies show, there is no greater, more impactful gift a dad can give his children. The result of successful, indispensable nuclear families like the Schefflers, in turn, leads to a strong and flourishing society.

Tax breaks and merely telling men that they need to step up can only do so much to help our nation’s family and fertility crisis. What young people need are real-life examples that money, career, and fame pale in comparison to raising little ones with your significant other.

When men in the spotlight lead well, the world follows by example. //

Scheffler is no sandbagger. He’s humble — his goal during the 2024 Paris Olympics, where he won gold, was to “have fun.” But he’s not making the world a better place because of his putting game or even his philosophical press conferences. The most significant mark Scheffler will leave on the world started at home with his decision to be a loving husband and present father.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released a video highlighting the huge win given to parents by the Supreme Court when they ruled in favor of the parents of children attending the Montgomery County school system, in the landmark case of Mahmoud v. Taylor.

Parents sued Montgomery County School Board Superintendent Thomas Taylor for introducing illustrated LGBT books into the children's curriculum without notifying parents. The school decided it didn't need to ask permission, resulting in the lawsuit that went all the way up to the highest court in the land, where it backed the parents and upheld their First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

Now the school must notify the parents before introducing these things, and parents have the option to opt their child out of the lesson.

McMahon said this "is not only a win for religious liberty, but parental rights." //

Moreover, it should be pointed out that Mahmoud v. Taylor was a 6-3 decision that was divided along ideological lines. That we'll have a Supreme Court that isn't ideologically tilted to the left is not guaranteed for the future, so what was decided today effectively needs to be codified into law.

Parental Oversight and Educational Transparency Act (H.R. 1416) is important for just this very reason. //

Too many school districts and even teachers with personal socio-political itches to scratch believe that your child is their sculpting clay and that their authority outweighs the parents when it comes to education. They are wrong about this.

But this is why H.R. 1416 is necessary.

I think too many public school educators and staff forgot that public schools are public institutions, not sovereign kingdoms where students — and even parents to a degree — are their subjects to be ruled over.

June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

That historic opinion recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” It also famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Sadly, despite that—and even now—many federal programs continue to encroach on parental rights. //

....

These federal programs violate parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and health care. The government should help—not hinder—loving parents in fulfilling their “high duty.” Including parents helps. Keeping secrets hinders. //

Fortunately, Congress has the authority—and the opportunity—to protect parental rights from federal government overreach by passing the Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act.

This act recognizes that parents’ fundamental rights are entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection. It requires courts to apply the proper standard of judicial review—“strict scrutiny”—to federal violations of parental rights.

This is the same standard the Supreme Court has applied to safeguard other fundamental rights—like free speech and free exercise of religion. Congress is well within its constitutional authority to ensure that federal programs properly respect parental authority. ///

Therefore... School choice!?

The culture has shifted, and it can be hard to go against the tide. However, we need people who go into the trades far more than we need college graduates. I think a revitalized America will rely far more on plumbers, electricians, and farmers rather than degreed people who can still barely tie their shoes, but can write 5,000 words on intersectionality during a two-minute commercial break. With that, I wanted to direct you to a website that I have been reading for about three years. This is a wonderful place to go, and it's full of podcasts, articles, skill-generating how-to's, and graphic novel-type illustrations that have a taste from the ol' Wayback Machine. I love it.

The Art of Manliness is not a hangout for misogynists or chauvinists, as it might sound to some, but rather a place that teaches skills, practices, and thought processes for men. Men of any age. And it's certainly not exclusive to men, because women would benefit from learning how to perform a snappy J-Turn as much as any of us who might need to get out of trouble fast. But if you want to learn how to build a campfire with one match or understand parenting styles that work, this site is a great resource. Want to know how to wear a polo without looking like a drip? Art of Manliness. Land a plane in an emergency? Art of Manliness. Develop the savoir-faire of James Bond? You guessed it....

https://www.artofmanliness.com/

https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-perform-a-j-turn/

https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-light-a-fire-with-just-one-match/

https://www.artofmanliness.com/style/clothing/how-to-wear-a-polo-shirt-without-looking-like-a-middle-manager/

https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/good-life-method/

Knowing how to tie a tie is one of the most essential skills a man must know.

