America's Prodigal Fathers and the Rights of Children

Dozens of attendees to the National Conservatism Conference gathered earlier this week for the “Family and Congregation” panel to hear four experts discuss the state of the American family and family formation.

Experts included Delano Squires, Research Fellow in Life, Religion and Family at The Heritage Foundation, and Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us and contributor to The Federalist, among others.

Squires 15-minute-long lecture was titled “America’s Prodigal Fathers.” Here are the top 14 quotes from Squires’ speech:

“It warms the heart to see a child reconciled with his parents after straying from the values and principles that they instilled in him. But what do we do when the prodigal in question is a father?”
“What happens to a culture when a large number of men have exited the workforce and spend their days high on drugs and hooked on porn?”
“What happens to a country when men trade the nuclear family and multigenerational legacy for intentional coparenting and multi-partner fertility?”
“What happens to women and children when men discharge their God-given responsibility to provide for their offspring onto an ever-expanding state that is more than willing to take up residence and exercise authority in their home?”
“Absent men make women and children less safe and secure. This is why you see multiple references to God’s care and concern for widows and orphans in Scripture.”
“It should not be up to women and children to man the frontlines of the culture war.”
“Teenage girls shouldn’t have to have their faces blacked out and their voices distorted in order to criticize Lia Thomas.”
“If Richard Levine and the activists that power the trans-lobby want to make hysterectomies, double mastectomies and penile inversions for confused kids federal policy, there should be an army of fathers waiting for them and willing to stand up to these delusions.”
“We should get used to asking the question, ‘Where is his father?’ out loud and often. We should ask it every time we read a news story about a teenager committing a serious violent crime.”
“We should promote core principles to the next generation of men. One of those is the success sequence.”
“Men are responsible for the children that they create, not the federal government. The government is a terrible husband and an absent father because it has way too many households to support.”
“The Overton Window has moved right in front of our children’s bedrooms, from abortion on demand to the transgender craze. A key part of conservatism moving forward is to keep the barbarians at bay, which means we need all hands on deck.”
“My hope is that the woman who lost a mate, the daughter who lost a model and the son who lost a mentor, when men left their positions and their homes, will all welcome men back with a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.”
“I also pray that every man who is a prodigal today will stay in his rightful place for his good and the security of his family and children.”

Katy Faust’s speech, titled “This is a Child,” exhorted the audience to consider the negative impacts that same-sex marriage, artificial reproductive technologies, adoption, and cohabitation have on children. Here are the top seven quotes from her speech:

“Conservatives must recover the fundamentals of the family.”
“Children have a right to be safe and loved. And the conditions that make that happen is being raised by the one man and one woman who gave her life.”
“In blended families, biological children are 15% more likely to have regular medical checkups, 22% more likely to be buckled up in the car, have 5% more money spent on their food and they are more likely to attend college.”
“The presence of an unrelated adult in a child’s home diminishes a child’s outcomes. That’s especially true when the unrelated adult is a man.”
“One of the most dangerous places children can find themselves in America is in a home that includes an unrelated man.”
“Biology affords a level of protection to a child that a romantic interest in her mother or father simply never will.”
“Some children are intentionally severed from a biological parent at conception via sperm or egg donation. Far from being some stranger who doesn’t matter because, ‘Love makes a family,’ these children often go on protracted internet searches to find their missing parent or dozens of half siblings.”