Kids — Part I

Get married. Have babies. Train em' up.

This is the first of a three-part series on raising children. To raise them, of course, first we must have them…

I am married to Ally. She’s a woman. Call me old-fashioned.

We’ve been married for 17 years, and we have four kids. They are incredible. Crazy. Wild. And a constant source of my sanctification. They are the joy of my life.

I want my kids to know Jesus. And though that is ultimately between them [volition] and God [election], I am doing everything in my power to point them to Jesus. If they are a vine, and God gives the growth, consider me the trellis… I am here to help them grow in the right direction.

And this is exactly what scripture demands when it says, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" [Pr 22:6].

Yet, the opposite is happening. Of all the world’s religions, evangelical Christianity is among the least likely to be passed down from one generation to the next. Islam and Hinduism take home the "fruitful and multiplying" award, with intergenerational retention rates greater than 90%.

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Two reasons why Christianity is not "fruitful" and "multiplying…"

1. Fewer Marriages = Fewer Babies

We are not getting married, and if we do, it will be later in life, resulting in fewer [to no] children. Data scientist Stephen J. Shaw noted that when a woman turns 28, and a man turns 30, the chance of them ever having children is reduced to 50/50. We are currently in the middle of a population recession. In the 1970s, the average number of children per household was 3.8. Today it is 1.6.

In 1960, 60% of women born were married by age 25. Today, just 4% of women born in 1998 are married. Current predictive models [based on existing trends from the Office for National Statistics] suggest that only 58% of Gen Z women and 56% of Gen Z men will enter into a legal marriage by age 50. We are on track to see fewer marriages in Gen Z than any other generation in American history.

What used to be mocked as the 'ol’ ball and chain' turned out to be the very thing anchoring men, families, and civilizations. Now, modern trends are upending the millennia-old tradition:

• Modern career expectations and competition… If you’re going to achieve your dreams, you’d better get out there and make a name for yourself, put in those late nights for a few years. Job and career advancement takes precedence over the covenant family, especially if you’re in your 20s.

• Contemporary educational priorities… If you want that job described above, it’s going to require some schooling. Lots of it, in fact. Soul-crushing amounts. Grad school, post-grad, internships, study abroad… Today, the average age of a college student is 25, and he carries approximately $43,333 in student debt. Of course, that’s assuming he finishes on time. He won’t. Fewer than half of first-time students graduate within four years, with roughly 62% completing their degree within six years.

• Fun prioritized in the gap years… You extend adolescence a little longer by sowing a few oats, traveling a bit, and seeing the world while you’re in your twenties. Just you, your dog, and dad’s credit card. YOLO baby!!!

• Waiting too long to find the right person… You wait so long for the 'perfect person' that you end up alone, mistaking lifelong covenant for endless consumer choice. "Is this really the person I’m going to be with? She’s not that interesting…" is the mindset quietly poisoning an entire generation.

Marriage was never designed to be sustained by constant novelty, entertainment, or emotional fireworks. Real love deepens through sacrifice, shared suffering, inside jokes, ordinary dinners, raising children, paying bills, burying parents, forgiving failures, and growing old together. The modern mind has confused fascination with faithfulness. When you spend your life endlessly evaluating people like products, eventually, no one feels good enough. There is always someone more attractive, more exciting, more successful, more interesting. So we keep scrolling, keep delaying, keep searching, only to wake up one day shocked by our own loneliness.

Can a civilization survive when commitment must compete with personal growth and perpetual excitement? I think not.

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Someone you know needs the wild rumpus? Pull the trigger. Sharing is caring

What all this means is simple… People are getting married later, fewer are getting married at all, and the biological clock keeps ticking [while culture tells us we have unlimited time]. We’ve traded covenant for convenience, permanence for optionality, and family for endless self-exploration.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our day is that people do not realize what they have lost until it is too late. Careers can be built later. Money can be made later. But family [fertility] is not infinitely elastic. Youth does not last forever. There are some windows in life that, once closed, do not easily reopen.

A society cannot endlessly delay marriage, delay children, weaken family, and still expect stability, joy, and preservation. Eventually, the bill comes due. Empty nurseries become empty homes. Empty homes become empty schools. And empty schools become empty cities. A silent nursery is often the first sign of a dying civilization.

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You can’t train up a child in the way he should go if there is no child to train. Christianity has always advanced through the ages, not primarily through proselytization, but through birth. The muslims are beating us because they are simply out-birthing us. Those who practice Islam seem to take Proverbs 22:6 more seriously than we do.

Back to the text and Reason 2 as to why we are not "fruitful and multiplying" on Thursday.

Until then, get married and make babies [in that order].

For the King,

— Harp

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Food for thought…. Not only are timelines shifting, so are the expressions of sexuality:

— One in five Gen Z adults identifies as something other than heterosexual.

— Gallup’s longitudinal data demonstrates that LGBTQ+ identification in the US has nearly tripled since 2012, rising from 3.5% to 9.3% in 2024.

—33% of Gen Z have interacted with an AI as a romantic partner.

—54% of teens first encountered pornography by age 13.

— On top of all this, Generation Z is the least sexually active young cohort in modern recorded history.

No sex, no babies. No heterosexual sex, no babies. Two male plugs don’t make a right, I mean light…

And for the record… Was there ever a better baby-making anthem? I think not.