No.1 Predictor of successful children -- seeing their father loving his mother

The answer to humanity’s civilizational crisis isn’t the multiplication of fatherless children; the solution is men who are truly willing to be fathers. //

Musk reduces fatherhood to passing along his genes and putting food on the table. He’s not alone in this. Forty percent of babies in the United States are born out of wedlock, and there are plenty of non-billionaire absentee dads. But a father isn’t just a DNA-donor and bring-home-the-bacon sort of person. A father is supposed to be a man-of-the-house, hug-crying-kids-in-the-middle-of-the-night, beat-the-tar-out-of-anyone-who-tries-to-hurt-you sort of person. //

When a baby comes into the world, he can do little aside from crying, and the father should often be near enough to hear those cries — even though the mother is the primary caretaker and the father will likely spend long hours away at work. A father should change his babies’ diapers and know his kids’ quirks and witness their day-to-day triumphs and temper tantrums.

Children should be able to yell, “Dad!” far too loudly and dramatically for whatever the problem is and not be met with silence or their mother telling them that Dad isn’t here, again. They should be able to watch their dad shave, kiss their mother, use sarcasm, and even engage in other less exemplary behaviors (like playing video games all night, for example) on a regular basis. It’s fun and heart-warming to see Musk trot the globe with X and other offspring in tow, but trips to the Oval Office don’t make up for perennial absence. //

But Musk misunderstands human nature and human capital. Humans are spiritual beings with emotions and a will — not mere “boot loaders” for an omniscient AI chatbot. His children need to be trained and mentored, not just handed the gift of intelligence and told, “Have fun saving humanity, kids.” And to the degree that Musk’s intelligence is heritable, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. The key input is Musk himself, not his genetics, and Musk isn’t scalable in the way his genes are.

Without his personal involvement as a father, Musk’s children could just as easily become evil geniuses as saviors of civilization. More important, children aren’t simply units of production in the war to save humanity, or at least, they shouldn’t be. Not to dads. Yes, they will fight the state’s wars, pay its taxes, and sustain its existence. But to fathers, children should mean much, much more. I know numerous fathers — true force multipliers — who are having lots of children within the confines of marriage and doing much to save humanity. But for them, rescuing civilization is a byproduct; the children are an end in themselves. Despite his civilizational aspirations, Musk doesn’t seem to go as far as viewing his children as mere units. But he comes close, and he could learn much from these men.

Along with other right-wing influencers and writers, Keeperman offered his thoughts on family formation and human fertility. Yet, unlike other speakers who discussed remedies for encouraging people to have more children, Keeperman took a different approach by declaring from the outset: “I’m going to explain why this conference should be disbanded as soon as possible.”

Far from dismissing the very real problem of depopulation, Keeperman thinks about it more than most people, but has concluded that this is one of those cases where less is more. As he puts it, people “need to care a lot less about their kids” and should stop calling themselves “pro-natalists.”

His first point warrants elaboration since most non-parents usually miss it. For several generations now, parents are expected to devote ever more of their time and attention to their children for the purpose of guaranteeing their material success, boosting their self-esteem, and conforming to an artificial standard projected by mass media. This means following all the new parental trends, seeking out the best schooling options, blocking out harmful influences, spending endless time bonding, and sparing no expense to keep their children happy and entertained.

Keeperman notes how these additional parenting burdens have made having more than one or two children far too onerous: “When parenting is redefined from an obsessive, resource-intensive exercise in micromanagement and resume-building to something much more hands-off and organic, each child no longer represents an exponential increase in parental workload and anxiety.”. //

For his part, Keeperman rightly sees the bigger problem with both views, which is that they make raising kids much more stressful and thus much less appealing. Hence, he admonishes his audience: “Don’t do this [over-parenting]. Stay as far away from this as possible. Actively reject this. Your kids don’t want this. It will not help them. You don’t want this. It is completely and utterly the wrong approach to parenting.”. //

After all, no normal person has children for the good of the country or to own the libs, nor should they. Rather, they should have children out of love. As Peachy Keenan said in her own excellent speech at the Natal Conference, “any healthy natalism movement must be about more than numbers and technology. It has to be about, simply, maternal love. We should do it for their babies, for our babies, out of infinite love for them.”

