Marriage Makes Women Happier: Myth Busting Cohabitation And Gen Z Faith

Guest host Micah Clark—Executive Director of the American Family Association of Indiana—welcomes Glenn Stanton, Director of Family Formation at Focus on the Family, for a no-nonsense conversation about what the data really say about marriage, motherhood, faith, and family. Glenn unpacks fresh research (including his recent Federalist piece) showing married women—especially married moms—report the highest levels of life satisfaction. They also explore why cohabitation isn’t a “trial marriage,” how faith drastically lowers divorce risk, and why stable, married families lift communities and shrink government dependence.

In segment two, Micah & Glenn tackle the myth that the American church is collapsing, drawing insights from Glenn’s book The Myth of the Dying Church and the surprising revival-energy among Gen Z. They discuss how elites “talk left but live right” on marriage, why children flourish best with a married mom and dad, and why public policy should stop undermining the very institution that makes people freer and happier.

If you care about culture, policy, and the next generation, this episode gives you research-backed clarity—and hope.

Focus on the Family resources: fotf.org
AFA of Indiana policy papers & Micah’s weekly email: AFAIN.net

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Attention. You're listening to the Tod Huff Radio Show, America's
home for conservative not bitter talk radio. Be advised. The
content of this program has been documented to prevent and
even cure liberalism, and listening may cause you to lean
to the rights. Here's your conservative but not Bitter host,

(00:32):
Todd Huff.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to the Todd Huff Show. Obviously I'm not Todd.
My name is Micah Clark from American Family Association of Indiana.
We're one of India's lean pro family public policy organizations.
Thank you for joining us today. I have with us
a very special guest, someone I've admired or worked with
for many years. He's with Focus on the Family. He's
an author, he's one of the nation's top family experts.

(01:06):
His name is Glenn Stanton. He's the director of Family
Formation at Focus on the Family, one of the nation's
largest Christian ministeries, which I'm sure you're all familiar with.
I just happen to see an article from Glenn recently
about marriage and the attacks on marriage and how many
people do not see a benefit to marriage anymore among

(01:26):
young people. In particular. It was in the Federalists. I
wanted to have Glenn on to talk with us today
about the importance of marriage and benefits why it's so
strong for an important factor for society. So we're going
to also talk about one of his books as well.
But Glenn, it's great to have you on today. Welcome
to the Todd Huff Show. It's good to see you

(01:46):
after all these years. Glenn.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Absolutely, Mike, and good to be with you. You and
I have interacted for a long long time, but it's
nice to be able to see you face to face.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, not everyone will get this reference, but I mean
this as an utmost compliment. I consider you and Brad
Wilcox running Neck and Neck is the nation's number one
family leader on family research, and Brad is someone I'd
love to interview as well. He does great work and
you're right up there with him. Just the stuff you
do on the importance of marriage and family is so

(02:19):
critical to our culture today. And your article in the
Federals just on Monday Labor they caught my attention because
I've seen some things that you reference in this article
about marital happiness. So maybe let's start out with what
is the cultural perception or maybe what even some anti
family or liberal folks are pushing out there that marriage

(02:42):
is somehow a negative for women, harmful for women, burden
some tell us about that basis that led you to
write this article.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, well, that trope has been out there for a
long long time. That it's you know, we talk about
it in terms of men, the old ball and chain,
but the same is true for women. That oh my goodness,
like married mother life is just drudgery for women. If
you really want to be in with what's happening, be

(03:14):
like the ladies on Sex of the City, you know,
free out there, single, chasing your options, things like that.
And the funny thing is the research just simply does
not show that that in terms of general life happiness.
We see time and time again, and this is some

(03:36):
of the research that I talked about, is that among women,
married women and married women with children mothers, married mothers
tend to be the most happy compared to unmarried women
and unmarried women without children. And regardless of kind of

(04:00):
how we look at this, we find data showing that
these married moms report significantly higher levels, sometimes by as
much as double more happiness and contentment in life than
their single or motherless peers.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, Glenn, it's not This isn't in your article, but
I can't help but say this because I've seen research,
and in fact, it may have even been your research
that shows, contrary to what the world says, married women
who also have a faith component are much happier. And
you know, the world is it kind of portrays the

