Tag: Children

gender equality

Younger generation lacks its mothers’ enthusiasm for gender equality

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

This report is based on a side-event at the UN’s 70th Commission on the Status of Women, held in
New York during March 9–19, 2026. The topic of the event was “Gender equality makes families
thrive” and was presented by a panel of Nordic ministers for gender equality. The video of this talk
can be accessed here at UN web TV. For more about Endeavour Forum’s work at the UN, please click here.

by Kathy Clubb

In their presentation, a panel of ministers for gender equality from several Nordic nations, including
Iceland, Denmark and Norway, examined how their policies have contributed to the well-being of
families in their respective countries. Specifically, the benefits of parental leave for both mothers
and fathers were explained. Additionally, the ministers expressed their surprise at the younger
generations’ failure to support their policies regarding gender equality, despite their claims that
their policies have been successful.

According to the ministers, gender equality is a form of justice for women, in keeping with the
theme of this year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) held at the United Nations
headquarters in New York. The attendees were polled by a show of hands which revealed that
most women in the room believe there is only a moderate access to justice currently available for
women around the world. Thus the context for the discussion was the so-called oppression of
women and “barriers” to justice.

Nordic prosperity due to gender equality?

The ministers claim that the prosperity enjoyed by their countries is due to their governments’
policies which promote equality between men and women. They especially gave credit to the
women who entered the workforce during the 1950s to 1970s for setting up their nations for
economic success.

During the Second World War, women by necessity had to take over many men’s roles, and in the
Nordic countries, as in other parts of Europe, women were loath to give up their incomes and
independence once the men returned from war to the civilian workforce. The ministers claim that
the post-war women workers benefitted the workforce by giving employers more choice in an
expanded worker pool. Along with advantages for employers, so the argument goes, the
independent income to which women now had access gave them the ability to divorce their
husbands when desired.

These government ministers — all career women — sought to debunk claims by conservatives
that gender equality policies undermine the family, claiming instead that such policies actually
strengthen families by providing economic resilience and safety for children. This is a claim that
was to be repeated over the course of the CSW events by many of the speakers in various
contexts.

Central to the Nordic family policies is affordable childcare as well as leave for both parents after
the birth of a baby. In Norway, for example, the government’s policy is one-year paid parental
leave for both mother and father. These policies enable mothers to re-enter the workforce, allowing
couples to maintain their income levels.

Proponents claim that this policy gives women an advantage when applying for jobs as they will no
longer be discriminated against for their potential need for maternity leave. Since men have
parental leave, employers are forced to treat men and women the same when screening them for a
position.

The ministers claim that their policies are based on practical needs and are not driven by ideology,
however, any policies applied to traditional families are also applied to what has become known as
“diverse” families — that is, those parents who identify as members of the LGBTQ community. Yet
we are expected to believe that there is no ideology driving the policy decisions?

The high cost of gender equality

Each of the ministers acknowledged that the younger generation appears not to appreciate their
sacrifice as working mothers. Indeed, the ministers lamented the fact that there is a need for
ongoing campaigning around gender equality to educate youth about its apparent benefits. In their
experience, the younger generations do not consider gender equality as important, with many
saying it has “gone too far”. Young people don’t want the government to interfere in families — a
mindset that was perceived as a threat by the feminist ministers.

The personal anecdote of one speaker might shed some light on the younger generations’ lack of
interest in their mothers’ pet project. While building her career in politics, this minister from Norway chose to leave her daughter with her father in another city, five days a week for four years. She told her daughter this sacrifice was necessary because it would secure the opportunity for her daughter to do the same thing to her own child!

It is small wonder that the children do not appreciate their mothers’ choice to prioritise careers over
family life. Indeed, the narrative seems to be that only when motherhood is combined with a paid
career can a mother “reach her full potential”. According to this narrative, that “full potential” is
measured only in dollars — an utterly utilitarian argument which their children have apparently
rejected.

The ‘anti-rights movement’ and the war on men

According to the ministers, another perceived obstacle to gender equality is what they call the
“anti-rights movement” whose claims need to be debunked. The chosen method for this
“debunking” doesn’t involve engaging with the opposition, but instead censoring it, particularly on
the internet.

Singled out specifically was the “tradwife” movement — a subset of conservative Christians who
value traditional family life, particularly traditional gender roles. The “tradwife” is a stay-at-home
mother and homemaker who gladly allows her husband to be the breadwinner. These traditional
gender roles apparently pose such a threat to militant feminists that they are labelled as
“misogynistic” and are seen as part of a wider “anti-rights” movement.

The ministers are determined that the digital space needs to be regulated to censor this “anti-
rights” movement. One specific tool they mentioned was setting age-limits on social media — a
policy which was recently adopted here in Australia. While promising to reduce harmful content for
children under 16, the ban effectively sets the stage for a digital ID system, while still allowing
children to access harmful content such as pornography.

Sweden’s minister for gender equality blamed algorithms for promoting “tradwife” propaganda to
men and boys, citing traditional gender roles as this as “harmful norms and disinformation”.
She declared: “We must regulate the digital world with age limits and similar measures, and we
need to be aware of all the forces trying to reshape the narrative on gender equality and push it in
the wrong direction.”

One “helpful” observation made by a minister was that “men may perceive that women’s success
comes at the cost of men”. She has set herself quite a challenge if she wants to convince men that
the opposite is true!

Traditional gender roles were decried as threats to the modern status quo, necessitating ongoing
resistance to backsliding. This movement toward traditional roles was identified as being universal
and not limited to the Nordic nations, although it was acknowledged that the “toxic masculinity”
movement has been somewhat defused by the introduction of parental leave for fathers.

Population decline

Algorithms were also blamed for the declining population. Apparently young men and women are
victims of algorithms which make them “unable to think alike” when it comes to family size.
In the Nordic countries, the average birth rate is less than one child per woman — far below the
2.1 births per women needed for a population to replace itself — and even that low figure is heavily
reliant on migrants who tend to have larger families.

Serbia was mentioned as an example of a country actively promoting pro-natalist policies. A
current campaign there is encouraging women to have “one more baby”.

The ministers admitted that they find themselves in a difficult position: while they acknowledge the
danger inherent in population decline, as feminists who emphasise bodily autonomy, they know
they can’t force women to have more children. Their solution is to try to encourage, but not push,
women to have more babies.

Where is the data?

The panel of high-level politicians put forward their argument without any recourse whatsoever to
statistics and data. Instead, the only “evidence” presented was anecdotal — their feelings and
personal experience. Statements such as “AI can be used as a tool to oppress women” were given
without any concrete examples being provided.

In fact, the only serious research mentioned was a future white paper on boys and gender equality
which one of the ministers was herself preparing: she said that since gender-based violence exists,
boys need to be educated in order to reduce its incidence. One reason identified as a cause of
“gender-based violence” was a dearth of good male role models.

In the feminist world, that means more men who think the same as the feminist career-women are
needed. Yet perhaps their question should be: why are they so hard to come by? Like the young
people who are rejecting the feminists’ working-mother model, are men finally becoming tired of
being labelled “toxic”?

The Trojan Horse strategy

Although much of the talk focussed broadly on the desires of most modern women, one speaker
revealed the more nefarious agenda at the heart of feminism: access to abortion and the upending
of the natural order. She noted the importance of gender equality campaigns in the global south for
“transforming gender norms” and for “advancing reproductive rights”.

The speaker then went on to explicitly state that under the guise of advancing gender equality is a
push for:

  • the removal of discrimination (gender quotas);
  • comprehensive sexual education (perversion and promiscuity);
  • mandating such sex-ed at schools (giving parental rights with one hand and taking them with
    the other); and
  • nurturing intergenerational conversations which promote the right to abortion (specifically in
    Latin America).

