Principles on Parental Rights and Child Flourishing

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Eikon.

1. God’s creation of mankind as male and female in His image grounds human dignity, undergirds the institution of marriage, and establishes the natural family through procreation (Gen 1:27–28; 2:24).
2. God has established the family prior to the state to be the first and foundational unit of society for maximal human flourishing, and thus the family enjoys certain rights, responsibilities, priorities, and privileges.
3. God’s good, creational design gives children to fathers and mothers (Gen 4:1; Ps 127:3), a stewardship accompanied by parental rights and duties ordered to a child’s good to provide for, to protect, to nurture, and to educate their own children to full maturity without interference.
4. These God-given parental rights and duties complement and do not negate the rights of a child to be nourished, to grow, to develop body and soul, to be educated, and to reach adulthood in bodily integrity, including with their procreative potential intact.
5. Neither parents nor the state are authorized to facilitate a minor child undergoing irreversible therapies and/or surgeries aimed at changing their God-assigned biological identity as male or female.
6. The law rightly acknowledges that a minor child cannot consent to adult sexual activity, so also should the law recognize that a child cannot consent to any medical interventions, including hormones and surgeries, that would inhibit their future sexual and reproductive capacities.
7. It is becoming increasingly common for many in the medical, educational, and legal sectors to encroach upon God-given parental rights to raise their own children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4) and to educate them according to God’s commands (Deut 6:6–7; Prov 22:6).
8. Parents have a God-given stewardship and priority to raise and educate their own children, rather than the state, medical professionals, teachers, or counselors.
9. It is to act against Nature and Nature’s God for courts to strip custody from parents who oppose their child’s so-called gender transition.
10. Parents should exercise their God-given rights and duties ordered to the good of their own children, under the authority of God, recognizing that they will be held accountable for their choices (Matt 25:14-30).
11. When God’s good design for the family breaks down, God authorizes the state to intervene (Rom 13:1–4; 1 Pet 2:13–14), particularly in the case of an established pattern of abuse or neglect, but always in pursuit of promoting the natural family and never denigrating or attempting to replace it.
12. Churches, pastors, and Christians of goodwill everywhere should advocate for policies and practices that support and strengthen the family unit, and should oppose any and all legal and cultural efforts aimed at undermining the natural family, breaking the bond between parent and child, or rejecting God’s good design for male and female created in his image.
    

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