(04:44):
swingers or the dating scene, or the Hollywood scene or
the romance comedy scene of multiple partners or faith is
never shown in law movies and things. But faith is
a huge component to marital happiness too. I know that
wasn't in your article, but tell us about that if
you could too, because I know you've researched that as well.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
Well.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
No, that's absolutely true as well, that for a woman
married to a Christian man and they both have a
common faith, that that keeps them out of a divorce
court and very significant levels. I mean so many, unfortunately,
so many pastors and Christian leaders will hear them say

(05:25):
that the divorce rate is just as high in the
Church as it is in the world. That is not
true marriages based on real faith, and we have to
be fair that really committed Jews, really committed Muslims, really
committed Christians have very high marital success rates. And I

(05:50):
don't mean to just pick out those three faiths, but
generally faith and having a common faith makes a real difference.
But also the Christian faith makes you neat difference in
the way that it looks at marriage and the way
that it has spouses honoring one another. And that's very
very important. We need to understand that, and we need

(06:11):
to know that, and that the Christian faith really does
help husbands become more of a servant, more of a
a you know, scripture calls the wife a helpmate, but
the husband is a helpmate as well, who comes along

(06:32):
and supports his wife and sees her as an equal,
sees her as his equal counterpart, and that therefore good
Christian men tend to treat their wives better. And Brad
Wilcox has some of this data than secular husbands do

(06:53):
tend to do.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, And one of the things I saw in your
article that that really jumped out at me. I'd seen
some of these ys before. It was just maybe even
a throwaway line, but it said that fewer young women
than men, less women than men now actually won't say
they want to have children, and as a guy. I
tend to think that's just some natural, you know, mother thing.

(07:16):
When I got married, I want to get married, but
I never had this deep desire, to biological desire to
have kids necessarily. Now it's been the blessing of my life.
But I'm shocked that fewer women want to have children
than even many men. Why is that? Do you think
is that cultural messages?

Speaker 3 (07:34):
I think it is cultural messages because you just touched
on it, Micah. And as I was reading over my
notes to prepare for this, I seized in on that
and I'm like, what that did does? And that's some
Pew data, And in my Federalist article I have a
link to that particular citation. But it really is surprising

(07:58):
that increasingly women are the ones that are less inclined
to have children. And that is striking because our physicality matters,
and men are wired to procreate. Our bodies are meant
to father, if you will. But it's even deeper in

(08:21):
the woman. More of her physicality is tied, more of
her emotional psyche, more of her wiring is guided toward motherhood.
And so to have a larger percentage of women today
indicating that they are not interested in being mothers is

(08:43):
an inversion, if you will, of what nature is. And
that's really concerning, and I think that has to be
a social message, a cultural message. I mean, you think
about an abortion culture. An abortion culture has to invert

(09:04):
the woman's natural tendency to care for and protect the
child within her. That doesn't happen in nature. That's a
perversion of nature, if you will. And so I think
the same thing that is happening within an abortion culture,

(09:24):
which says that pregnancy is a problem, babies are a drain,
they're a negative. I think unfortunately, women have gotten that message,
gotten that message very clearly, and I think that's probably
one of the reasons, the main reasons why they more

(09:46):
say they are more inclined not to. But the other
message is they, you know, achieving women, women who want
to accomplish everything that their education and their economic and
their political resource versus allow them to gain. They're thinking, huh,
I'm not going to be able to accomplish all that

(10:07):
if I have a child, or if I have a
number of children. But there are a number of great
women out there that are telling us a different story.
They are mothers. They are making a den in the
world they are accomplishing their professional and academic goals all
the while while being a mother. And this is what

(10:28):
this data shows us, is that motherhood and marriage in
women does lead to greater happiness.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well, I've seen some research and I've just observed this
and in random folks too. A lot of women who
buy into the ideology of success and happiness being through
career only and they set aside parenthood or even marriage.
Then all of a sudden, the next thing they know,
they're in their their forties, coming along, Yeah, thirties, and