An objection to abortion was booed

The previous comments by the pro-abortion speaker were met with an intervention from a delegate
in the audience. She made an objection to abortion rights on the basis of international human
rights law, asking how bodily autonomy can include the killing of children.

This prompted the moderator to respond aggressively, effectively shutting down the pro-life
intervention and revealing the overwhelming support for abortion found in the room. Applause and
cheering in favour of abortion rights revealed the true spirit driving this and many of the UN’s
“humanitarian” efforts.

Elephant in the room: life’s realities

A second questioner asked how it is possible to balance a career with children. She suggested that
with two competing priorities, women are in an impossible situation. The ministers’ responses were
predictable: the core principle is that women can do what they want and that they need the
courage to follow their dreams.

If many women feel frustrated that they can’t be a bigger part of their children’s lives and if it is
impossible to add to the birthrate when paid careers are the priority, then the government must
create family-friendly policies so that women can both work and be mothers.

Conclusion

While believing themselves to be at the forefront of a successful women’s rights movement, the
five Nordic ministers have instead revealed their inability to convince younger generations of the
benefits of feminist ideology or to reverse a rapidly-declining population rate.

They emphasised their belief that it is wrong for men to be perceived as the breadwinners,
underscoring how feminists impose their own definitions on the roles of men and fathers. They
then keep reminding society of the definitions they have advanced in order to maintain them. This
itself is proof that the definitions are not self-evident: they must be imposed rather than observed.
Despite the slick packaging as “women’s justice”, the Nordic ministers showed that the tools of
choice for feminists are propaganda, censorship, and an unhealthy reliance on the welfare state.

About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother and home-educated her children for the
best part of 30 years. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion
exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018.
Her articles have appeared at Family Life International, LifeSiteNews, the Daily Declaration, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.

women

US resolution to protect women and girls faces uphill battle at the UN

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is wrapping up this week amid historic disagreement between delegations over what it means to be a woman. You read that right. Diplomats at the annual international meeting focused on “women’s issues” are engaged in negotiations and backroom maneuvers to avoid clearly defining what they mean by the word “gender.”

By Grace Melton

Last week, when the meeting opened, it was the first time in the commission’s 70 years that the “agreed conclusions”—the negotiated document that the diplomats usually adopt by consensus—had to go to a vote.

The U.S. diplomats requested that the commission members take more time to negotiate a document that all countries could agree to, and then subsequently proposed amendments to the document that would have brought it more in line with U.S. policy. The U.S. opposed the “ambiguous language promoting gender ideology,” as well as references to “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” which U.N. agencies use to promote abortion.

But the chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, Costa Rica’s Maritza Chan Valverde, used procedural machinations to require that the proposed U.S. amendments be packaged together, effectively killing their chances of passage. She was able to censor the countries that shared some of the U.S.’ objections to the document but were unwilling to join in opposition to all of them.

Ultimately, the controversial “agreed conclusions” were adopted by a vote of 37 in favour, with six abstentions and only the U.S. voting “no.”

This ideological battle is nothing new. The U.N. bureaucracy and European countries routinely push gender ideology and a radical abortion agenda under the guise of women’s rights and gender equality. And over the past several years they have labeled their opposition—those who hold traditional beliefs about the sanctity of life and the protection of the family—as “the pushback” or “anti-rights actors.”

Last year, the newly reelected Trump administration opposed the business-as-usual progressive agenda at the Commission on the Status of Women. And this year, the U.S. is taking its defense of women and girls a step further. As the new Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance Policy illustrates, the Trump administration intends to “promote human flourishing” by opposing abortion, gender ideology, and DEI activities at home and abroad.

After losing the vote last week, the U.S. delegation is now proposing a new resolution on the “Protection of Women and Girls Through Appropriate Terminology.” It seeks to reaffirm the original language from the 1994 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which defines “gender” according to “its ordinary, generally accepted usage, as referring to men and women.” It rejects any expansion of the term to include “gender identity” or other subjective and ideological terms.

Pro-life and pro-family organizations, including Family Watch International, are encouraging the many countries that consistently oppose radical gender ideology to join with the U.S. in sponsoring the resolution.

While the U.S. resolution faces an uphill battle—some say insurmountable—these countries would be wise to support it nonetheless. A strong showing of support would challenge any assertion that customary international law has developed to expand the meaning of gender to include “transgender” or other so-called gender identities.

Such support would build on the momentum of the successful vote late last year in the General Assembly to remove controversial “sexual orientation and gender identity” language from a resolution on implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. And it would send a clear message to U.N. bureaucrats that U.N. Member States have the sovereign right to define U.N. policy through transparent processes.

The dangers of gender ideology are not theoretical. Reem Alsalem, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has highlighted many of them in her recent report on sex-based violence against women and girls. Women’s dignity, privacy, safety, and opportunities are at stake when men can violate female-only spaces by claiming to “identify” as women. 

Sadly, much of the world is only beginning to understand the horrific physical and psychological harms that those who have attempted to “transition” to another sex, boys and girls alike, have experienced under the euphemistically named “gender-affirming care” regimen of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries that aim to change the appearance of their bodies.  

For too long, activists on the Left have insisted that abortion is necessary for women’s empowerment, that motherhood and family are impediments to personal fulfillment, and now, that “gender identity” is something real that others must validate.

These are lies that hurt women and girls. In the decades since the Beijing conference, more people have come to recognize them as ideological deceptions that hurt men, women, and children alike. Now it’s time for more countries to confront those lies at the U.N., even when that means they’ll likely lose a vote.

Republished from The Daily Signal.

About the author: Grace Melton is senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Human Flourishing.

gender clinic

Scathing review of Cairns gender clinic

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment


A Queensland Health review of Cairns Hospital’s paediatric gender clinic raises serious concerns about safeguards, oversight, and the treatment of vulnerable children in Australia.

By John Steenhof

A newly released review of the Cairns Hospital paediatric gender service has raised serious concerns about the treatment of vulnerable children and the clinical culture surrounding youth gender medicine in Australia.

The Queensland Health investigation identified a “negative patient safety culture”, with troubling shortcomings in assessment practices, oversight, and clinical governance at the paediatric gender clinic at Cairns and Hinterland Hospital. The review found incident reporting and risk management processes were inconsistent or absent.

In some cases, young patients with developmental delays were on medication despite not understanding the treatment they were receiving. Among the most concerning findings were reports that children as young as 12 were prescribed puberty blockers without adequate multidisciplinary assessment or robust psychological evaluation.

While some defenders of gender medicine may seek to characterise Cairns as an isolated or poorly managed service, the broader significance of the report should not be overlooked. The findings add to a growing body of international and domestic evidence calling for greater caution, stronger safeguards, and more rigorous clinical standards when dealing with children experiencing gender distress.

Global reassessment of youth gender medicine

Across the Western world, medical authorities and courts are increasingly scrutinising the “affirmation-first” model. Reviews in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and parts of the United States have already led to tighter restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex interventions for minors. The Cairns report now places Australia squarely within that global reassessment.

The developments are particularly striking given the treatment of clinicians who have urged caution. For years, Queensland child psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer has advocated for a careful, holistic approach to children presenting with gender distress. Rather than being welcomed as part of a legitimate clinical debate, she has faced disciplinary action and professional pressure.

The Cairns findings underscore why open medical discussion is so important. When complex and evolving areas of medicine become insulated from scrutiny, the risk of harm increases – especially where children and irreversible interventions are involved.

Calls for open debate and stronger safeguards

This is not merely a question of process at a single clinic. It raises deeper issues about whether clinicians feel free to exercise independent professional judgment, whether parents are receiving balanced information, and whether Australia’s regulatory environment allows genuine debate about the best interests of vulnerable young people.

