The Daily Wire&#8217;s Isabel Brown fired back after the hosts of ABC&#8217;s &#8220;The View&#8221; went into full meltdown mode on Monday over her passionate support for younger women embracing more traditional families.
&#8220;I’d like to thank the women of @TheView for showing their truest, darkest colors today: they’re literally shrieking like demons at the thought of encouraging young women to have children. PS &#8211; &#8216;stupidest&#8217; isn&#8217;t a real word,&#8221; Brown posted.
&#8220;They want you to hate happy, healthy, fulfilled young people with kids. Even more disturbingly, they want you to hate babies so much that you never want them in the first place. Their response to my encouragement for Gen Z women to get married and have kids? &#8216;You&#8217;re telling people to have as many babies as they want to? Again I&#8217;m going to send you back into the past,'&#8221; Brown continued. &#8220;In other words, *wanting* a baby literally is not a choice as a so-called &#8217;empowered&#8217; woman in 2026.&#8221;
Brown doubled down, saying that she believed the family was the &#8220;strongest threat to evil&#8221; in the world, and adding, &#8220;Again, I reiterate: HAVE THE COURAGE to get married and have a beautiful family. Your life will be better because of it.&#8221;
After promising to further address the topic — and the comments from &#8220;The View&#8221; — on her next Daily Wire show, Brown shared the full segment from the ABC midday talk show: &#8220;If you just can&#8217;t help yourself in the meantime &amp; want to grab some popcorn — here&#8217;s the whole segment of 5 grown women screeching about how I am the &#8220;stupidest&#8221; person on the Internet, who should divorce my husband, and probably never should have become a mom in the first place. Misery sure loves projection, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;
WATCH:
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And if you just can&#8217;t help yourself in the meantime &amp; want to grab some popcorn &#8211; here&#8217;s the whole segment of 5 grown women screeching about how I am the &#8220;stupidest&#8221; person on the Internet, who should divorce my husband, and probably never should have become a mom in the first… <a href="https://t.co/ijm2z8MxfV">pic.twitter.com/ijm2z8MxfV</a>
— Isabel Brown (@theisabelb) <a href="https://twitter.com/theisabelb/status/2038691529795965026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 30, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Whoopi Goldberg opened the segment with a clip of Brown, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), encouraging young women to get married and have children — and she and her cohosts immediately claimed that Brown was promoting backward thinking.
Goldberg began by claiming that women of color had been criticized in the past for having too many children, saying they were the reason that government assistance programs were getting cut.
Cohost Sara Haines argued that by promoting traditional families, Brown was reducing women to only the value of their reproductive organs: &#8220;The whole women&#8217;s movement was not about bucking the trend of staying at home or loving tradition. It was giving women a choice to do what they wanted. And that&#8217;s what this is too. Marriage, children. It&#8217;s a choice.&#8221;
&#8220;The fact we keep putting this on women, that their only worth in society, politics, policy is if they produce a baby or have a husband is the stupidest, most old-fashioned thing!&#8221; Haines continued. &#8220;We have come too far! The world has over 8 billion people! We no longer need to force people to procreate and pump out babies! We have arrived here! Women now and girls now have a choice!&#8221;
Ana Navarro also weighed in, ignoring the fact that Brown had been clear about women getting married prior to starting families and complaining that no one was expecting men to step up and be responsible for all the babies.
&#8220;If you&#8217;re not paying my bills, you don&#8217;t get to tell me what I do with my uterus,&#8221; she declared.
Cohost Sunny Hostin went a different direction entirely, claiming that Brown&#8217;s position was untenable primarily because of President Donald Trump. Blaming him for the fact that child care was too expensive for most working families, Hostin argued that women should think twice before following her advice.
Goldberg followed right behind, arguing that red states were enacting laws that were not encouraging women to do anything other than &#8220;flee&#8221; from them: &#8220;You&#8217;re telling people to have as many babies as they want to? Again I&#8217;m going to send you back into the past.&#8221;

Isabel Brown

Daily Wire Host Fires Back After ‘The View’ Melts Down Over Her Support For Young Families

Daily Wire Host Fires Back After 'The View' Melts Down Over Her Support For Young Families