(11:01):
you start here reading women who said I regret not
having children now and that because that time just goes
so fast. Another question that brought up is we talk
about faith differences, are there ideological differences too, because it
seems like a lot of women who have more conservative
traditional values are more likely to marry and have children,

(11:25):
although also more educated women I think are having children
in getting married. We have a lot of the bottom
end of the economic social structure. Marriage. Marriage used to
be something that I think decayed first among certain groups,
but now it's into the middle class where the decay
is even catching up. You're seeing the higher educated people
being more stable marriages than lower. What dangerous as that

(11:49):
pose to our society?

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, what it does is that marriage and motherhood, but
primarily marriage is an escalator, if you will, that improves
life well being. Men who are married tend to earn more,
they tend to work harder, they turn, they tend to

(12:12):
get promoted more. I think largely the same is true
for women. But as we're seeing the middle class and
the lower class moving away from marriage, they're moving away
from an institution that generally elevates us up the ladder,
and so they are cutting themselves off from this social mechanism,

(12:38):
if you will, marriage and a commitment to another person,
and another person believing in you and having to rely
upon you and depend upon you and encourage you to
become the best person that you can be. That makes
you a better, more productive employee. But as we're seeing
marriage rates remaining remark high among the college educated and

(13:06):
graduate level kind of citizens, they're just simply hanging on
to this ideal that elevates them to where they are. Again,
you mentioned Brad Wilcox. He has this great phrase that
many liberal elites talk left but live right. They talk left,

(13:31):
and that they're liberal in their ideas but and he
does this. He does this wonderful thing in his classes
at the University of Virginia. He will ask his students,
very elite students at the University of Virginia, how many
of you think it's morally wrong to have a baby
out of wedlock? And nearly all of them will say

(13:54):
there is no moral problem without whatsoever, like upper nineties.
But then he asks them, how many of you intend
on having your first baby after you get married? Exactly
the same numbers. Ninety eight percent of them say I
am not interested in having a baby outside of wedlock. Now,

(14:16):
they may not think that it's morally wrong, but they
know that it's not socially wise or economically wise. And
so a lot of these elites they talk left, but
they live right. They live conservatively in the sense of

(14:37):
being married, staying married, and then having their children within
a marital situation.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well, one of the things that's undermined marriage it was
because of a false message people believed. And I think
it came a lot from the divorce culture is people
think they're can have a trial marriage or cohabitation, but
does cobitate. I know a lot of it breaks up,
but people who cohabitate for length of time, Is that

(15:06):
equate to a marriage type a relationship in the data
you see?

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah. I wrote a book a number of years ago
called The Ring Makes All the Difference, And it is
a book that breaks down that very question. What is
cohabitation and is it different than marriage? And it is
categorically different than marriage. Cohabitation is basically live in dating.

(15:35):
It is more representative of dating relationships than it is
marriage relationships. In fact, the only thing that's similar in
marriage and dating is that your toothbrushes are like in
the same cup in the bathroom. Other than that, cohabiting
men are very different, cohabiting women are very different. And

(16:00):
marriage changes us, Marriage changes us for the better. And
sociologists tell us that it is the clarity of marriage.
It is the definitive nature of marriage that makes that difference.
Two very famous scholars up at the University of Denver,
right up the road from me where I live, They

(16:22):
use this phrase sliding versus deciding. They say, couple slide
into cohabitation. You know what, You stay over a night
here or there, Then you start to stay over a
couple more nights, and then you're like, hey, why are
we paying rent in two different places. Why don't we
just move in together. That is not a clarifying, definitive

(16:43):
sort of life statement. Marriage is you propose, you make
a big deal about it. Then you're going to have
a big party called a wedding where all your friends
and loved ones and family members are going to hear
you make a definitive statement to this other person to
forsake all others. And this is a clarifying event. Marriage

(17:08):
and weddings are clarifying events. So yeah, cohabitation again looks
more like dating. There's more domestic violence, there's more breakup,
there's more infidelity, there's less help with housework and things
like that in cohabiting relationships than there is in marriage.

