Put Children First

Civilization transmits culture from one generation to the next, and so must be concerned with children. Education, law, the peaceful transfer of power—these civilizational elements developed over the centuries to foster the creation of children and create the space for them to grow into their inheritance. If such is a true picture, then Katy Faust’s Pro-Child Politics: Why Every Cultural, Economic, and National Issue Is a Matter of Justice for Children is an indictment of the status quo and a diagnosis for healthier politics.

The culture of the United States in 2024 does not value children, Faust contends. In fact, she makes a straightforward claim: In each of the 19 political issues surveyed in Pro-Child Politics, the needs of children should be put above adult desires but are not. Instead, adults wield power and influence to satisfy their own desires at the expense of children. Recovering a healthy politics begins with recognizing disordered priorities. Choosing to enact a child-centric approach to cultural, economic, and national political issues then serves as a nonpartisan source of unity.

Faust is a relatively minor voice in Pro-Child Politics, contributing the introductory essay and a chapter on the family. Her genius in this project is bringing in 18 other voices. Contributors are universally qualified to write their chapters; most are major players in their particular spaces. Delano Squires writes on race issues for the Heritage Foundation; Billboard Chris (Chris Elston) has become a global X (Twitter) phenomenon arguing against transgender policy on college campuses worldwide; Peachy Keenan is a clear voice on the realities of contemporary feminism. Phil Kerpen on debt, Grover Norquist on taxes, and Jon Schweppe on pornography—each of these authors combines deep expertise in a complex area and personal concern for familial and national well-being.

Each chapter of Pro-Child Politics begins with a real story and is then structured by exploring two-to-four lies told in that domain; the author then argues for an equal number of truths, with sections on how children are harmed by existing policies and how embracing truth would benefit them. For readers well-versed in an area, these chapters are rarely breathtaking; the breadth of issues covered in this volume, however, means that every reader will find new areas of knowledge. More significantly, this is a volume to read with other people. Parents should get copies for teenage children; book clubs, college classes, or friends who read and meet for coffee would all benefit from discussing these essays. Chapters are highly accessible, and authors write specific, data-driven arguments. For high school and college students passionate about building better politics, Pro-Child Politics is a great entry point into our national conversation.

With 19 topical chapters to cover, a comprehensive review is impossible in this short space. Instead, I’ll focus on one chapter from each section: Billboard Chris’ “Gender Ideology” in cultural issues, Phil Kerpen’s “Debt” in economic issues, and Lora Ries’ chapter on “Border Security and Immigration” in national issues. These entries stood out in addressing significant problems in excellent ways.

Gender ideology writing typically suffers from two flaws: abstract quasi-philosophical language about the nature of the true self, and emotionally driven personal stories about felt identity. Billboard Chris cuts through the nonsense with clear logic and explicit prose. He opens by quoting detransitioner Prisha Mosely: “There are many mental health disorders that make you hate your body, and the solution isn’t to change your body; it’s to fix your brain.” Chris’s description of the effects caused by puberty blockers is chilling: “Girls’ breasts won’t grow, their hips won’t get wider, boys’ penises won’t grow, they suffer muscular atrophy, and one widely known side effect is bone demineralization.” He goes on to describe “penile inversion vaginoplasties,” in which doctors “cut out some of the boy’s colon … and use that to fill the lining of his false vaginal cavity. It is just a wound. A wound that has to be dilated for the rest of his life to prevent it from closing up.”

He brings the same clarity to describing the reality that gender theorists need to rediscover: “There are girls who like to play football, work on cars, and play with the boys. There’s a term for them. They’re called beautiful girls!” And “There are boys who like to cook, draw, read, and dance. There’s a term for them. They are called beautiful boys!” Such lucidity serves to equip adults to better care for gender-confused children.

Billboard Chris closes his essay by arguing that “when people know the truths about gender—that there’s no such thing as a ‘gender identity,’ just a beautiful array of personalities; that there’s no such thing as a transgender child; and that children cannot consent to experimental transgender treatments—they take action.” In short, when adults grasp just what gender ideology entails, they cannot support the mutilation of children.

In his discussion of the national debt, Phil Kerpen makes an abstraction concrete, concluding that solving the debt crisis is necessary for a good life. The problem “is not a lack of revenue, but an addiction to spending” on the part of the federal bureaucracy. He argues that “these lies about federal spending are not just intellectual errors; they are moral failings. … A government that lives beyond its means creates a society that lives beneath its potential.” Kerpen insists that when “the response to every crisis is to pile trillions of dollars onto the national debt,” you have the makings of a catastrophe. Contra Keynesian-influenced modern monetary theory, the debt is real and must be repaid. Children will

bear the burden of paying that debt back, either through prosperity-reducing future taxes, inflation-producing monetization through Federal reserve money printing, or else perpetual refinancing. This amounts to picking the pockets of our children to temporarily relieve the problems of the present, while frequently failing to achieve even that short-term objective.

Kerpen pulls no punches in what a $35 trillion national debt means: “A child born today faces diminished job prospects and a government too hamstrung by interest payments to effectively provide for the national defense, the administration of justice, and the other core functions of government.” In looking to a solution, he cites “Mitchell’s Golden Rule: ‘Ensure that government spending, over time, grows more slowly than the private economy.’” It is possible to return to fiscal solvency on a national scale, but such a choice requires prioritizing the future of children over the present reality of adults.

Lora Ries of the Heritage Foundation focuses on the ways legislation motivates unaccompanied minors to enter the United States. In essence, the status quo incentivizes cartels to ship teens into our country, where they become prey to perverted desires. “Yolanda came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied alien child (UAC), and she is just one among thousands whom U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encounter each month. Like Yolanda, too many of these children are subject to sex trafficking once in the U.S.” Ries focuses on how perverse incentives create this tragedy: “Anyone who reads [Section 235 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008] easily understood that it would entice parents to send their children across the border unaccompanied to gain entry, receive immigration benefits, and to establish a family foothold in the U.S. for subsequent familial reunification.” Since 2021, the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has “repeatedly stated that unaccompanied children would be allowed into the U.S. His words amounted to free advertising for Mexican trafficking cartels.”

Ries tracks the increase of unaccompanied alien children into the U.S. over the years; each year the number of UACs has risen. “While Joe Biden has been in the White House, [Customs and Border Patrol] agents have encountered over 490,000 unaccompanied alien children, a historic number.” According to the House Budget Committee, “Cartels increased their human trafficking business and saw their profits rise to $30 million per day, or $1 billion per month.” The solution is clear: “Preventing unaccompanied child border crossings likewise protects children from abandonment, drugging, rape, recruitment into gangs, and other trauma while still in Mexico.” To stop this from happening “requires removing the incentives for unaccompanied child border crossings.” Immigration is not a partisan issue; instead, it is a matter of respecting the family as the child’s natural community. Incentives should not attempt to destroy the family; to do so only brings harm to the most vulnerable.

Pro-Child Politics affirms that adults ought to put children’s interest above their own; when we fail in this responsibility, children are harmed. Our cultural, economic, and national issues today are defined by the interests of adults. When we approach our issues first with the question “What is the interest of the child?” we create a healthier politics, a unified nation, and the ability to pass our civilization on to the next generation. Katy Faust and her team have written an excellent book t

By Joshua Herring, Ph. D , professor of classical education at Thales College