Dads are crucial. We’ve known this for a long time. For example, former president Barack Obama, despite advancing many policies that undermined the family, remained an outspoken voice on the importance of loving, involved fathers. According to all the evidence, he was partly correct. Kids need their fathers, but do best when their fathers are married to their mothers.
This sweet viral video shows a lonely grandpa asking his granddaughter over for a sleepover and the plans that they end up making for the night. Megan Elizabeth is 29 years old, and she grew up in Illinois across the street from her grandparents. Her grandmother died of Alzheimer's a few years ago, but her 92-year-old grandfather is still with us, although his health is declining.
Recently, Megan's grandfather texted her asking is she wanted to have a sleepover at his house. And she made a video that she shared on TikTok where she showed his heartwarming text messages.
Actor Henry Winkler stepped up to care for his mom in her final years despite his tough childhood.
Winkler was raised by two parents who valued hard work and education. His parents had scars from their own parents dying in concentration camps, and his mother and father had escaped Concentration Camps in 1939. These tragic facts overshadowed any happiness and joy Winkler tried to create. Growing up, Winkler gravitated towards comedy and laughter. At the same time, he struggled in school because neither his parents nor himself realized he had a learning disability.
Despite these unknown facts, Winkler did the best he could given the circumstances of his life.
A Democratic legislator sparked a major backlash this week when she labeled traditional beliefs about marriage “dangerous and un-American” and criticized the idea that children need a mother and father.
Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed two groups of men. One is a group of 456 boys from Boston’s most troubled families and roughest neighborhoods. The other consisted of 268 Harvard College students, chosen by a professor of hygiene specifically for their potential to become healthy, well-adjusted adults. The focus of the longitudinal study has been to discern the factors that best predict a long, healthy life.
The researchers who have followed these young men have maintained a stunning 84 percent participation rate over eight decades. They have visited homes, spoken to parents and siblings, tracked medical exams, and followed marriages and careers. The study, which is currently tracking a second generation of participants, has produced a wealth of significant data. However, in a recent article published in The Wall Street Journal, director Dr. Robert Waldinger and associate director Dr. Marc Schulz pointed to the most significant contributing factor for physical health, mental health, and longevity.
A new research poll from the Barna Group shows that Christians are most influenced by family members when it comes to resolving conflicts.
In internet lingo, to “say the quiet part out loud” means to reveal one’s true intentions or motives that were supposed to remain publicly unsaid. Recently, a couple of prominent organizations that deal with children have “said the quiet part out loud” when talking about parental rights.
I hope we will always be amazed and humbled that God chooses to use the Colson Center to equip His people.
Family is not merely a “name.” G.K. Chesterton called the family a “triangle of truisms,” with the three sides of father, mother, and child. “The love of man and woman is not an institution that can be abolished, or a contract that can be terminated,” he wrote. “It is something older than all institutions or contracts, and something that is certain to outlast them all.”
Grocery store remarks can reveal a lot about a culture. Just ask any mother or father of more than 1.7 children about the comments that strangers somehow feel free to make about their unfashionably large broods. These comments reveal what more and more data is also showing. A lower percentage of Westerners, including Americans, are embarking on parenthood than ever before. However, these comments also betray how we think about children: as burdens, impositions on freedom, or so very, very expensive that only the wealthy can afford them.