And for that infinite love to fully emerge, prospective parents need to distance themselves from the pressures to over-parent as well as disengage from the natalist debates. To do this, they need limit their exposure to the incessant chatter of digital media so that they can rediscover their natural impulses to pair up, procreate, and raise children. There is little need to complicate it, and much to lose from making the effort.

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Elon Musk reposted
More Births
@MoreBirths
A Pronatal Culture is the Clearest Path to Solving the Birthrate Crisis
Many worry that we won't be able to solve the low fertility crisis without terrible costs on society. Some fear women will lose access to birth control and abortion, like in Ceaușescu's Romania.Ceau Others imagine a religious theocracy as in The Handmaids Tale.
A slightly better possibility is the Scandinavian model, where significant sums are spent on subsidies for children. That's not a bad idea. But it seems to take big spending for only modest increases in fertility. Norway, Sweden and Finland all have a fertility rate below 1.5 anyway.
There is a way to solve the fertility crisis that is compatible with reproductive choice, reasonable government spending and a broadly freedom-oriented society. What is that? A society that priorities having children as one of the highest values.
Don't all societies do that? No, it's actually pretty rare in the modern world. Israel and Mongolia are two examples of countries that achieve healthy birthrates through a directly pronatal culture.
In December I wrote "Understanding High Israeli Fertility" about the only rich country with above-replacement fertility.
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1870911221630685465
In August I wrote, "Elevating the Status of Motherhood Solves Low Birthrates" about how Mongolia achieves triple the fertility of its neighbors with the help of national celebrations of motherhood. (The top image shows a Mongolian mother of four receiving the Order of Maternal Glory award, at the presidential palace in Ulaanbaatar.)
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1827418468813017441
That thread went viral thanks to @ElonMusk.
Both of these countries solve the fertility crisis in the most straightforward way possible. The fact that society needs more children is communicated openly and sincerely, over many years so that everyone in society understands. Having children became not just a personal choice but a national cause.
Building society-wide pronatal belief may not be easy. But that has to be the foundation of any successful pronatal strategy.
What is so great about having children as a national goal? A lot of things:
(1) It is honest about what society needs from people.
Society needs children and will fall apart without them. Most countries aren't willing to openly say it, but nations that do say it, and have a sense of national identity, can see profound results. //

Having children may bring happiness to adults, but so can fine dining and travel to beautiful places. Why should someone choose the first one which is hard instead of the latter two, which are easy? Are we willing to make the ask, to say we need people to have more children?

(2) A pronatal culture makes parenthood and especially motherhood higher status. //

(6) A pronatal culture solves fertility simply, mainly by getting existing parents to have more kids!
One the few examples of a country that went from below replacement fertility to above is Kazakhstan, whose TFR went from 1.8 in 2000 to 3.0 today. It did it much like Mongolia did, by celebrating motherhood and directly urging people to have more children for a brighter future.
What happened in Kazakhstan? First order births hardly changed but third, fourth and fifth+ births rocketed upward.

This has to be the easiest solution! People who aren't ready for kids don't have to have them. Those who already have kids just choose to have more!
Guess what: That is also how the Patriarch of Georgia got his country to raise its birthrate, by persuading parents to have more.

My friend Bridget Phetasy recently replied to this highly accurate meme on X, and it made me laugh.

Possibly drunk, I felt compelled to respond.

Challenge accepted.

I had my assignment.

I’d write about all the ways my wife and I could raise our two kids Gen X and how in the end it would be really good for them for reasons of confidence, self-reliance and proper taste in music.

Then a funny thing happened.

As I started thinking about how we could raise our kids Gen X, I realized … WE ALREADY WERE.

Every time I thought of a funny or real Gen X thing, it was like, oh hey what, we’re doing that. Obviously, it’s not 1988, and we’re not checking every single Gen X box, but, come on, our third graders already have very strong opinions about Full House.

Now … I know what some of you are thinking.

You might say it reflects poorly upon me not to have a parenting strategy of which I am even conscious at all.