At HRLA, we continue to support professionals who speak carefully and conscientiously in contested areas of practice. Protecting freedom of conscience and evidence-based care is essential to maintaining trust in the medical system and safeguarding children’s wellbeing.

The Cairns review should prompt serious reflection across Australia’s health sector. Robust safeguards, transparent oversight, and open clinical debate are not obstacles to good medicine – they are its foundation.

John Steenhof is the Principal Lawyer at Human Rights Law Alliance. This article first appeared at The Daily Declaration and is reproduced here by permission.

The Daily Declaration is Australia’s largest Christian news site. It is dedicated to providing a voice for Christian values in the public square. Its vision is to see the revitalisation of our Christian values for the common good. 

family walking on path

The feminists’ assault on the family hurts children most

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

In the name of ‘liberation’ and ‘progressiveness’, the family has been dismantled, fathers marginalised, and children quietly reshaped to fit adult belief systems; the consequences are catastrophic.

by Melania Gill at The Conservative Woman

THERE is no such thing as a baby,’ wrote renowned paediatrician Donald Winnicott in 1942. ‘There is a baby and someone.’

His meaning was simple and profound: an infant does not and cannot exist in isolation. It is attached. In the 1960s John Bowlby’s great insight into child psychology known as ‘attachment theory’ explained why. Over the last few decades neuroscientific research has confirmed the observations his theory (of attachment, maternal deprivation and separation anxiety) were based on. A baby comes into being initially through its attachment to its mother – ideally through attuned care, emotional presence and the steady regulation of distress by either parent. This infant dependency is not a flaw to be overcome, it is the foundation of its development. 

Yet it is precisely this truth that contemporary feminist ideology and thinking denies. As science has clarified and confirmed the importance of connection, social practices have moved in the opposite direction. Practices that formally cut or break this connection, from abortion to institutionalised early day-care through to family separation, have increased or been normalised in recent years. Decisions that are framed in terms of autonomy share a common feature: the deliberate severing of human dependency at its most vulnerable points. 

We are living through a cultural moment that denies such dependency, sees attachment as danger, and relational need as oppression. In the name of ‘liberation’ and ‘progressiveness’, the family is dismantled, fathers marginalised, and children quietly reshaped to fit adult belief systems. What is presented as progress increasingly resembles something else: a refusal to accept the basic conditions under which human beings develop at all. The casualties from this are not abstract. They are children. 

Decades of developmental neuroscience show that the human brain is shaped through early emotional relationships. The neuroscientist Allan Schore’s work demonstrates that the systems responsible for emotional regulation, empathy, stress tolerance and social understanding develop in direct response to the quality of caregiving. Brain development is not merely biological; it is relational. 

When caregiving is emotionally attuned, a coherent sense of ‘self’ forms. The child learns that feelings can be experienced without catastrophe, that relationships survive disagreement and that dependence does not mean annihilation. When caregiving is mis-attuned, when parenting is driven by unresolved anger, trauma, grievance or rigid belief, particularly in cases involving parental alienation, something else happens. Children learn which emotions are safe and which are dangerous. They learn which parent must be protected and when, which feelings must be hidden and which version of reality is safest to adopt. Over time, the child’s inner life thins. They stop discovering who they are and start performing who they need to be. Across nearly 20 years of family assessment, I have repeatedly seen this occurring even when there is no overt cruelty. Often it is quiet: originating in a parent who can’t tolerate ambivalence or who requires their child to mirror their emotional reality. 

Unresolved anger and distress from childhood relational harm is rarely expressed directly; rather it’s projected outward on to those whom cultural narratives have already positioned as dangerous or blameworthy – men or fathers, for example. In present ideological climates, they frequently serve this function. The child becomes the carrier of this projected anger. What looks like confidence or moral clarity is, in reality, fear held rigidly in place. 

Such children can speak with striking certainty about adult matters they cannot possibly understand. They repeat slogans rather than thoughts, show contempt where curiosity should be, and appear strong while lacking emotional depth. What looks like independence is a self that has had to harden too early; a fundamental and unconscious lack of trust in all relationships. 

Underlying this is a failure of early emotional attunement. When children are not accurately seen, soothed, or mirrored by primary caregivers, the brain systems responsible for emotional regulation and identity integration do not fully mature (Schore, 2015; Fonagy et al, 2002).

The result is chronic, often unrecognised anger and emotional instability. During adolescence, these vulnerabilities may manifest as identity confusion, distorted memory, intolerance of dissent, and defensive self-enhancement (Erikson, 1968; Kernberg, 1975). The thousands of reality-based professionals working on family law cases across the world witness this time and again in depressingly increasing numbers. 

Dependency is not weakness; it is the engine of development. Children become independent through relationship and connection, not in defiance of them. Yet much contemporary ideology rests on the opposite premise: that needing others is oppression, that attachment is danger, and that autonomy demands severance. Here, radical feminism reveals its deepest psychological error. By reframing attachment as a flawed concept and dependency as harm, it renders parental care, especially paternal care, suspect. Fathers become optional, even inherently dangerous. It creates a ‘case’ for chopping off half of a child’s relational world. By prioritising adult identity claims over children’s developmental needs, it inverts the moral order and takes over culture. 

Unsurprisingly, societies that celebrate this model now face collapsing birth rates, rising loneliness and escalating psychological distress. Extinction-level fertility is not only an economic warning; it’s a psychological one. It signals a culture that has lost faith in continuity and is heading for oblivion.  

It’s impossible to ignore that this same distorted psychological ‘logic’ underpins both radical feminism and contemporary transgender ideology, despite their surface-level conflicts. At their core, both reject biological givens, evolutionary continuity, and developmental constraint in favour of self-definition unconstrained by body, relationship or reproduction. When realities are treated as oppressive rather than formative, identity becomes unmoored. This creates fertile ground for narcissistic adaptation.

For children and adolescents already struggling with mis-attuned parenting or fragile identity formation, ideologies that promise absolute self-definition offer powerful relief. The projection of unresolved childhood attachment anger becomes a demand for justice. Self-righteous certainty replaces curiosity. Any challenge is reframed as harm and aggressively denied using howling moral outrage and ‘cancellation’ of those who disagree.

From a developmental perspective, this is profoundly anti-evolutionary and truly dystopian. A society that denies sex, embodiment, reproduction and dependency is not merely redefining identity, it is splitting itself from continuity. The result is fragility: identities that cannot tolerate disagreement and relationships that cannot survive difference. And there is a chilling historical parallel. 

What we see now is not biological eugenics, but a cultural analogue: deciding which family bonds are expendable, which parents are suspect, and which children must adapt to ideologically curated environments.

Fatherhood becomes a developmental risk by presumption. Children are expected to reorganise themselves accordingly. They call it liberation; ‘back in the real world’ we know it as catastrophic damage to families and children on an industrial scale. 

History shows that systems convinced of their moral superiority struggle to see the harm they produce. Once children become symbols rather than developing minds, the line between safeguarding and social engineering disappears. The appalling outcomes are being and will be written into the psychology of the next generation. When a culture teaches its children that they need no one, it should not be surprised when they grow up unable to love, trust, or carry the future they were meant to inherit.

The family is not a patriarchal relic. It is the primary psychological infrastructure of all societies. Undermine it, and everything downstream weakens. Winnicott was right: there is no such thing as a baby alone, a child, or in fact anyone. And there is no such thing as a society that survives the denial of dependency.

By Melanie Gill. This article first appeared at The Conservative Woman and is republished here with permission.

Melanie Gill is a UK-based attachment specialist, psychologist and forensic consultant, working as an expert witness in complex family proceedings for nearly two decades. Despite an ongoing feminist-inspired campaign to ‘cancel’ her from her family court work she continues to campaign for children and families and remains passionate about bringing psychological science and knowledge into policy and family law.

