In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law an act of Congress establishing Mothers’ Day as an official holiday. Father’s Day came 58 years later. Both holidays call us to do what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 5:16: “Honor your father and your mother. . . that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you.” But nobody considers these federal holidays as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Even without the special revelation of the Bible, everyone on earth has one father and one mother to whom we are bound by the deepest of emotional bonds. That is common across all religions, ethnicities and nationalities. It is a law written into nature itself.
The science of genetics proves that a person, with an utterly unique combination of DNA inherited exclusively from his or her specific mother and father, comes into existence at the moment of conception. And the science of psychology knows that the relationship of children to this father and this mother is so primal that the entire course of a person’s life can be affected—either positively or negatively—by it.
Modern reproductive technologies that deliberately separate children from their genetic parents using donor eggs, anonymous sperm, and rented wombs are committing outrageous injustices against children. Wyoming’s ill-conceived surrogacy law (W.S. 14-2-9 passed in 2021) has written child abuse and child-trafficking into state statute. This should be repealed as quickly as possible.
Parents are not interchangeable widgets. The love and honor due to parents hinges on the possessive pronoun. You are obligated to honor your own father and mother in a way different than you relate to anybody else’s parents. That’s because your parents, alone, are obligated to nurture, protect, and love you in a unique way. Nobody on earth can take their place.
Father and mother provide nourishment, warmth, and shelter, but not only that. The irreplaceable good of parents is relational, not mechanical. When the bond between parents and children is healthy, the child flourishes. When it is strained or broken, both parent and child—but especially the child—is measurably harmed.
For this reason, just societies protect the parental relationship especially for the good of the child. Adults have the power to form marriages and keep vows. Children do not. Adults have the strength to build homes and fill them with love. Children are helpless either to build homes or to defend themselves against the abandonment, abuse and neglect caused by homewreckers. That’s why other parents have a responsibility to protect children by guarding the family.
Parents look out for the neighbor’s kids by helping their parents stay together and provide a safe home. Social programs that prioritize only the physical needs of food, clothing and healthcare while undermining the parent-child relationship itself not only miss the mark, they actively harm children.
Parents form governments, in part, because they owe it to children to support and protect the stability of home life. This care for the home not only calls parents to account when they neglect or abuse their children, it also calls children to account when they disobey their parents and try to do what their parents forbid. Those who aid and abet children in disobedience to their parents are doing the children no favors.
That’s why adults who break down the protective barriers between children and drugs, alcohol, or pornography are committing crimes against children. Parents standing up for their parental rights are standing up for their children. Parental rights, after all, exist because parents have an irrevocable duty to protect, nurture and educate their own children.
All of this leads to another important observation. All government authority is based on parental authority. Unless parents had a duty to their children and the right to do that duty, governments would have no right to hold parents accountable. In other words, governments that attack parental authority and subvert the primal bond between children and parents are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting.
School boards, city councils, state legislators and social welfare agencies should keep this fact in mind. Those that don’t betray the public trust and torpedo their own legitimacy.
Yesterday, Churches around the United States gathered for Thanksgiving Day observances. Many of them heard that, “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, [should] be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Timothy 2:2).
Christian citizens pray for legitimate authorities because they are God’s good gift for quiet, peaceful, godly and honest communities. If you are a government official on any level, thank God for the parents who pray for you. Then, honor fathers and mothers by encouraging and supporting them in their special work.