This is the tragedy most families never see: a blessing delayed is often a blessing lost.

Money doesn’t carry the same power in every decade. Most families give it at the stage of life when it accomplishes the least. A dollar at 25 can change a destiny. A dollar at 55 barely moves the needle. //

Then there’s the confusion between “spoiling” and “equipping.” Spoiling is Cancun trips and Teslas for teenagers. Equipping is a down payment, cleared debt, or tools that create stability and responsibility. One creates softness; the other creates potential.

This fear sits beneath almost every hesitation. But money doesn’t create character; it exposes it. It amplifies what is already there. A grateful child grows with it. A disciplined child multiplies it. A foolish child reveals his foolishness, but at an age when the mistakes are still recoverable.

The danger isn’t giving. The danger is giving without guidance or waiting until bad habits have hardened. A young adult will waste less and learn far more with $10,000 at 23 than with $200,000 at 45. Early mistakes are small; late mistakes are catastrophic. What ruins a child isn’t generosity; it is handing real power to an undiscipled heart and walking away. //

Money needs structure, expectations, and accountability. Like fire, it warms the house when it is controlled, and it burns the whole thing down when it is not.

Because money is powerful, it must match the child you are actually raising, not some idea of fairness. Equal giving is not wisdom. Wise giving is. Some children can handle more. Some need guardrails. Some need coaching before capital. Some need smaller steps. Your job is not to divide everything evenly; it is to be a good steward of all that you have been blessed with.

And here is what most parents miss: by the time your child is 25, your authority is basically gone, but your influence is not. You cannot command an adult to avoid foolish debt, but you can position them to avoid it. You cannot force stability, but you can create the margin that makes stability possible.

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@VP get's emotional talking about the kind of Husband and Father Charlie Kirk was.

He is going to honor Charlie by being the "best husband he can be."

"The best way that I can honor my dear friend, is to...be the kind of husband to my wife that he was to his." 🙏

4:37 PM · Sep 15, 2025. //

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Charlie Kirk said The MOST important thing you could do, if you’re a young man, is to become a husband & father.

"He talked about the joy that came from fatherhood, the joy that came from raising a family and being part of their growth."

Charlie Kirk was a very wise man.

4:39 PM · Sep 15, 2025

And so, after a long wander looking for an “ism” to explain what’s wrong with her love life, in the final paragraph, she turns to the words of a friend: “’The old way of mating is dead,’ said my friend at our colloquy of female complaint over dinner, ‘and the new one has yet to be born.'”

Garnett and her friend believe this may give some comfort in their relational wasteland, but in truth, the old ways are alive. Plenty of people still get married and remain happily and faithfully married. But she is right that the old ways are not alive for everyone — not for as many people as they should be. And that’s the big picture explanation that Garnett struggled to identify.

Garnett’s present unhappiness is a result of the ideology and behaviors she has promoted. The immediate cause of her unhappiness is that she’s a middle-aged woman hooking up with noncommittal men. The more comprehensive cause is the culture she has marinated in and furthered. She obviously yearns for the “old-fashioned man-woman stuff” she wants to dismiss. And she should — she was made for it. But our culture encourages people to give their bodies quickly and their hearts slowly, if at all. This divides the person and precludes genuine love, which requires the gift of the whole self. This is why Christian sexual morality — and the marital sexual exclusivity it requires — is not a killjoy. Rather, it is a protector and promoter of human well-being. It directs us toward our good and the good of others.

Zhang operated a surrogacy agency called Mark Surrogacy from their mansion. The agency purportedly marketed itself as an institution assisting American and international couples struggling to conceive through surrogacy. However, investigations revealed a startling truth: The only couple the agency served was Zhang and Xuan themselves. They are the biological parents of 21 children born through surrogacy. Of these children, fifteen lived with them in the mansion under the care of a few nannies, while friends and family supposedly looked after the other six in different locations. //

It is crucial to highlight that Xuan must be a member of the CCP to serve on the People’s Congress. U.S. immigration law prohibits immigrants with “membership in or affiliation with the Communist or any other totalitarian party” from becoming naturalized citizens. Thus, it is curious how Xuan, a high-ranking CCP member linked to genocide in Xinjiang, was able to obtain U.S. citizenship. //