The Conservative Woman is one of Britain’s fastest-growing websites and is committed to explaining and promoting the virtues of people’s instinctive social conservatism and its importance for children’s wellbeing.

contraceptives

Lack of demand for contraceptives?

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

A recent report from the Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for contraceptives admitted that most women don’t actually want them.

By Rebecca Oas.

A recent report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for “sexual and reproductive health,” including family planning, admitted that, in fact, the majority of so-called “need” for contraceptives is made up of women who have expressed no openness to using them or have rejected them explicitly.

The latest edition of Guttmacher’s Adding It Up continues to promote the concept of an “unmet need” for family planning, which is often misconstrued by family planning proponents like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as a lack of access.  In reality, as a 2016 report by Guttmacher reveals, only five percent of women described as having a “need” say the reason is lack of access.

The new report introduces the concept of “unmet demand,” described as the “narrowest” subset of “unmet need,” which is made up of women “who want to avoid pregnancy and say they are interested in or open to using contraception in the future.”  This category includes an estimated 78 million women—less than half of the total 214 million with “unmet need.”

The broader definition of “unmet need” includes women who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a family planning method, regardless of the reason.  This aligns with the metrics used in previous Adding It Up reports, as well as indicators in use at the United Nations for decades.  However, as Guttmacher admits, “it is not the most appropriate estimate of actual need for contraception.”

This is because, when asked, most women with a “need” cite concerns about health risks and side effects of contraceptive methods, personal or religious opposition, or infrequent sex as their reasons for non-use.  Based on the 2016 estimate that five percent of “unmet need” was due to lack of access, even most of the women in the narrower category of “unmet demand” are making a personal choice not to use contraceptives.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “[f]ocusing on this [narrower] group helps prioritize limited resources.” However, they insist that “broader investments will ultimately be needed to reach the many other women who also face barriers to contraceptive care.”  Based on Guttmacher’s own data, these “barriers” are likely to be women’s own priorities and decisions.

The Adding It Up report estimates that it would cost $104 billion a year to address the “unmet demand” for contraception, all maternal and newborn care, abortion services, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections for women in low and middle-income countries.

However, it emphasizes that “[e]very dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would save $2.48 in the cost of maternal, newborn and abortion care.”  While this may sound like a way to reduce abortion, there are two important problems.  First, it presumes that funding more contraceptives will result in increased use, despite the evidence coming from the same organization demonstrating that the market for family planning is approaching saturation.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Guttmacher Institute is calling for investment in “sexual and reproductive health” organizations that provide abortions and lobby for abortion in pro-life countries and are explicitly trying to siphon funding away from maternal and child health services in favor of contraception.  This does nothing to build the basic health infrastructure required by the women who will want to become mothers, and their children, in the poorest regions of the world.

By Rebecca Oas. C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Gen Z social media

Gen Z, social media, and envy

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

Social media causes desensitisation to things that should disturb us and hypersensitivity to things that should not disturb us. It afflicts Gen Z with a toxic culture of envy.

My generation, Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2010), finds itself in the throes of individual depression, pessimism about the future, and a strong tendency not to take personal responsibility. As a 20-year-old college student, I have witnessed this firsthand. I believe much of the problem can be traced to social media and its creation of a make-believe world, a world defined by pronounced social envy.

Only 39 percent of Generation Z aged 18-29 believe that achieving the American dream is still possible, while 60 percent do not.1 It is disheartening, to say the least, that a large majority of our youth do not believe in the American tradition of achieving success through hard work and determination.

Gen Z has grown up in a different world from previous generations—an online world, one that immerses them in fantasy. Fantasy leads inevitably to disappointment as this made-up online world creates unrealistic expectations for the real world.

Abundant research shows that social media is harmful to youth. Social media use is correlated with rising instances of self-harm and suicidality in boys and girls.2 At the same time, American girls use social media far more than boys.3 While boys are off playing video games or consuming online porn, girls succumb to toxic self-comparison at a time when they are most confused about their identity. This allows them to be taken advantage of by predators, by influencers espousing extreme ideology, and by other women who tell them to prioritise themselves above all others.

The results of this gender gap are ominous for the future of America. More young men than young women report wanting to have children.4 At a time when America’s birth rate continues to plummet below replacement, Gen Z is dropping the ball on family formation. It is not just apathy towards having a family. Gen Z is growing more anti-capitalist, more anti-natalist and more callous about the deaths of others. Reactions on social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination come to mind.

Social media causes desensitization to things that should disturb us and hypersensitivity to things that should not disturb us. It afflicts Gen Z with a toxic culture of envy.

The inside view

Generation Z’s ailments are clear from the outside, but even more so from the inside. It is important to note that the author is a member of Gen Z himself, born just a few years after the turn of the millennium. I have been spared the despair of my generation because of my family.

Raised in a large family with close bonds with my siblings, I was never alone in the sense that many Gen Zers report themselves feeling. My parents ran a household that was strong in moral teachings and founded upon family values. Furthermore, my parents had the foresight to withhold social media from my siblings and me far longer than most of our generation. We were not subject to the culture of envy that we watched our friends endure. I made it all the way to my 19th birthday before I became curious, suspecting that social media might prove useful or practical as an adult in college.

I deleted all my accounts in less than a year. My experience on social media was far from anything I had expected. Perhaps I was naive to expect pictures of pleasant scenery and the occasional post about a family trip. But I could not have foreseen the extent to which social media is riddled with depravity, dishonesty and delusion. What I saw as an outsider to my own generation made plain precisely why my close friends and peers seemed so distant and anxious. It was clear why they had lost faith in themselves, their communities and the American dream.

The reason social media has had such a horrendous effect on American youth is that, fundamentally, social media is not what it seems. The photos and videos that are posted online are often edited into an unrecognizable version of the truth. What is presented as a casual selfie is often an hours-long commitment that requires professional equipment, painstaking attention to detail and constant revision. Instead of honest photos, our youth sees perfection. But it is perfection presented as something attainable. Or rather, something that seems attainable, but isn’t attainable in reality. This is the root of Gen Z’s envy.

Incessant comparison

Social media’s inherent culture of envy is bad enough. But what makes it particularly dangerous to Gen Z is that members of my generation are obsessed with comparing themselves to their peers. Gen Zers average about nine hours of screen time every day.5 It is not unusual to have a screen time of 10 or even 14 hours a day. Some of my friends can spend 20 hours a day looking at screens.

Social media takes up a significant amount of these appalling screen times. Sixty percent of Gen Z spends at least four hours a day on social media, and 22 percent report spending seven or more hours a day.6 Time spent on social media is time not spent socializing, working, exercising, reading, spending time with family, and more. Rather than engage with the real world as much as possible, a sizable majority of Generation Z spends the greater part of their day in an online fantasy.

Living in the fictional world of social media is a major cause of Gen Z’s pessimism, and Gen Z’s members know it. About 83 percent of America’s youth have tried to limit their social media use, albeit largely unsuccessfully.7 Gen Z recognizes the harms of social media as a group. But while 48 percent of teenagers agree that social media is harmful to people their age, just 14 percent believe that social media affects them personally.8

What these statistics reveal is an element of denial. The youth culture’s expectation of perfection requires hiding imperfections. But upon a closer look, it becomes clear that this perfectionism is a symptom of envy. The desire to be as affluent, powerful, attractive and popular as influencers on social media comes from spending too much time in the online world. Carefully curated posts that are funneled to the right audiences create an infinite network of nested mini-worlds in which our youth have become lost. The resulting lack of direction is part of why Gen Z feels so pessimistic. Generation Z’s pessimism expresses itself in many ways: class resentment, hetero-pessimism, apathy and sensitivity.