My response is that it is the most Gen X thing possible to not even have a parenting strategy.

Oh, you’re a Tiger Parent? I’m a Keep My Kids Alive and Teach Them Not to Be A Chucklehead Parent, nice to meet you. Yes, I was born between 1965 and 1980. How could you tell?

Without even ever discussing it, my wife Jen (a standard issue Gen-X name if there ever was one) and I are teaching our children The Old Ways. //

By today’s standards, our childhood was basically a series of OSHA violations. We ate too many Pop-Tarts, rode in the back of station wagons without seatbelts, lived in constant fear of being kidnapped by a creepy guy in a white van named Lester and got most of our hydration and immunity from garden hoses. But we also learned how to exist without constant supervision, how to entertain ourselves without a screen, how to handle differences of opinion away from adults and how to venture forth from the house without a subcutaneous GPS chip.

The Old Ways are the good ways.

With any luck, one day my kids will grow up, roll their eyes at the next generation, and mutter, they’re the worst. //

A Gen-X sibling who had sisters and a single landline will be the one who brings peace to the Middle East.

This book contains 7 easy ways to motivate someone with Asperger's to do daily tasks and take charge of their own life... without arguing, manipulation or stress. It's a quick, actionable read that is based in our own experiences of living & growing up being diagnosed with Asperger's and contains tools, communication strategies and step-by-step advice you can put to work immediately.

Red-Line motivation is by far the most commonly used kind of motivation out there. A Red-Line Motivator’s go-to question is, “What can I do, give, or take away that will produce a result (a change in behavior) now?” Red-Liners love carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments; it’s all about control.

If a Red-Liner wants you to do something, then they will find the sweetest carrot they are willing to give and dangle it in front of you until you start chasing after it (money, video games, love and acceptance, etc.) Alternatively, they will find the scariest punishment they can and throw it at you until you move (losing privileges, yelling, withholding love and affection, etc.) They will bribe, manipulate, control, and coerce you to try to get you to do what they want.

Basically, Red-Liners seek to reduce human motivation to its most basic elements. They assume that people avoid pain and effort, and that they will only work hard if moved upon by an outside force or a biological urge (hunger, sleep, sex, etc.) Red-Liners see human beings as little more than animals responding to stimuli. Trained rats in a cage will press a lever over and over if you give them food. A yappy dog with a shock collar can be conditioned to stop barking. Similarly, a Red-Liner believes that you can motivate humans by tapping into that same desire to avoid pain and seek out pleasure. //

Psychologists have known for nearly a century that people will respond to the right rewards and punishments (they call it conditioning). Meanwhile, kings and rulers have understood this basic truth for millennia. You have to admit, it’s a rather elegant idea. If you want more of a particular behavior, reward it. If you want less, punish it.

However, nowadays we have decades of scientific research showing that the carrot-and-stick philosophy we hold dear actually has quite a few holes. Parents, teachers, and managers are gradually discovering that people, particularly people with Asperger’s, don’t always respond to external influences in the ways we would hope or expect. //

In a classic 1978 study, three psychologists investigated and measured the happiness levels of paraplegics and lottery winners. They found that less than a year after experiencing one of these life-changing events both the lottery winners and the paraplegics had mostly returned to their baseline levels of happiness. We would normally expect lottery winners to be much happier than regular folks. However, they were, on average, only slightly happier. Similarly, the paraplegics were only slightly less happy than others. For the most part, they were just as content with life as they had been before that fateful tragedy befell them.

Human beings are truly incredible at adapting to almost anything. Given enough time, both positive and negative changes in our lives can quickly become our new “normal.” When this happens they no longer have a significant impact on our day-to-day emotions. Scientists call this phenomenon hedonic adaptation. It crops up everywhere. //

The more Margaret uses this Red-Line approach, the more Johnny goes into Defense Mode and lives in a state of fear. He’s shut down and angry. Any semblance of trust or mutual understanding in their relationship has been destroyed. In fact, he might even start missing school just to assert his independence and regain a feeling of control.