(17:30):
And there's also competing expectations. Some scholars took cohabiting couples
men and women broke them up into different groups, the
women over here, the men over here, and they asked them,
what is the future of your relationship. One group was
more likely to say, Oh, we'll probably going to get

(17:50):
married one day, we're just waiting for the right time.
And one group was, yeah, we don't know what's going
to happen. We're just hanging out seeing what the future holds.
Who do you think was in each of those groups?

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right?

Speaker 3 (18:04):
It was the women who thought, no, I'm domesticating my
guy by living with him, and this is naturally going
to lead to marriage. And the guys, on the other hand,
are just like, you know what, everything's fine. I don't
know why we need to change anything, And so cohabitation

(18:24):
sets women up with false expectations. That's why the data
does not show that cohabiting women are just as happy
as married women. Married women are the women that are
most happy, and their happiest win their moms as well.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Well. Tell me about the difference, and then we'll go
on to here the next topic of your book. I
could talk to you for hours about this. I really admire.
I love listening to your lovery and your books. You've
got several on this topic. But what's the difference, then,
is there? I'm sure there's a difference between cohabing children
in a co having relationship born or brought into co

(19:05):
having relationship or born in a cohabitating relationship versus children
born into a married relationship.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Well, the first thing, and you know, even liberals will
tell us this or progressives will tell us this, that
what children need is stability. And you know they're like, oh,
even in same sex families, like, kids don't need a
mom and a dad, they just need stability. Well, it's
not entirely true. But to take that argument, even in cohabitation,

(19:34):
cohabitation relationships break up at tremendously high rates. If you
if you want a relationship to break up, go cohabit
with somebody, right. But and that may be good for
the adults, like, Okay, we're road testing this relationship, we're
just seeing what it's like. But in terms for children,

(19:57):
and that's not a good thing. I can explain in
that in just a minute. But in terms of the
children themselves, children in cohabiting relationships are more likely going
to be bounced from home to home to home to
home with an unrelated male in their life, which social

(20:18):
science tells us is the most dangerous place for a
child to be living is in a home where that
child does not have a biological attachment to the father,
and marriage is generally what provides that kind of relationship.
Cohabitation simply does not.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
Well.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
We often hear the term spousal abuse or domestic bias
and spousal abuse, but it's far often more it's boyfriend
abusing the woman or the child.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
No, absolutely, and you're exactly right, that is an unclear
statement that you know, Oh, spousal abuse is so high.
But when you break it down by form of relife relationship, husbands,
because of the way that they view their wife, because
of the way that they view their spouse, they are

(21:11):
substantially less likely to either sexually, physically, or verbally abuse
the woman that they live with. Cohabiting it's sky high
and cohabiting relationships, and a lot of that is because
they have different expectations of what the relationship is. I mean,

(21:35):
it's interesting that, you know, you can imagine a dating
or even a cohabiting guy will say, I'm going fishing Saturday.
You're not my wife. You know, even guys like that
understand that a wife has certain claims on a husband,
determining what he will and what he won't do. And

(21:57):
he may not always like it, but he's like, you
know what, this woman's in my life. I'm committed to her,
I've made vows to her, I've spoken my commitment to her,
and that she has more relational sway if you will
in the marital relationship than she does in the cohabiting relationship.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
You've been listening to Glenn Stanton to focus on the
family today as we've discussed the importance of marriage, marital happiness,
and the benefits of marriage to society. I'm Micah Clark
sitting in for Todd Huff today. I'm with the American
Family Association of Indiana. We have a lot of policy
papers on our website covering marriage and these issues we're
discussing today, have over thirty of them on various topics.

