This article is the second in a two-part series featuring remarks from the annual National Conservatism Conference 2025 held September 2-4 in Washington D.C. You can read part one here.
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., gave a compelling pro-family address as one of the opening speakers at this year’s National Conservative Conference in Washington, D.C.
The Family’s Decline
“Our Founders, for all their erudition, prescience and political imagination, could never have envisioned the state of the American family today,” Roberts warned attendees Tuesday.
“The American family – the spiritual heart and soul that animates that Constitution – has grown weak, fractured and hollow.”
Roberts cited concerning statistics showing the average age of first marriage – for both men and women – has risen in recent decades, now sitting at 31 and 29, respectively.
Meanwhile, both marriage and birth rates have fallen dramatically. Married-couple households made up just 47% of all U.S. households in 2022, down from 71% in 1970. The U.S. birth rate is at a record low with less than 1.6 children being born per woman.
Part of the problem is that families who do desire children don’t think they can afford them.
“Since the 1970s, Americans have consistently said their ideal family size is about two-and-a-half children,” Roberts also said. “But reality has fallen short. Financial pressures, cultural hostility to marriage, and the erosion of hope have opened a tragic gap between the families that Americans desire and the families they believe they can achieve.”
Roberts blamed, in part, the anti-child, anti-family policies of several 20th century progressive activists and thinkers like Margaret Sanger and John Dewey.
“[Sanger] championed sterilization, spread contraceptives, and began reengineering our culture around the idea that children are a burden,” Roberts explained, while men like Dewey led a “transformation in education … shift[ing] children’s formation from home and church to state institutions.”
These progressives “largely succeeded” in their goal of reshaping American culture and society, Roberts contended, adding,
We must meet the long campaign being waged against the family with an equally long offensive campaign to restore it.
The Family’s Restoration
Roberts proposed two solutions to America’s crisis of the family. First, conservative Americans must lead with their actions by living out their pro-family commitments.
“We cannot just praise marriage from the podium. We must enter into it, embrace its commitments, and remain faithful through its trials,” he said. “We cannot merely lament the falling birthrate; we must welcome children into our homes and give them the love and discipline they need to grow into virtuous citizens.”
Second, Roberts recommended the virtue of prudence guide our lawmakers and elected representatives in their creation of laws:
Prudence … demands we ask of every policy and every proposal, “Will this strengthen the American family? Will it advance the common good of the American people? Will it cultivate the virtues without which liberty cannot endure?”
“If the answer is no, even if a proposal aligns with some past ideological commitment, prudence requires we reject it,” Roberts continued. “But if the answer is yes, then prudence requires us to embrace it.”
“The surest test of any policy, any law, any reform, is whether it fortifies the institution upon which the future of our nation stands. If it does, it is worth pursuing. If it doesn’t, then it’s not worth the time.”
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