As shown in the Red-Line graph, each new attempt to motivate will produce fewer results, and, in the long-term, will continually require a sweeter carrot or a scarier stick in order to maintain its original effectiveness. //

Contrary to what we would expect, introducing an expectation with a contingent reward attached actually decreased the rewarded behavior instead of increasing it. Why? Because human beings are incredibly adaptive. When this new drawing experience taught the children that drawing a picture=compensation, they got the message loud and clear. The children used to draw because they enjoyed it for its own sake (intrinsic motivation). Now they will only draw if they’re expecting to receive some kind of reward. //

What does hedonic adaptation have to do with motivation? Well, it means that any reward or punishment consistently used to motivate your child will quickly be adapted to and thus rendered ineffective. //

Choosing to use Red-Line carrots, sticks, and other if/then methods of motivation is not inherently bad and wrong, nor is it always good and right. Red-Line is simply a tool that is uniquely suited for specific kinds of situations.

A hammer is great if you need to drive a nail into wood. It’s less than ideal if you’re trying to perform surgery. The problems arise when you encounter a situation that requires a tool, you look into your toolbox, and you discover nothing but a single, lonely hammer. You’ll probably end up using the hammer because, after all, it’s better than nothing, right? //

Blue-Line Motivation is all about holistic influence. This means that a Blue-Liner recognizes people as whole, complex human beings who are often intrinsically motivated. They know that people are so much more than animals that simply avoid pain and seek out pleasure.

A Blue-Liner will tap into this innate drive by approaching people and situations from a place of trust and love. They sincerely believe you can and will make good choices for yourself and others. They assume that you’re not necessarily unmotivated. Rather, they are open to the possibility that you might just be scared, stressed, missing resources, or lacking understanding, etc. A Blue-Liner will not try to “force” things to happen, or control you from the outside with carrots and sticks. They will work with and catalyze the natural, intrinsic motivation processes that already exist inside you and within the situation.

However, the Blue-Line path comes with one costly trade-off. A Blue-Liner will need to put in most of the work on the front end, and they will see few (if any) results for the first while. That’s just how the organic process of intrinsic motivation works. Blue-Liners are 100% okay with that because they understand that once you hit the tipping point (i.e. the point where you’re intrinsically motivated and you truly choose it for yourself), then the whole system will become largely self-sustaining.

Blue-Line is essentially the opposite of Red-Line. As more time passes Red-Line requires more and more work, whereas Blue-Line requires less and less. In the end, both approaches to motivation require work and effort. There’s no getting around that. The trap of Red Line is that it looks so easy in the beginning, while it’s actually the more difficult out of the two. The work is still there, it’s just hidden. A Red-liner will undoubtedly find more and more of it as time passes and they slide further down the slope. They have to keep working endlessly and putting in more effort as they attempt to produce the same result. Blue-Line motivation, on the other hand, can get to a point where the parent (or teacher, therapist, whomever) can step back and watch their child soar. //

When you’re looking to cultivate the “Blue,” intrinsic, self-sustaining kind of motivation, then there’s three key ingredients you need. They are as follows:

• Capability
• Belief
• Desire

//

A Red-Liner is a like a carpenter using their tools to shape, manipulate, and polish an inanimate block of wood in order to produce a specific result. A Blue-Liner is more like a gardener, using their tools to adapt the environment and add the necessary resources in order to give the living plant what it needs to grow and flourish on its own.

Catherine Pakaluk and Emily Reynolds’ new book, ‘Hannah’s Children,’ studies mothers of large families and concludes they may hold the key for solving many societal ills. //

While there is much to be said about the particular reasons people choose to have large families, Pakaluk writes that there is one beautiful commonality among these women:

I suppose it boils down to some sort of deeply held thing, possibly from childhood — a platinum conviction — that the capacity to conceive children, to receive them into my arms, to take them home, to dwell with them in love, to sacrifice for them as they grow, and to delight in them as the Lord delights in us, that that thing, call it motherhood, call it childbearing, that that thing is the most worthwhile thing in the world — the most perfect thing I am capable of doing.

