As Goes the Family So Goes Religion & Conservatism

Both Religion and Conservatism become impossible to understand without the family. The reason for this is because the family is the last place we have where piety functions as a part of every-day life. Piety is the reverence we give to things because their nature demands it. The best illustration of this, as thinkers from Cicero, Aquinas, and Burke have noted, is the natural family and the relationship between parent and child. The child did not contract with his parents and clearly enumerate his and their responsibilities. Nor did he consent to their authority of his life. Yet still, the child is expected to obey the authority of his parents because the institution of parenthood, by its nature, demands reverence.

The world’s religions have all agreed that God, by his nature, demands reverence from us. We did not enter into a contract with God, nor did we consent to enter the world He has created, but He demands a certain reverence nonetheless. Similarly, conservatism has always taught that one’s country, contra some enlightenment thinkers, is deserving of the same sort of reverence. No one consents to being born in a certain kingdom, therefore any reverence we have for hearth and home cannot be based on our consenting to its forms.

Younger generations have always rejected piety towards God and Country in varying degrees. One thing that separates our rising generation from the past, however, is that we have separated sex from nature and procreation. In the past, we could almost always count on young liberals growing up, getting married, having children, and then one day in a fit of frustration proclaiming “Because I said so!” in response to the innocent question “Why?”

By having children piety begins to make sense. Former young liberals learn quickly that there actually are forms of authority deserving of reverence just because of their intrinsic nature. To many of these young minds, it is only after having children that God, Religion, and Conservatism begin to make sense. By having children we cease to be children ourselves.

The problem now is that fewer people are getting married and fewer people are having children. Of those who do get married, the ceremony has been so reduced to the form of a contract, that it is less of an existential commitment, and instead merely one possible option amongst many. Even the creation of children has become contractualized through the influence of New Reproductive Technologies, where the time and place of a child’s birth is completely controlled, and the third parties involved are interviewed to ensure the child will have desirable qualities. Once the existence and the attributes of the child become one possibility out of the many that could have been contracted for, the institution of parenthood ceases to demand reverence because of its intrinsic nature. Once the child becomes self-aware, he could easily refuse to honor his parents on the grounds that if they would have only spent a few thousand dollars more on a better surrogate or sperm donor he could have easily been accepted to Harvard.

This is all that is at stake as the family continues to unravel. Fortunately for conservatives, this may be the easiest battle we have faced yet, for no one wants to live in a world without children.