Class resentment is the byproduct of economic forces on social media. Online sites kick consumer culture into hyperdrive. It begins with extravagant displays of wealth. Influencers who advertise perfect dress, flawless appearance, ideal travel experiences, luxurious homes and fine dining inevitably attract viewers for the simple reason that wealth is desirable. Considering that Gen Z is significantly more dissatisfied with their economic situation than other generations, it is no surprise that young people are drawn toward such content in large numbers.9 Much of Generation Z sees what they want but cannot have, for hours at a time each day.

Displays of unrealistic wealth

Individual envy is then amplified into pessimism. Social media algorithms recommend to users what they are most likely to click on. The more outraged users are, the more likely they are to become even more outraged and to be connected to other users who reinforce their indignation. Since Gen Z is uniquely susceptible to economic pessimism, they are at a greater risk of falling victim to this outrage. As time passes, young social media users fall farther down the rabbit hole, becoming more radicalised and more pessimistic.

The consequence is a strong current of anticapitalism and economic pessimism that views the American system as fundamentally unfair. And so long as they remain isolated in their online echo chambers, my peers will continue to be overexposed to the shortcomings of American capitalism and underexposed to its many benefits.

The hyper-individualization of Gen Z encouraged by social media applies to dating and family dynamics as well as economic concerns. Just as algorithms radicalize the youth into anticapitalism, they do the same for hyperfeminism.

Recent surveys continue to show that young women are ranking their career and individual interests ahead of starting a family.10 This is unsurprising given the prominence of anti-male trends on social media. As of late, a proliferation of social media posts with the hashtag childfree suggests that childlessness as an identity is growing.

There are also movements encouraging women to become “boysober” and swear off all emotional and physical relationships with men.11 Some women online are using the term “mankeeping,” which is primarily used to complain about the burdens of supporting their partners through hard times. Popularized in 2016, the MenAreTrash movement swept social media platforms and gained rapid popularity for disparaging men and heterosexual dating in any way possible.

Toxic feminism

The online environment culminates in a general pessimism about dating and family called “hetero-pessimism.” Originally coined in 2019, hetero-pessimism refers to a movement where women are ashamed of being straight and view “heterosexuality as a prison within which they are confined against their will.”12 Gen Z women are especially vulnerable to trends like hetero-pessimism.

Again, considering the radicalising nature of social media algorithms, it is easy for girls to fall for ideas that promote individualism and the prioritisation of self over pair-bonding or community. As a result, teenage girls sometimes enter the dating scene with unrealistic expectations because of exposure to fake relationships on social media. Young men who encounter such women are then treated to a rude awakening where they are expected to act as an accessory to a woman who is more interested in superficial pleasures and material wealth than true partnership.

It is worth pausing to emphasize that this is a somewhat extreme characterization of a complex phenomenon. Not all young women who use social media are anti-male. Yet, anti-male sentiment weaves itself into social media in various ways.

social media

More widespread than hetero-pessimism is the creation of echo chambers by social media algorithms that amplify and radicalise opinions and perspectives.

Consider the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. In the era before social media, it may be true that the victim of such a horrific and violent act would have received near total sympathy from the American public, including its youth. Regardless of whether this was the case in the past, it is certainly not true now.

Apathy—and in some cases jubilation—from the left over the murder of Charlie Kirk is not originally because of inherent cold-heartedness and cruelty. It is because of desensitisation. This is an important distinction. Desensitisation by social media is what leads to coldheartedness and cruelty when left unchecked. Such apathetic and jubilant individuals did not express sympathy because that is not what they were shown. Social media algorithms likely predicted that such viewers, especially some progressive youth, would not have clicked on such content. Instead, they were fed increasingly extreme posts that dismissed or mocked the death of Charlie Kirk. And in viewing such posts, their views were validated and radicalised instead of moderated.

The condoning of Kirk’s assassination that spread across the internet is emblematic of a growing apathy towards the plight of persons outside each individual’s social media bubble. Within these anonymous echo chambers, algorithms supercharge this apathy into a callous joy that is not just inappropriate, but dangerous.

The tyranny of online policing

Online policing of political correctness reached a fever pitch during the Covid-19 pandemic, when American society was as far from the real world as it had ever been. This had a detrimental effect on Generation Z, given that they came of age around the use of chosen pronouns, progressive terminology like “safe spaces,” and leftist ideology that accused most social and economic institutions of being inherently bad. So rather than work to develop empathy for those different from them, Generation Z was immersed in a ruthless online culture that focused on the faults of those who were different from them, instead of what we have in common as Americans.

Generation Z is steeped in a fabricated version of reality that amplifies outrage, promotes individualism and heightens our differences. The culture of envy engendered by social media has made our youth so pessimistic that many of them no longer believe in the American dream. Who can blame them? Because of social media, much of Gen Z is entering adulthood unchallenged, un-self-aware, and unable to see that they are part of something greater than themselves.

As a member of Gen Z, I place my hope in those of us who are strong enough to stop looking at our screens and start looking at all that is happening around us. For when we do so, we begin to see that the beauty of reality is far more rewarding than any online illusions of perfection.

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website:  www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.

  1. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/02/americans-are-split-over-the-state-of-the-american-dream/ ↩︎
  2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6278213/ ↩︎
  3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9176070/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ ↩︎
  5. https://www.hiddengemsaba.com/articles/average-screen-time-statistics ↩︎
  6. https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/gen-z-social-media-smart-phones/ ↩︎
  7. Ibid ↩︎
  8. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social-media-andmental-health/ ↩︎
  9. https://www.mtlc.co/how-to-handle-the-optimism-pessimism-paradox-of-gen-z-at-work/ ↩︎
  10. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ ↩︎
  11. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/style/boysober-celibacy-hope-woodward.html ↩︎
  12. https://thenewinquiry.com/on-heteropessimism/ ↩︎
Homeschooling

Homeschooling in America: from fringe to future

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

The number of families homeschooling in the United States has doubled in the past five years, meaning it is becoming a mainstream alternative to the traditional model of schooling.

Imagine a girl, about age 15, sitting in the cozy four-season room of her home. She might be clutching a Jane Austen novel in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. A yellow school bus passes the home and stops at the corner of her lot. Children tumble out, some her age, but many much younger. They just finished the school day, having arrived at 7 a.m., and did not arrive home until about 3:30 p.m. They will have roughly two hours of homework.

The girl started her school day around 10 a.m. She woke up naturally, had the time to prepare and eat a nutritious breakfast, and then powered through her schoolbooks at the kitchen table. Today she focused on her chemistry, Latin and language arts. She completed her school day after roughly three hours of work.

Her siblings worked alongside her. Their mother, doing her household chores, periodically checked in to see how her children were doing. After the girl finished her schoolwork, she went on a walk with a fellow homeschooled friend.

She is enjoying her leisure time with her novel, and tonight she will go to tennis practice at the local community center. She has no homework and will be in bed by 10 p.m. She aspires to be a nurse, and next year will begin classes at her local community college, which will eventually count toward her nursing degree.

This young girl is homeschooled, and her future is bright. By the end of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century, every state in the U.S. had some form of compulsory schooling law. Homeschooling was largely discouraged and unregulated until the 1970s and 1980s. Those who chose to homeschool were generally Christian conservatives or secular freethinkers. Homeschooling was a fringe movement that was met with official resistance. Families that did homeschool faced truancy charges and were taken to court.

Homeschool advocates sought judicial protection, citing the Supreme Court decision of Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), in which Amish parents challenged a state law requiring children to attend school until the age of 16.1 The Court ruled that forcing Amish children to attend high school violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. The case centered on ending formal education after eighth grade, and it established a crucial precedent affirming parents’ rights to direct their children’s education. While few today advocate ending formal education after eighth grade, the case laid a legal foundation supporting homeschooling as a legitimate and personalized educational path.