In addition to concerns about immigration, Xuan and Zhang’s case highlights the ethical, legal, and moral dilemmas surrounding the commercial surrogacy industry, which has turned a deeply human experience into a commodity. As one research paper concludes, “Surrogacy degrades a pregnancy to a service and a baby to a product.” //

Surrogacy is illegal in many countries, including China, but the United States has no federal restrictions. Commercial surrogacy is legal in most states, including California. This legal landscape, along with birthright citizenship, makes the U.S. a popular destination for international surrogacy, attracting foreign couples who seek American women to help fulfill their dreams of parenthood. //

Those who advocate for immoral policies such as unchecked immigration or the commodification of women’s bodies should understand that horrifying stories like this are what happens when we take these policies to their logical end, and that cases like Zhang and Xuan will only become more common.

The reason for asking the civil government to proclaim the goodness of traditional family life is not because men and women in marital covenant wish to become a special interest group. Rather, the official acknowledgement of the traditional family’s goodness is proper because one of the government’s most basic duties is to promote virtue. Challenging the county commission to honor this role offered them the opportunity to proclaim truth amidst a backdrop of other governments, businesses, and institutions promoting vice.

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.

children need to be nourished by three socio/emotional staples as they grow: Mother’s love, Father’s love, and stability. //

We are raising a generation of children who are experiencing family breakdown on a mass scale, not due to tragedy but because of adult intentionality. Adult desire, identity, feelings, and romantic pursuits have been elevated above the fundamental right of children to be known and loved by their own mother and father. Some of these kids will recognize that brokenness and work to reverse it. Many will be so damaged they will perpetuate the cycle in their personal lives … or their professional lives.

A one-time payout of $5,000 — an amount that wouldn’t even cover the cost of one of my births — isn’t a life raft, but a pat on the head as families struggle to stay afloat amid rising costs, child-care shortages and a culture that undervalues parenthood.

American families don’t need a flashy push present. We need durable policy change.

We need tax reform rooted in research, reflecting the real needs of modern mothers and fathers, and support that empowers families to dream bigger, not just survive.

Several Republicans on Capitol Hill are thinking deeply about how to ease that burden. //

Moore’s Family First Act, for example, won’t solve the whole problem, but it sends the right message: families matter.

As Moore told me, “Moving toward a pro-family culture will require considering both immediate incentives and lasting policy change.”. //

Which brings me to a moment last week, halfway around the world, that somehow felt very close to home: Vice President JD Vance‘s X post of a perfectly imperfect photo of himself, his wife Usha and their squirming, squinting children on their official trip to India.

The caption? “With three little kids staring into the sun, this was actually the best photo we got at the Taj Mahal today” — followed by a laughing emoji.

That’s the kind of positive, pro-family image Americans need to see more of: messy, real and beautiful.

People often look at countries like Liberia and focus on the trauma of war, the chaos, the displacement. But here’s what I see: our government does the same thing in America when it tears families apart. The trauma may not be caused by civil war, but the suffering is eerily similar.

The child welfare system uses its power to forcibly remove children from their parents, just like I was separated from my siblings. These children are often placed with strangers, stripped from their community, their culture, and everything they know. Siblings are split up. Families are erased. And all of it is done in the name of safety.

Let’s be honest. This isn’t safety. It’s state-sanctioned separation. And it’s causing a level of trauma that mirrors the effects of war.

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.

Black people aren't inherently violent, but they do have an overwhelming amount of fatherlessness in their communities. With a father-shaped negative space in so many lives, it shouldn't be any wonder why so many in the black community are destabilized, and thus destabilizing everything around them.

This is a cultural matter for the black community that's only reinforced with government rewards. Welfare even goes so far as to disincentivize marriage by reducing benefits if there is a father present, effectively making it more lucrative to be a single mother. It should be the opposite. Tax benefits should be given to rewarding nuclear families.

Moreover, in our greater cultural zeitgeist, fathers are considered an afterthought, or unnecessary altogether. It's pretty clear that this has been severely damaging to society overall, but it's been particularly hard on the black community. Fathers should be looked at as integral. The presence of a masculine figure and the effect they can have on a young life should be seen as essential.