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For generations, the conversation about motherhood has been framed as a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-girl-boss-dream-promised-women-everything-why-so-many-now-want-out">binary choice</a>: boss babe or homemaker? Corner office or weekly playgroup? But in more recent years, those two worlds have collided, with a quiet third option emerging as a viable alternative. Enter the full-time working mom who is also a full-time caregiver for her kids. It’s not a fringe phenomenon: One 2025 <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/03/21/remote-work-parents-kids-childcare/82228037007/">survey</a> estimated that 2.3 million workers either keep their children home with them while working remotely or bring their children to the office.
Women are more likely than men to seek out these arrangements — and not just because of childcare. The flexibility that comes with remote work is increasingly seen as non-negotiable by mothers of young children. Data from the Brookings Institution <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/seven-economic-facts-about-prime-age-labor-force-participation/">found</a> that remote work is most common among parents with children under five, with mothers of young children logging the highest rates of fully remote work across all demographic groups.
When I put out a call on social media asking for mothers who were working from home without external childcare to share their stories, the response was overwhelming. No two situations were exactly alike. Some working moms had occasional help — from family, part-time nannies, or a spouse working different shifts. Others swapped childcare with other working moms. There were also plenty doing it completely alone: single mothers or married women whose husbands worked long hours outside the home.
Everyone was cobbling together a slightly different version of this seemingly impossible arrangement. What most had in common was a deep sense of gratitude, a heaping side of guilt, and the constant urge to prove themselves.
The nap time hustle is real
Molly, an SEO manager and mother to an eight-month-old and a six-year-old, does the majority of her work around her kids’ schedules. She describes her days as wholly dependent on them.
“The nap time hustle is a real thing. Sometimes I feel like I can get more done in that two-hour nap than I can in a four-hour time span when my son is awake,” she told The Daily Wire in an interview.
Molly checks email during school pickups. She gets back on her computer after the kids are in bed, often until 10 p.m., and is the first to admit that work-life separation isn’t her strong suit.
“I’m pretty awful about separating work and personal life right now, but I know that life won’t always be like this,” she said.
Kate, a content marketing writer for a fintech company with a 10-month-old, left a job she loved because its strict in-office culture left her no flexibility. Her new role pays more and allows her to work from wherever she wants.
“When I’m on a video call, I’m usually muted while [my son] throws blocks around the room at my feet,” she admitted. “I haven’t sat at my desk in months; my laptop is often precariously balanced on a surface high enough to keep him away from the keyboard.”
Nap time, when it happens, is sacred. Evenings and weekends are spent catching up. She wakes at 2 a.m. sometimes — not just because of the baby, but because her brain won’t stop working.
These mothers are staking a claim to something that doesn’t have a clean label yet: making money and achieving professional success, but also being there when the kids get home from school. Breastfeeding between meetings. Reading picture books on their lunch breaks. Being present, even imperfectly, for all of it. They’re doing it by necessity, by choice, or — more often than not — some complicated combination of the two.
There is a stigma associated with working from home with kids, though. One popular Instagram influencer with nearly 200,000 followers — who regularly shares her real name, profession, and work-from-home-with-kids content online — declined to be interviewed for this piece.
“It makes no sense with me sharing online, but something for an article feels too official,” she wrote in response to an interview request.
She wasn’t alone in her hesitation. Even on the social media thread where I solicited respondents, there was pushback from strangers. “[Women] shouldn’t be doing this,” one commenter wrote. “Let’s not normalize this.” 
The judgment comes from both sides: traditional working moms can be skeptical that someone is really pulling her weight while wrangling a toddler, and full-time stay-at-home moms sometimes assume the kids are running feral. Neither is exactly right.
Guilt that never clocks out
Unlike the influencer, dozens of full-time work-from-home moms were eager to share their strategies, triumphs, and challenges. One mom was candid with some of her tips for success.
“Full disclosure: I use a mouse jiggler to keep my Teams status green and computer from locking between the hours of 8:30 and 5,” she told The Daily Wire. But that admission doesn’t mean she’s a slacker.
In the same breath, this mom mentioned how important it is to her not to back off responsibilities or display anxiety about her workload. As part of a small team of parents with older children who largely trust her to hit her deadlines, she says the pressure to perform at pre-baby levels is constant. Still, she recognizes her most important role. 
“You are replaceable in your workplace, but the time with your children while they are young is finite and precious,” she said.
If there was one word that surfaced again and again in these conversations, it was guilt. If the moms focus on work, they feel like they’re neglecting their kids. If they step away to push their kids on the swings, they feel like they’re shortchanging their employers — even when their in-office colleagues spent the same 20 minutes making a Starbucks run.
Jenna, who works in tech sales and has a three-year-old and a four-month-old, described it by saying, “It’s so hard trying to repeatedly explain to [my daughter] that I have to work and can’t focus on her as much as I want to. And then it’s simultaneously hard to really focus on work when she’s constantly asking me to play. I feel guilty either way.”
Her employer knows her kids are at home with her and is understanding. But the voice in her head is the loudest critic. “I know that I’m way harder on myself about it than any of them are on me,” she added.
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<div id="attachment_1067407" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1067407" class="size-medium wp-image-1067407" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-523428608-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-523428608-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-523428608-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-523428608-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-523428608.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Getty Images</div>
Jessica, a director of marketing at a digital marketing agency with a two-and-a-half-year-old son, has the receipts to prove it can work.
“I have seen comments on social media from people who say that it’s not possible to work from home with kids without being a terrible employee — and I fully disagree,” she said. “I have a great working relationship with my boss, I never miss deadlines, and have received promotions and raises during my time working from home with my son.”
Not everyone is working from a home office. Laurel takes a different approach entirely: She brings her nearly two-year-old twins to the office where she works for a small vitamin and supplement company.
When she found out she was having twins, her company didn’t even have a maternity policy. Faced with the high cost of living in her state, she went to her boss — who has older children he used to bring to the office himself — and they agreed to try the arrangement on a trial basis.
That was almost two years ago. Now there’s a dedicated room in the office with two pack-and-plays, a changing table, and a sound machine. When the twins nap, the office runs normally. When they’re awake, they play in their mother’s office or attend meetings with her. She advocated for more companies thinking outside the box like this.
“I feel like everybody is just used to the status quo, and it’s just not something that we do. But I really wish that we would, because so many moms are going through this,” Laurel said of her arrangement. 
She’s floated the idea of the company hiring a part-time in-office babysitter, or creating a dedicated childcare space as an employee benefit — a model she believes is more feasible than most corporate cultures are willing to consider.
What do these mothers want employers to understand? Molly’s answer cuts to the heart of a disconnect that runs through nearly every story.
“I love seeing the term ‘flexible hours’ on job listings, but I’m not sure that most companies actually use that term correctly,&#8221; she said. &#8220;If you can find a working parent that is willing to work mornings, evenings, or weekends to make sure their job gets done and gets done well, I think you’ve found a really great employee.&#8221;
Challenging the status quo
For some of these women, the arrangement wasn’t a lifestyle choice; it was a means of survival. Micaela became a virtual assistant after leaving an abusive marriage and being financially cut off, building a career from scratch while raising a two-year-old alone.
“I feel a lot of pressure throughout the day to figure out how I’m going to fit all my hours in,&#8221; Micaela said. &#8220;Whenever my son is asleep or otherwise occupied, I feel torn between the pressure to get my hours in, take care of my home, or take care of my own self-care.”
She’s also become an advocate for how employers think about mothers more broadly.
“I think most employers undervalue mothers,” she told The Daily Wire. “Most moms are some of the hardest-working employees, and when employers are flexible and understanding in regard to children, it opens up the hiring pool and reduces work-life balance-related stress.”
Sarah, a Stitch Fix stylist and Amazon content creator in Minnesota with three children ages five, three, and almost two, has two part-time jobs totaling 40 hours a week and homeschools all three of her kids. 
“Some days, things go sideways and you’re going to feel like a failure. Some days, you’ll feel like you’ve totally got it all figured out,” she said. “The biggest benefit is that I get a front row seat to my kids growing up. Nobody knows them better than I do. There are only so many years of your kids being little — be there.”
The working from home with kids life has become a reality for millions of moms. Their children are learning independence, adaptability, and the value of hard work modeled by example. Their employers are getting employees who, by necessity, are more efficient, more motivated, and more determined to protect the life they’ve built.
Laurel put it best in the advice she’d give any mother thinking about trying this: “Try not to compare your old self to your current self because it’s easy to get in your head about productivity and all that. Just try to be grateful for the experience. In the end, you will look back and realize that it was such a blessing to have that opportunity.”
Not everyone will get that opportunity. But for the women who do, they’re not necessarily failing at both. They’re going down the long road to inventing something new.