Hannah
Pakaluk opens with the story of Hannah, a woman from a Reformed Jewish background whose search for meaning led her ultimately to procreation and the proliferation of family through child-bearing, what she called “this key to infinity.” At the time of her interview, Hannah had seven children, and described her choice to have a large family as a “deliberate rejection of an autonomous, customized, self-regarding lifestyle in favor of a way of life intentionally limited by the demands of motherhood.” //

The modern challenge to traditional and cohesive family roles has absolutely impacted family growth patterns, the book argues, and will likely continue to do so. And the declining population will impact future workforces, infrastructure, and entitlement programs far beyond basic demography.

“The political and economic consequences of these trends cannot be overstated,” Pakaluk writes. “Birth rates are falling because of tradeoffs women and households are making — tradeoffs between children and other things that they value.”

‘Home Alone’ isn’t just a funny Christmas movie. It displays a mother’s transformation from selfish, absentee parent to devoted loving mother.

Be A Man

Nick Freitas
Playlist
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9 videos
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• What They Don’t Tell Fathers About Raising Sons
• Three Things I Learned Raising Daughters
• Why Dads Should Be Dangerous
• Should You Get Married Young?
• What Every Son Needs To Hear From His Father

Florida has long been the most prominent battleground in the ongoing struggle between the rights of parents and the elitists who wish to violate them.

The latest skirmish in this war centers on HB 1069 which, among other things, gives parents and taxpayers more of a say in which books and materials are made available in public school libraries. //

The law empowers parents to raise objections to certain types of material. These objections would be taken into account by the district, which will work with the community to decide whether the content will be removed, restricted, or allowed.

This has nothing to do with censorship, as folks on the left contend. It has everything to do with parents being able to decide what their children are learning in the schools they fund through taxes. It is a process through which local communities have a stronger voice in what their children are seeing and consuming in the state’s educational institutions.

For most people, this concept is a no-brainer. Parents are the ones responsible for raising their children. Moreover, schools are funded using money taken from parents in the form of taxes. Why shouldn’t they have more of a say in what schools are teaching their children? //

The suit complains that Florida’s law requires books to be removed without consulting “trained professionals, such as teachers or media specialists.”

The notion that only governmental and corporate “experts” should decide what books are appropriate for school libraries smacks of elitism. This perspective implies that only our betters are equipped to know what our children should and should not be learning in class. //

The plaintiffs cannot win this lawsuit. It is not just about books. It is about parental rights. Corporate and governmental interests should not supersede the rights of parents to determine how their children are raised and educated just because there are some folks who want small children to view sexually explicit content.

A lot is said about what a good father is. He's strong, present, tough but fair. All of these are good qualities to have, but one that is ignored in today's society, or denounced once identified, is one you don't often hear about.

Indifference to worldly pressures. //

Brandon Morse @TheBrandonMorse
·
This is fantastic.
At the end of the day, the demand to validate lifestyles of others is going to fall flat on the ears of a father that loves his children, because it's a father's job to stand between his children and danger. Rage and cancel all you want, but a good father… Show more
Nickmercs @NICKMERCS
Stay true to your beliefs
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4:24 PM · Sep 10, 2024

This indifference to the world's demands is fueled entirely by his love for his child.

This quality is often the most frustrating thing to the world. Fathers are belittled, disregarded, called "toxic," and hated for what I believe is this often unspoken quality.

Getting to the child is very difficult with a father standing in the way saying "no."

If they can't get to the child, they'll go after the father. They'll try to shame him, pressure him, threaten him, and make him into a pariah. Yet it's the father's duty to stay strong, shrug, and not budge. It's his job to be indifferent to the demands made upon him and his child. His job isn't just to protect the home physically, it's to protect the home's heart as well. //

It can be overwhelming, but sometimes the father must stand up amid all that and say "no, not in my house." He has to reject the pressure on behalf of his family and take on the responsibility of being that wall. You'll often hear this referred to as despotism in the home, but really, it's a father having a calming influence in the lives of his family members, keeping them from sinking into a mire of confusion and harm.

Fathers are built for the fight, but oftentimes the fight isn't physical or forceful. It's calm, quiet, and immovable. It's shrugging at an angry and demanding world, and softly telling it to move on.

Because that's what fathers are built to do. They hold the fort. Their defend the bridge. They protect the home.