I'm not entirely sure how things change without changes to how we reward and encourage fatherlessness. Until we do differently, the black community will continue to be plagued with violence and crime, especially toward each other. //

justpaul
2 hours ago

There's a common thread here that isn't being addressed, and that's the lack of masculine influence. In other words, the black community is plagued with fatherless homes. According to the Census Bureau, in 2023, 54 percent of black children live with a mother only.

I think you forgot an important word there, that being the word 'positive'. Young "Black" men are awash in masculine influence, but most of it comes from very negative sources. And that may well be due to a lack of fathers in their homes. But we shouldn't pretend that Karmelo Anthony wasn't being exactly the kind of masculine man his upbringing taught him and so many others like him to be. Modern "Black" culture admires and aspires to thug life, and having Dad around doesn't help when he's a thug too. //

C. S. P. Schofield
2 hours ago
Through the 19th century, successive waves of poor ethnic immigrants climbed out of the slums, through family cohesion and education. Irish, German, etc. all managed it. Blacks were held back by being more obvious even than readheaded Irish. But they made progress, especially once some of their culture started to be embraced during the Jazz Age. Progress was slow, for a variety of reasons, but it was there.

And then in the mid 1960’s Progressive policies devastated the Black family and destroyed the public school systems.

I’m not insisting that it’s deliberate. But if it isn’t, it’s hard to see how it could have been made intentionally worse.

Maybe Luna genuinely does have strong convictions on being “pro-family” and ensuring parents are present in their children’s lives. But those convictions do not change the fact that being a member of Congress is not a part-time gig, and in no way should the House change its rules to accommodate members who fail to understand that.

What Luna clearly doesn’t comprehend in her push for proxy voting is that she’s a proxy tasked with voting on behalf of the people who elected her. It’s her sworn obligation to be there for House activities and act in accordance with her voters’ interests.

Like any individual who runs for public office, Luna took an oath to represent her constituents on a full-time basis. That means showing up for votes, committee hearings, and any other actions related to the obligations she agreed to.

If the congresswoman or other representatives want to be an active presence in raising their children, then they should abdicate their seats to people their voters can count on to represent them in Congress. They can’t have it both ways.

Baby showers are a way culture and churches bestow value and honor to mothers and infants, unborn children, and growing families.

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.

As reported by The Federalist's Elle Purnell, there's a movement arising of individuals all over the country who are choosing to forego gathering with loved ones around the Holiday season and choosing, instead, to focus on themselves by giving them a self-care day: //

To be clear, there was no explicit socio-political reason given. It was just the stress of doing things that focus on arranging, scheduling, and being with others. The thing is, modernity and all the ideals and trends that come with it are primarily leftist, as modernity is driven by corporate tastemakers and slacktivists.

And if there's one thing leftism promotes, it's isolation.

Ideological isolation is one of leftism's biggest demands. You cannot think thoughts outside the body politic, you can't ask questions that would challenge approved ideals, and if anyone breaks from the approved boundaries they must be ejected. You must close off your mind to anything outside the boundaries. //

The "do what feels good" approach to life has contributed to an inordinate amount of people obsessed with their mental health, as anything that doesn't feel good becomes a stressor, and stress is a sin in the modern world. Stress-reduction is a billion-dollar industry, and I'm not just talking about the pharmaceuticals that promise to reduce it. Therapies of all varieties have sprung up, all of which promise to reduce your stress.

All of this has created a culture of "me," and people are willing to abandon loved ones and go into isolation in the false hope that it will relieve their stress and improve their "mental health."

If you peel it all back, you'll see the self-care industry is just that — an industry. Corporations love for you to spend time and money buying things to help you focus on yourself. As I said, it's a billion-dollar industry, but ultimately, this is harmful to the mind and soul. Isolation is not healthy. //

People who are lonely are also more susceptible to illness. Researchers found that a lonely person's immune system responds differently to fighting viruses, making them more likely to develop an illness.

Selfishness is literally unhealthy, both mentally and physically.

Family matters, friends are a lifeline, and isolation due to it being a kind of stressful to travel or deal with relatives is not doing yourself any favors.