Pandemic pivot

By 1993, all 50 states legalized homeschooling, but the oversight varied greatly by state. As a result of this legalization, the number of homeschooled children grew from 15,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 2 million just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.2 Homeschooling was on the radar, both legally and statistically, but it was not something most families seriously considered.

The Covid-19 pandemic took the world by storm, and education was certainly affected. Spring 2020 emergenc school closures sent educators and parents alike scrambling to maintain the semblance of a school education at home. In the first weeks, when the closures were expected to be brief, students were often given packets of worksheets or would meet with their classes virtually for an hour, with the rest of the day dependent on parental oversight.

As the fog of uncertainty lifted to reveal a longer road ahead, schools and parents adapted to make the school
day more structured. In most instances, students were provided with electronic devices, and virtual learning went on throughout the day. The virtual learning was balanced by individual work to be reviewed by the parent or teacher after the fact. Later in the pandemic, this virtual learning combined with in-person learning to create a hybrid model. Today, the Covid school shutdowns are almost universally reviled as a failure of educational policy.

Many parents grudgingly went along for lack of choice. For the first time, they balanced being co-teachers in their child’s education with their own careers and responsibilities. Some came face-to-face with their children’s curriculum, only to cringe at what they saw.3 Others found they liked spending the days with their children and being hands-on in the learning process. These parents began to see homeschooling as a genuine option.

A dramatic increase

In 2019, prior to the pandemic, homeschooling statistically represented only a small movement— just 3.4 percent of school-age children were homeschooled.4 At the peak of the pandemic, most children experienced their schooling at home, while some were withdrawn from their registered school of attendance to be homeschooled. In 2020-21, 6 percent of American students were reported to be homeschooled.5 More recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey show that 6.3 to 7.9 percent of school-age children were homeschooled in 2024, comprising 3.4 to 4.3 million children.6 In just five years, the number of homeschooled children in the U.S. has doubled.

The pandemic fueled the start of this growth, and perhaps without parents having found themselves in the role of co-teachers, it would not have been so rapid. Yet, several years after the pandemic, the number of homeschooled children continues to grow. Homeschooling is no longer a fringe choice. It has become a significant educational method in the United States.

When considering homeschooling, many assume that the format of the school day is modeled after a traditional classroom. While it can fit that description, this is far from the approach most families take. Homeschoolers are a diverse group. Demographically, it runs the full gamut of religion, political affiliation, income, education levels and ethnicity. Naturally, the educational approach will vary greatly depending on family resources and priorities. Some of the more common approaches include:

Classical Education: Classical education aims for a structured approach with emphasis on grammar, logic and rhetoric through studying great books, history and language. Generally, families following this approach will purchase their curriculum through a company such as Mother of Divine Grace or The Well-Trained Mind Academy.

Charlotte Mason: A British educator from the late 19th century, Mason emphasized a gentle, literature-rich method of learning. This philosophy cultivates a love of education through “living books,” nature and the arts. “Living books” are engaging works that bring subjects to life, in stark contrast to dry textbooks.

Montessori: Based on the philosophy of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, this method is child-led and focused on fostering independence and practical life skills in a tactile environment. This method is particularly popular among parents of young children.

Unschooling: As the name suggests, this method largely rejects the concept of structured learning and is led entirely by the child’s interests and motivations.

Hybrid Homeschooling: involves a mix of in-home instruction and outside classes, generally provided through a private, part-time school. Students will learn at the school for a portion of the week and are provided a curriculum to follow at home under the direction of the parent for the remainder of the week.

Benefits of homeschooling

Most families probably use a combination of these approaches to best fit the needs of their children. These methods are best combined with ample usage of extracurricular and social opportunities for children.

The benefits of homeschooling are abundant for most families. Katie Fitzgerald, a mother of five in Maryland, states: “My children are authentically themselves. They have time and space to pursue their God-given gifts and the support and encouragement to persevere in them. They are well-spoken and confident around children and adults.” This may be one of the more common reasons parents cite when they make the choice to homeschool. They want their children to be confident and free thinking: in the world, but not of it.

Some parents remember a school experience that was punitive if they were of the rowdier type, while others recall sliding under the radar if they were quiet: their strengths or weaknesses may have gone unnoticed if they kept their head down and followed instructions. Gifted students were often bored and unchallenged, while struggling students felt embarrassed and left behind.

To homeschool is to offer a unique solution to each child, each circumstance, each ability level: that is, to meet them where they are and help them to excel. Whereas the traditional school setting is focused on the collective, the
homeschool experience is focused on the individual, so that as an adult, he or she might be a healthy member of the community.

Individual attention, flexibility

Lorryn McGarry from Oklahoma homeschools six children and enthusiastically reports: “My children get their childhood back. For millennia, children have been taught for a few hours a day, and the rest of the day is for exploring and climbing and playing. Through homeschooling, this is how I give this centuries old, developmentally appropriate structure back to my children. They are each other’s greatest playmates.” Lorryn alludes to another great benefit of homeschooling, which is the flexibility of the day.

Much of the school day in a traditional setting is not dedicated to active learning, but to busy-work, transitions
and behavior management. A homeschooled child can achieve these same active learning hours at home under
the guidance of a parent and forgo some of the less necessary activities. Instead, the world is their oyster! As they get older, some students can begin taking courses for college credit. Students can sharpen skills they are interested in such as art, music, crafts or athletics—and without sacrificing family dinners or relaxation on the weekend.

Children who were homeschooled for the long term (eight or more years) generally report higher levels of optimism, gratitude and life satisfaction as compared to their peers.7 They are also less likely to report symptoms associated with depression and anxiety.8 In terms of academics, they tend to outperform their public school peers by 15 to 30 percentile points on standardised tests, indicating that, on average, homeschooling is more efficient than public school.9 If homeschooled students generally have better mental health and academic outcomes, what is the argument against homeschooling?

Principal critiques

Perhaps the loudest concern voiced by those opposed to homeschooling is the question of socialisation. They worry that if children aren’t interacting with their peers all day and following the structure of a typical classroom, they will be unable to cope once they leave the nest as adults. Something these naysayers fail to consider is what the world looks like outside of the nest.

Your average adult spends the day surrounded by adults of varying ages, often of different ethnic and economic backgrounds. Compare this to the typical public (or even private) school student. Their peers were born within nine months of their own birth date and often come from similar economic backgrounds. Let’s not forget that
school districts are funded by the property tax of the surrounding area, and that to attend most private schools, you must be able to afford the tuition. This sounds considerably more homogeneous than the world that awaits them upon graduation.

By contrast, homeschoolers who are exposed to extracurricular activities (such as a cooperative group, or even regular trips to the local library or playground), are regularly interacting with a wide range of ethnicities, religious backgrounds, economic levels and ages. From a younger age than their peers, they are learning how to collaborate and interact with people who are different from them. Of course, if a family approaches homeschooling from an isolationist mindset, their children may struggle socially. Homeschooling families must be conscientious about integrating their children into the world early and often, or they run the risk of giving homeschoolers a bad name.

The other concern involves educational blind spots in the parent acting as educator, otherwise explained as the inability to teach a subject at the level necessary. This is less likely to be a problem when teaching a young child phonics or arithmetic but is far more likely to be a concern with high-school-level instruction in foreign languages, math or science. This is solved by outsourcing the subject: by hiring a private tutor, sending the child to a class taught by an expert, or utilising online learning.

The road ahead

Homeschooling in America has always existed alongside a wide spectrum of regulations. Some states impose multiple layers of oversight, requiring parents to file curriculum plans, submit test scores or undergo evaluations. Other states demand very little documentation. Yet, even in states historically considered relaxed, attempts to tighten control can surface.

