Topic: Nuclear Families
“When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.”
One interpretation of this is that he (and by extent, the authors of Project 2025), wish to dictate what it is we “ought” – that is, have families and children. He goes on to say that the government resents that we (Americans) don’t want to be told how to live (I agree), but then tacitly supports the government dictating how people should live.
Full contextual analysis of the foreword here.
“The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage,” replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
By “subsidizing single motherhood”, the author means government assistance programs like TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and SNAP (food stamps), and any other form of financial aid that helps single mothers support their children. They think that by taking these things away, they’ll be “encouraging nuclear families”, but the reality is that it plunges many single mothers into poverty, and incentivizes them to stay in abusive marriages or relationships because there is no help for them outside of that. Vice president-elect J.D. Vance has publicly suggested that kids suffer when marriages fail, even when those marriages are violent (if not explicitly saying women should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their children, as the left is fond of claiming):
“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’ And maybe it worked out for the moms and dad, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.” [Source]
Seems to me, however, that’s EXACTLY what he’s at least implying. And what of deadbeat dads who don’t want to be involved with their children? Why would you punish those mothers and children? Because punishing women is part of the appeal of these policies, for them. And has no needy family with a father figure ever existed? Has there never been a single father? Why are we singling out women when we’re deciding we’re denying needy people help?
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“In the context of current and emerging reproductive technologies, HHS policies should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them.”
This is an argument against certain types of IVF, surrogacy, adoption, and use of donor gametes to create families.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“Because the male-female dyad is essential to human nature and because every child has a right to a mother and father, three-parent embryo creation and human cloning research should be banned.”
This mischaracterizes the purpose of “three-parent embryo creation.”
What it IS, is removing the nucleus from a mother’s egg and placing it into a donor egg with healthy mitochondria, which is then fertilized by the father. The goal is to prevent mothers from passing on genetic illnesses that they’re aware they carry (and are caused by mitochondrial disease.) Examples of mitochondrial diseases that babies can inherit include MELAS syndrome, Kearns-Sayre syndrome, Leigh syndrome, neuropathy, ataxia, NARP, Pearson syndrome, and more. This practice enables women who carry hereditary genetic diseases to have healthy biological children.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“States should consider using some of their Title IV-B funding for providing healthy marriage and relationship education for families at risk of having their children placed in foster care.”
If my home life is in such a shambles that my children are in danger of being put in foster care, I can’t think of anything more useless than marriage counseling. Most kids end up in foster care because they’re being abused or neglected by one or both parents. Severino is suggesting not removing children from abusive and neglectful situations, but counseling their parents on “healthy relationships.” Statistics suggest that the majority of abusers NEVER STOP. Counseling regarding how to safely leave an abusive relationship and help doing so would be far more appropriate here. Note that I am not at all against marriage and relationship counseling, nor against the federal government helping to offer it. I AM against using marriage counseling as a substitute for removing children from abusive situations.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“Social science reports that assess the objective outcomes for children raised in homes aside from a heterosexual, intact marriage are clear: All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.”
This is categorically untrue. Research finds that kids raised by same-sex couples fare the same as – or better than – kids of straight couples. [Source]
“On some metrics, children of sexual minority parents actually outperformed their peers from traditional families, particularly when it came to psychological adjustment and child-parent relationships.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“The Secretary’s antidiscrimination policy statements should never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation. Rather, the Secretary should proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
This is in no way an “anti” discrimination policy. Also, “all children having a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them” shits on IVF, egg and sperm donation, IUI, adoption, step-parents, family raising children as their own when their parents cannot, etc.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“In dealing with sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, the OASH should focus on root-cause analysis with a focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance.”
Yes, because married women famously have never required abortion care. Your body magically can carry babies to term without any complications once you say “I do.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“In addition, HUD programs tend to perpetuate the notion of bureaucratically provided housing as a basic life need and, whether intentionally or not, fail to acknowledge that these public benefits too often have led to intergenerational poverty traps, have implicitly penalized family formation in traditional two-parent marriages, and have discouraged work and income growth, thereby limiting upward mobility.”
The argument that HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) programs have “implicitly penalized family formation in traditional two-parent marriages” likely refers to how certain public assistance programs, including housing benefits, use income thresholds to determine eligibility. In two-parent households, the combined income of both parents can push the family above the income limit for receiving assistance, effectively reducing or eliminating benefits.
He’s arguing that this discourages people from getting married, so they can stay on federal aid. I’d argue that if HUD programs are indeed leaving married couples with families behind, perhaps we need to revisit the way the programs are structured. I suspect Carson will argue for stripping unmarried people of benefits, rather than raising the income threshold for needy families.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.6: Department of Housing and Urban Development here.