But they're missing something very important about the original Snow White. In fact, they're missing what I would consider to be such an important part of femininity overall.

The 1937 Snow White didn't lift a finger to fight. She didn’t have to. Her purity and goodness were worth fighting for and protecting, which is why a group of normally peaceful dwarves picked up their weapons and went to chase after the evil queen at the end.

I don’t know if you recall this moment from the original movie, but it’s still a heart-wrenching, intense, and oddly beautiful moment. When this movie was first released in theaters, people were really overcome here. There were people crying in the theaters when the apple fell from Snow White’s hand, because they truly thought she’d died.

At that moment, the audience was the dwarves. They wanted to bring the evil queen to justice. We wanted to pick up weapons and ride out in the name of punishing evil and preserving that beauty and kindness that had touched our lives. Ultimately, that evil was struck down by God Himself. To this day, the entirety of the pursuit sequence holds up as an incredibly dynamic moment.

But the dwarves served a much deeper purpose here. We were the dwarves. All of us. We were messy, grumpy, dopey, and unrefined, but when true goodness and beauty come into our lives, it changes us for the better.

We relate to the dwarves on a personal level, and defending the beauty in our lives, even if violently, is worth doing.

Even after this sequence, a very interesting phrase pops up on the screen before it cuts to her in her golden coffin, with all creation, including the dwarves, paying homage to this beautiful, kind woman.

"So beautiful, even in death, that the dwarfs could not find it in their hearts to bury her."

She was inspiring them even after she died. That was the effect she had on them. You're going to tell me that this isn't a power of its own? To be so life-changing that the people who knew you didn't want to let you go? Taken spiritually, you really begin to see the importance of what Snow White actually represented.

Snow White enchanted everyone she came across. She caused people to change into better people, not because she forced it or demonstrated some sort of artificial toughness, but because she inspired them to be better.

This is what the writers of this modern rip-off and the actors and actresses that play in it don’t get. To them, Snow White is a character that needs to change because she has no power. They see her as weak and, as such, needs to be injected with strength, not understanding that Snow White’s tenderness and boundless kindness carry with them a strength and power that refines civilizations, crafts and grows humanity, and inspires goodness through kindness, generosity, and tender warmth.

This is the very essence of femininity, and it's a strength that modern feminism — with its hyper-focus on selfish inner power relating to outer power — can't wrap its head around.

This is why the 1937 film was such a masterpiece and appealed to so many people, and why the modern "live-action" film is likely going to bomb and eventually be forgotten. The modern version is a shallow shell of what the original told. It misses the point entirely.

It doesn't understand the power of kindness and warmth.

Be A Man

Nick Freitas
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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

‘In many ways, my life is what I always dreamed it would be, except for one glaring difference: I am not a mother. I wish I was.’ //

If most women knew they were sacrificing the freedom, provision, and safety of full-time mothering to be a gypped gas station attendant or “Office Space”-style paper-pusher, far more would choose full-time motherhood. To make it easier for themselves to reach the C-suite and the Oval Office, elite women sell their lower-class sisters glamorous false promises of “Boss Babe.” This is another reason we should reject feminism: it damages women. //

Another part of Cheng’s situation besides the lack of broad social networking opportunities is also now common to all women. It’s the no-win outcome of the Sexual Revolution: women must either have sex with men before marriage or the men can easily find other women who will.

The post-Pill expectation that women will make sex an infertile act obviously eliminates a major motivation for men to pop the question. If the men Cheng dated in her 20s and 30s couldn’t get sex aside from accepting the responsibilities of husbandry — which include fatherhood — I’d bet $10,000 she would have secured a man before her fertility window closed. //

Of course, men also get economic and familial security from marriage, as married men earn more, reach higher career zeniths, are happier, and live longer. But those benefits are less obvious and require a longer timeframe than the benefits women and children get from marriage, which usually begin accruing much earlier.

This is one major negative effect of America’s leaders deciding to kill Christianity as a social norm. It’s also another way in which people who participate in the life of a local church dramatically increase their chances of finding a spouse while they still are physically capable of procreation. Pastors, congregations, denominations, and Holy Scripture itself all stand behind women who say, “I’d love to have sex with you, but I can’t unless we’re married.”