A recent example is Illinois, where a proposed Homeschool Act (H.B. 2827) would have imposed some harsh penalties, including criminal charges for submitting incomplete paperwork. Parents mobilized in opposition, and the bill was defeated earlier this year. This underscores both the ongoing vulnerability of homeschool freedoms and the steadfast commitment of families to defend them.10

Taxpayers spend an average of $16,446 per pupil in public schools.11 With 3.1 million homeschooled
students in 2021-22 and the cost of their education largely shifted to their parents (who spent an average of $600 per student), $51 billion was saved for taxpayers.12 This significant cost savings may not continue in the future as school choice options spread to more and more states.13

However, most homeschooling families have no financial aid to cover their children’s homeschooling costs, and many prefer it this way. More government dollars may equate to more government oversight, which generally gives families less autonomy over their curriculum and pacing. As homeschooling continues to grow in numbers, it will be interesting to observe how both state and federal laws adapt.

Homeschooling is no longer a fringe experiment. It is an increasingly mainstream educational path rooted in the
belief that parents are best equipped to guide their children’s learning and development. As laws evolve and
educational options expand, one thing remains constant: The home continues to be a powerful place of formation. In homeschooling, families are reclaiming their children’s education and finding joy in the process.

For families who are new to homeschooling, see the final endnote below for some reputable online resources to help you get started.14

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website:  www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.

  1. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972). ↩︎
  2. Albert Cheng and Daniel Hamlin, “Contemporary Homeschooling Arrangements:
    An Analysis of Three Waves of Nationally Representative Data,” Educational Policy
    37, no. 5 (July 2023), https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048221103795. ↩︎
  3. See, e.g., Mindszenty Report, September 2023 and July 2021, for discussions of
    the pervasive infiltration of transgender ideology and critical race theory into U.S.
    schools. ↩︎
  4. https://hslda.org/post/homeschooling-continues-to-grow-in-2021 ↩︎
  5. https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ ↩︎
  6. https://admissionsly.com/homeschooling-statistics/ ↩︎
  7. https://readlion.com/op-ed-long-term-homeschoolers-enjoy-most-favorablelevels-of-mental-health-study-finds/ ↩︎
  8. Ibid ↩︎
  9. https://homeschoolingbackgrounder.com/average-academic-performancehomeschooled-students/ ↩︎
  10. https://edreporteronline.org/documents/august2025 article 3.cfm?utm source=email&utm_medium=email%20 marketing ↩︎
  11. https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ ↩︎
  12. Ibid ↩︎
  13. Regarding the spread of school choice options in the U.S., see, e.g., Mindszenty Report, July 2023 ↩︎
  14. Heart of a Mother: Offers a broad overview of guidance and curriculum recommendations specifically for Catholic families. https://www.heartofamother.net/curriculum.
    Homeschooling 101: A breakdown of essential subjects to teach at various age levels. Home School Legal Defense Association: A comprehensive source for state laws and legal guidance for homeschool in the United States. https://hslda.org/legal ↩︎

Some people are still choosing to have a large family

The larger the family, the greater the gift

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

There are a number of factors which have led to the decline in family size, yet there are still those who understand that becoming a parent has a personal benefit, as well as a societal one.

The U.S. fertility rate dropped to an all-time low in 2024, according to recent CDC data. Our country’s fertility rate now stands at fewer than 1.6 births per woman, well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to achieve population replacement. Effectively, this means that we’re unable to replace – let alone grow – our population through reproduction. Once the trend toward population shrinkage begins, it’s difficult to reverse.

The problem is global. Twenty-three nations are set to see their populations halve by 2100, according to the BBC. Population collapse could fundamentally reshape societies as they grapple with the impacts on economics, military readiness, healthcare, and culture. Human beings remain the most important resource for any civilization – and we’re on track to run out of them.

So why is the global population, by and large, not replacing itself? A lot of factors contribute to this trend, and, at the end of the day, it remains somewhat mysterious. But we can point to some concrete reasons, outlined in Ross Douthat’s book, “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.”

Douthat first notes the major economic and cultural shift from agrarian to industrial and urban living. This change from farm to factory to firm “made children less valuable as extra household laborers and made an intense educational investment in each child make far more economic sense – which in turn raised the costs of childrearing for the ambitious and successful.”

In the past, farms – and to some extent, factories – needed large numbers of laborers, who could be relatively uneducated, incentivizing farming families to have more kids. Today, our economy prizes automation and AI, with just a limited number of tech whizzes needed to keep the whole thing running.

The introduction of contraceptives is another factor Douthat raises. These made it possible for people to separate sexual activity from its natural procreative end, and that trend was only exacerbated by the sexual revolution of the 1960s in which sexuality was reframed as purely the pursuit of pleasure, rather than a life-giving act meant to take place within matrimony.

Feminism also urged women out of the home and away from childrearing, while the rise in divorce undercut the longevity of marriages, discouraging couples’ attempts to build large, stable families.

Additionally, the secularization of society removed religious support and motivation for extending the gift of life, while an increasingly comfortable and consumerist society encouraged self-centeredness and physical enjoyment over self-sacrifice. Further, since the sexual revolution, men and women struggle more to establish relationships with each other in the first place, even though most people still say they want relationships, marriage, and children, according to Douthat.

By some accounts, the declining birthrate is symptomatic of societal anxiety over finances. “People are marrying later and also worried about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment,” CBS reports. Yet financial constraints to childrearing seem more of a cultural perception problem than actual poverty, given that generations of our forebears successfully raised larger families on less wealth.

According to a Pew survey from 2024, finances aren’t the main reason people are avoiding procreation. For adults aged 18-49, the most common reason given is “I just don’t want to.” This is often because they want to focus on other things, like hobbies, interests, and careers. Interestingly, the third most common reason provided was “concerns about the state of the world.”

These responses suggest that the biggest determining factor in the birth dearth has to do with societal attitudes towards what is most important in life, and whether or not the world is headed in a positive direction. The ideologies most young Americans are formed in focus on personal fulfillment and career achievement over the sacrifice entailed in giving back to society (and one’s own offspring) through childrearing.

Further, since the breakdown of traditional ideas about religion and truth, the world has suffered from a crisis of meaning, epitomized by nihilist philosophers such as Nietzsche. Tragically, mainstream thought has largely turned away from belief in objective truth, and with it, the belief that life has inherent meaning and value.

Ultimately, our failure to reproduce stands as a sign of a profound cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in the value of life itself. Anyone who truly understands the value of life longs to share it through children. Anyone who doesn’t will see little point in reproducing.

Fortunately, some young people are rejecting this anti-life zeitgeist. In certain communities – especially devout religious ones – couples are choosing to have large families, finding greater joy and fulfillment in the process than any hobby or career could provide. [NOTE: In Hungary, the Orban government’s pro-natalist policies have had some measure of success in boosting the birth-rate. This is something that should be investigated by Western policy-makers. Read more here– Ed.]

Each new life is like the creation of a whole new world. With each child, parents give someone else the gift of experiencing the world and all that life has to offer. What could be more meaningful than that? It is in the act of giving that we also receive the most. The more we give, the more we are ourselves fulfilled – and there’s no greater gift to give than life. Many young parents today are realizing that parenthood is not only a boon to their children and society, but also a blessing to themselves. And the larger the family, the more abundant the gift.

by Walker Larson. The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), and is reproduced by permission.

12 year old consent to abortion

Court rules 12-year-old can consent to an abortion

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

A pre-teen mother has been deemed by the Queensland Supreme court as able to consent to an abortion, after a hospital requested permission to abort her child.

The case was brought by the unnamed hospital under a Queensland law prohibiting a parent from consenting to an abortion on behalf an underage child. This triggered parens patriae jurisdiction, which allows the court to act as a ‘parent of the country’ and assess the child’s ability to consent. The goal of parens patriae legislation is to protect children and those without full mental capacity, ending in a decision which is supposedly in the “best interests” of the child or child-like person.