(22:41):
You can find that at afai n dot net. That's
afa in dot net. You can also get Glenn's information
Focused on the Family FOTF dot org. That's FOTF dot org.
Stay with us, we'll be right back to continuous discussion
with Glenn Stanton.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
Welcome back.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
I'm Micah Clark of the American Family Association of India,
guest hosting for Todd Huff. After this break, we'll talk
more with Glenn Stanton. Glenn's the author and one of
the nation's top pro family experts. In the second segment,
he's going to get into not just more information on marriage,
but also we're going to talk about one of his
books called The Myth of the Dying Church. You know,
marriage and church go together to strengthen each other. And

(23:36):
Glenn's going to talk about a perception that the church
is dying in America and that's not actually the case.
As you'll hear in this segment, strong churches are remaining
strong and staying stable. Churches that don't teach strong truth
are actually not appealing to many people and shrinking inside.
So Glenn's going to talk about that as we go

(23:58):
back talking with Glenn stanton a focus on the family,
about the importance of marriage, as well as his recent book,
The Myth of the Dying Church.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yes, yes, Myth of the Dying Church is my most
recent one and that was done in twenty eighteen, and
that's the first kind of sociology of religion that I've done.
And basically it busts this myth that you know, we

(24:27):
hear from people. Oh my goodness, young people are leaving
the church in droves, and that you know, Jesus is
not as popular as he used to be. In fact,
there is this movement Jesus needs PR, needs new pr
Jesus kind of needs our help. And I wanted to
look at the sociology of faith, and what I found

(24:52):
out and what the book talks about, is that yes,
church population is declining, but it's the declining in liberal,
mainline churches that have given up on the gospel. Churches
that preach the Gospel, that are faithful to God's Word,
that have vibrant worship. Those churches are really really doing

(25:16):
quite well. In fact, I mean we live in the
age of the megachurch. That's a relatively new phenomenon. And
the megachurches are not the liberal churches. The megachurches are
those that are typically good Bible teaching, evangelical churches that

(25:39):
call people into a real saving relationship with Christ and
provide opportunities for worship, have provide opportunities to learn God's
Word and to go out and serve the community. Those
churches are growing.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
In the last few years, when we're really within maybe
two or three years since you've written your book, I've
seen a lot of data about the new generation gen
Z and how they are different from millennials in terms
of faith. There seems to be a really interest, especially
young men of Gen Z, looking for faith. Maybe they

(26:19):
looked around and seeing previous generations or the culture and
and but have you looked into that this growth we're
hearing about gen Z even across the globe of being
more faithful.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Yeah, and that's the other thing is is that the
church is exploding across the world. But you're exactly right,
these younger men in gen Z, there is a real revival.
And what's interesting about this is this is not just
a revival in oh, my goodness, Jesus is now my

(26:56):
new best friend. You know, this is real, rugged kind
of faith. They are studying early church history, they're studying theology.
They're diving deep into the richness of the Christian faith
and the Christian tradition. And not just in a lighthearted

(27:19):
sort of, oh I got saved last week and I
love Jesus kind of thing. You know, this is real discipleship,
real informed discipleship. And that's a very exciting thing. And
I think a bit of that is a cultural reaction
because young people have been seeing the absolute drift of

(27:39):
our culture morally existentially and they're looking for something that's real.
I mean, they look and they see, like, my goodness,
we can't even define what a male and what a
man and a woman are. And they're like, I want
something that I can really hang on to that I

(28:01):
know to be true, and that's where they're diving deep
into more historical faith of Christianity, whether it be Catholicism, Orthodoxy,
or the Reformed Faith.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
One of the things that happened right before we were
seeing a lot of stories about gen Z and you
addressed this in your book quite a bit, is in fact,
I remember one headline I think in USA today it
was called the rise of the Nuns, people who now
have no faith, and there was a lot of fear
about that. But your book I kind of put that

(28:39):
a unique perspective that a lot of the nuns were
not people they may have previously identified as well. My
grandmother was Baptist, so I'm Baptist, and now they've just
come out saying I'm nothing. That is that the case?
Tell me about the.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah, fear, It really wasn't a shift in faith. It
was a more honest look at identification. And it's interesting
that when I was writing my book The Myth of
the Dying Church, I talked to the guy who coined
the phrase the nuns, and he said, actually, the group