Staff from the hospital sought orders from the court after they were concerned that the young mother, known by the pseudonym, ‘E’, was not mature enough to consent to the abortion. E was 9 weeks pregnant at the time, and both she and her 13-year-old boyfriend had requested an abortion.

The court was told that E had already tried to commit an abortion using the abortion pill, as she was apparently very fearful of her father discovering the pregnancy. Her plan was to have the baby aborted before any signs of her pregnancy showed.

In her judgement, Justice Catherine Muir wrote that “Historically, children have had no capacity at all to consent or refuse treatment. This was always within their parents’ remit. Now the law recognises that there are certain developmental stages relevant to a young person’s ability to consent to medical care.”

Despite testimonies from a gynaecologist, an obstetrician and a psychologist questioning E’s ability to comprehend what was going to happen to her, the judge deemed that E could, in fact, understand the abortion procedure and its inherent risks. Justice Muir also took the opportunity to repeat the progressive talking point regarding the procedure’s safety, noting that “… the proceduralist assesses those risks as not being significant in this case.”

Justice Muir’s main concern seemed to be that E understand the physical process involved in having her baby terminated. She wrote: “Critically, E was able to explain to me what she understood she was doing by choosing to terminate the baby, and also that there were risks with this procedure, including bleeding, risks for future pregnancy, cramping and infection.”

A closer look at this section of the judgement shows that the medical professions who assessed E twice concluded that her knowledge of an abortion procedure was “rudimentary”, a view they believed to have been “consistent with that of a 12-year-old.” So while E may have understood in basic terms that her baby was going to be killed, it isn’t at all clear that she understood that her child had a heartbeat and brainwaves, that it was almost old enough to suck its own thumb, or that it was fully human.

The girl’s mother was very supportive of the abortion, and requested that her daughter be fitted with a contraceptive implant afterwards. From this we can glean that the young girl has no intention of avoiding, nor will she be encouraged to avoid sexual activity at the conclusion of this sad affair. It also sheds some light on the contrast between the girl’s attitude towards babies and that which is more commonly held by girls of her age that babies are to be protected and cherished. Almost a child herself, it is surprising and sad that E did not empathise with the plight of her baby, despite the difficulties associated with motherhood at such a young age.

In this scenario, we see that those who should be relied on to support a young mother through her crisis pregnancy convinced her to take the route that was simplest for them. Knowing that they would have a significant role to play in helping her through pregnancy or care for a newborn, they steered her towards abortion, out of either a misplaced sense of compassion or out of concern for their own time and energy.

While the medical professionals did raise some concerns in court, they were not against the abortion in principle. Rather, it appears that they desired that the responsibility for making the decision be lifted from their shoulders. This is an example of the danger of the parens patriae doctrine being used by ideologically-driven courts. Just as courts may confuse an abusive household with an impoverished one, so they may use an ostensibly compassionate law to further a pro-abortion agenda.

A testimony given by a midwife seems to have been the only voice of reason in the case. She said “that the girl required assistance to understand some of the questions put to her about the termination,” and thought “she did not demonstrate sufficient insight into the operation’s risks and benefits.” It’s difficult to understand how the opinion of this experienced medical professional was ignored by a judge who gave only a cursory evaluation of E in the courtroom.

It should be noted that Justice Muir had little care for the psychological impact the abortion will have on the young girl. Although it may be years before she comes to terms with her decision, E, like many other mothers, may find that this is a decision she will regret for the rest of her life.

One of the most questionable elements of the case is the rationale for keeping the decision from the girl’s father. Court records state that he wasn’t notified due to an apparent threat of violence. If this claim is true, then we can only wonder why the girl could not be protected from this threat and supported to continue her pregnancy. Surely enough legal protections exist to guarantee the girl’s safety so that she didn’t feel compelled to inflict the ultimate form of violence on her unborn child: killing it in the womb.

This sad case is not the first time that Queensland courts have allowed an abortion to be performed on a 12-year-old. A similar case took place in 2016, when Justice McMeekin gave permission for a young mother with the pseudonym ‘Q’ to have her baby terminated.

Writing about the latter case, the progressive Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) explained the Court’s recourse to parens patriae jurisdiction, again citing the “best interest of the child.”  The HRLC statement then goes on to give the brutally honest caveat: “This does not include the interests of an unborn child.”

by Kathy Clubb

difficult delights

Teaching children to embrace the difficult delights of life

Published on by EF TeamLeave a comment

Reading for pleasure has lost popularity with the rise of a digital culture: it can be restored if communities promote more traditional ‘difficult delights’.

I browsed the shelves for as long as my mother would allow when I visited the library as a child. When her patience – or our available time – finally petered out, I brought seven or eight books up to the library counter to check out – a healthy mix of historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, and classics. The librarian often raised an eyebrow or chuckled at my stack of books, but my mother knew I would usually read them all.

I tore through books in my childhood and teenage years. But I wasn’t alone. My siblings read a similar amount, as did some in my friend group, especially those with little to no access to video games and social media.

Such habits are increasingly rare among children. A 2024 study conducted by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) in the U.K. found that only 35% of children ages 8-18 read for pleasure – a number 8.8 percentage points lower than in 2023. Since 2016, the NLT has seen a downward trend in children reading for pleasure.

A 2020 study conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress on 9- and 13-year-olds found that those who regularly read for fun in the U.S. has also dropped substantially over the past decade. Data from 2022 and 2023 show the continuation of this declining trend.

Meanwhile, screen time for children in our country continues mounting since the pandemic.

This isn’t news to most of us; we witness such decline every day in anecdotal forms. I used to see children (and adults) reading on trains and planes; now I primarily see screens. I’ve also seen the decline in the emptiness of my neighborhood library and in the complaints of schoolchildren when they encounter books I once enjoyed.

Efforts are underway to counteract this decline, however. Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced a “Summer Reading Challenge” for children in grades K-8, inviting children to read 12 books between June 1 and Sept. 5, completing a log of what they read. Each child who completes the challenge will receive a certificate, a small prize, and an entry into a raffle to visit Washington, D.C.

Schools often institute similar summer reading challenges or requirements. A classical Christian school in my area created a “Screen Free Summer Challenge,” encouraging children to spend as many days as possible without screen-based entertainment.

Such challenges can help direct children to spend their time taking in the written word rather than delighting in the easy pleasures of the online world. But reversing our culture’s trend toward practical illiteracy will require more than the enticement of a prize or grade.

In my years as a student, tutor and teacher, I have found that those who read much do so not primarily because they are required or enticed, but because of a deep love for reading, a love inculcated and emboldened by their peers and family.

In order to achieve a culture that encourages reading, we need to build sub-cultures that do not normalize ease – the ease of flipping through TV channels or scrolling through social media – but instead recognize the value of difficult delights. Such work begins in the home, with the culture of the immediate family, and moves outward to the neighborhood and then to the church or school community.

By difficult delights I do not mean only those found within the pages of a book, but also the delights of work in the garden or garage, or the delights of time spent at the piano bench in front of sheet music or on a ladder with a paintbrush in hand.

For the enchantment of literature to become once again a force in our culture, we must become disenchanted with the latest offers of a passive and difficulty-free life mediated by screens and feeds. We must become disconnected from the consumerist mindset that dominates our society. When a sub-culture, however small, connects instead with gladhearted gratitude around pursuit of the good, true and beautiful – not the easy, crass and self-gratifying – children will be blessed in all variety of ways, including a fondness for good stories.

In other words, for children to love reading again, they must be shown and learn how to love life – real, embodied life, as God has given it, with all its difficult delights.

By Sarah Reardon.

The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), and is reproduced by permission.