(29:18):
that is growing more than anybody else is the nons,
and what he meant by that was the non denominational
evangelical churches. And he said, what's interesting is that I
said both of those things, but the media picked up
on the nuns nne and not the nuns the nons,

(29:45):
and so I have a chapter in my book talking
about where that growth is. Is it with the nons
or the nuns? And the nuns like you said, that
was a revival or anti revival in non belief. It

(30:06):
was just a different way of identifying. I mean, like
you said, you said it, well, it used to be oh, well,
I mean we're Methodists. We've always been to the Methodist church.
In fact, three years ago I went to my grandmother's funeral.
It was at a Methodist church. So that's what I am,
you know. And they are just more identifying, like, no,

(30:28):
I don't really believe anything. So these were just people
never having an original faith, being honest about not having
that faith. But again, the guy who coined that term
the nuns says that most of the growth in the
religious community is among evangelical, non denominational folks, those megachurches

(30:55):
that we all hear about, and that most all of
us have a few of them in our town.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
We're talking with Glenn Stanton. He's with Focus on the Family.
He's the director of Family Formation Studies and one of
the nation's top scholars and minds on families and the
importance of marriage and family. And we're talking to right
now about his book, The Myth of the Dying Church. Glenn,
I know you're busy. I'm going to let you go,
but tell us. Should people buy The Myth of the

(31:27):
Dying Church through Focus or Amazon or do you have
any preferred way for people to any of your books
because you've got half a dozen or more books out there.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yeah, I've got quite a few out there and buying
them through Focus on the Family. Just go to the
Focus on the Family bookstore online. The Myth of the
Dying Church? Is there? My book The Ring makes all
the difference? Is there another book loving my LGBT neighbor,
being friends and grace and truth? How do we stand

(31:58):
firm on what God's word says on the LGBT issue,
but also loving individuals and walking that balance very finely?
So yeah, I appreciate that shout out for them.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
You had a book too, with a unique title, You
had any book with a unique title about the messed up,
my wonderful messed up family or something like.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
That, My crazy and perfect Christian family. Yeah, and it
just talks about the realities of difficulties within family and
that all of us are there and that God has many,
many graces for us in those kinds of families.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
We've been speaking of Glenn Stanton today, the director of
Family Formation that focus on the family. I so appreciate
what Glenn talked about in the second part about cohabitation, because,
like you, I know so many young people who want
a successful marriage. They desire marriage, but they've been led
to believe that cohabitating is a trial marriage that will
make their marriage better when they do get married. Unfortunately,

(33:03):
statistics are almost eighty percent of people who live together
will never make it to the altar for a marriage ceremony,
and those who do often have higher divorce rates than
couples who do not live together before marriage. It's one
of those myths of the American culture right now that
you can have a trial marriage, or that other living
arrangements are as good for society as traditional marriage. Children

(33:27):
need a mom and a dad committed through a marital
vows and Glenn did such a good job of discussing commitment.
So to learn more about glenn As work at Focus
on the Family, can go to their website at Focus
on the Family dot com or FOTF dot com and
we'll be back with more of the Todd Huff Show.
But our website for similar information is afa I dot net.

(33:52):
That's afa I dot net for the American Family Association
of India. I'm Micah Clark.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Stay with us, Welcome back on.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Micah Clark of the American Family Association Indiana sens today
for Todd Huff. We're glad talk got some time away
and he is restling with his family. I know that
you're probably thinking I've heard a lot about family marriage,
But you know, Todd talks about politics, current events, and culture,
and I so appreciate that he does. But I hope

(34:35):
what you saw today and heard today from Glenn Stanton
it was the importance of marriage and family and children
and how that impacts culture and politics as well. I
recently saw a poll that was interesting because they pulled
young people, young adults, and they found that forty three

(34:55):
percent said that having children made them more politically. I
don't think liberalism works very well as parenting strategy. But
the finding is that also Republicans are much more likely
than Democrats to say that members of their religious community
are helping them in raising children. There's been a lot

(35:16):
of attention to gen Z. We kind of touched on
that a little bit with Glenn young people going to
church in that demographic as opposed to the boomers and
Generation Acts and other demographics. But there was a pull
from NBC recently that found a very different gap among

(35:37):
gen Z, particularly among males and females, and particularly among
those who vote differently. When they were asked to choose
from thirteen different items that they saw as possible keys
to success in life, young men who vote for Donald
Trump placed having children as their number one key to

(35:58):
a successful life, with marriage not being far behind. However,
when they ask females who voted for Kamala Harris, what
was the key among these thirteen items to a successful life,
children ranked eleventh out of thirteen and marriage ranked twelfth.
Is a key at the bottom to successful life, And

(36:21):
I think what we saw today in Glenn's discussion is
that children in marriage are a big factor in happiness
in life and success in life. And so that's one
of the reasons I want to have. Glenn On, I
appreciate you listening today. Now some of you might be thinking,
you know, I know family is important, it's where I live,
but I'm really interested in politics instead. As I said,

(36:46):
culture plays a huge role in politics. One of my
favorite quotes that ties this together. And for your economic
conservatives out there, this is a very important quote. But
President Ronald Reagan, who was one of my heroes. He
formed a lot of my worldview. I grew up as
a teenager in the eighties and Reagan was the guy

(37:08):
back then who really shaped at my political views. In
nineteen eighty two, President Reagan put together an official report
from the White House called the Report on the Family.
Here's what he wrote. So it is no accident that
every ttalitarian movement of the twentieth century has tried to
destroy the family. The essence of modern totalitarianism has been

(37:32):
to substitute the power of the state for the rights, responsibilities,
and authority of the family. Everywhere the equation holds true
where there are strong families, the freedom of the individual expands,
and the reach of the state contracts. Where family life
weakens and fails, government advances intrudes and ultimately compels, and

(37:56):
that's what we stand for at the American Family Association
of Indiana. Our mission statement fits in with this is
the American Family Association of Indiana's mission is to educate
and activate Hoosiers to preserve the traditional moral foundations of
American culture by advocating for these values in the home,
in the public square. That's the work we do in

(38:16):
the Indiagural Assembly to advance policies that strengthen families and
protect our values, because that is such a strong key.
You know, there was a Speaker of the House in
the eighteen fifties who made a famous statement. He said,
man will either be governed by the ten Commandments or
the ten thousand commandments. What he was saying was, if

(38:40):
morality breaks down, government will step in. We see that
with a breakdown of the family. We see problems with crime,
educational attainment, economic poverty with a breakdown of the family.
We're seeing that in cities, we're seeing that elsewhere. If
you want smaller, limited government, you have to have strong
families in society. You have to have strong marriages. And

(39:02):
we've seen as that's been an issue over the last
fifty years. Government has grown and grown and grown to
fill in the gaps left behind as families and institutions
like churches, the uphold families have weakened. So that's our
mission at AFA. I know that's Todd's passion as well
as he talks about these issues every day. I so

(39:23):
appreciate what Todd does on the radio and talking and
bringing these things together. And I hope what we've covered
day with Glenn Stanton about the importance of marriage and
church touches you where you live. There's always time to
deal with politics, and we're never at a shortage for
news events to talk about. But I hope today was
helpful in explaining the role of family and church. Again.

(39:47):
I'm Micah Clark with the American Family Association. I so
appreciate you listening to me and tuning into Todd every day.
He's got a great show. He's got stations all across
the nation. And for those of you don't live in
the app if you have family and want to learn
about us, or if you're are who's your our website
is afa I dot net. That's a fai N dot net.

(40:12):
But there are also pro family organizations in every state
that you can get behind and there's powers and numbers.
Get behind the group that's doing great work for this.
You can again sign up for my weekly email that
write every Wednesday. Try and get information out there. The media,
as you know, is slanted. We try and put out

(40:32):
good information policy resources. You can sign up for that
at my website at afai n dot net. We also
have about thirty different policy papers on there covering a
wide range of issues. So again, Todd, thank you for
allowing me to be on today. Thank you for listening
to The Todd huff Show. I'm Micah Clark with a

(40:53):
FA