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The Working Mom Shift That’s Challenging The Status Quo

Children

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Remote Work

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Large American Family Group Gathering

Why Kicking Your Kids Out At 18 Is Actually Insane

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Gen Z

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Matt Walsh

Opinion

Parenting

Teenagers

“Hamnet” star Jessie Buckley, who just won the Academy Award for Best Actress on Sunday night, is being praised for her pro-family, pro-baby acceptance speech that stands in stark contrast to previous winners who celebrated abortion from the podium. 
Buckley, 36, became visibly emotional when her name was announced during Hollywood’s biggest night. She began her speech by thanking the cast and crew, but then drew the most attention by directing it toward her family. 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Jessie Buckley Wins Best Actress | 98th Oscars Speech (2026)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tI12K8G1U2c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
“My family, my Irish family, they’re all here,” she said. “Mom, Dad, thank you for teaching us to dream and to never be defined by expectation and to carve from your own passion.”
Buckley next turned her attention to her husband of three years. “You, Fred, I love you, man. I love you; you’re the most incredible dad. You’re my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you, I do. I do!” she said.
The mom of one then addressed her baby daughter. “And Isla, my little girl who is eight months, who has absolutely no idea what’s going on and is probably dreaming of milk, but this is kind of a big deal, and I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can’t wait to discover life beside you,” she went on. 
“It’s Mother’s Day in the U.K. today, so I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart. We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds. Thank you for recognizing me in this role. This is the greatest honor. I can’t even believe it.”
Buckley was the first Irish woman to win a Best Actress award, but chose to skip blathering about representation and instead focus on her loved ones.
Reactions on social media were overwhelmingly positive.
“Imagine if every Hollywood actor showed this level of humility and poured this kind of love onto their kids instead of giving us preachy lectures. Hollywood would still have fans,” one commenter <a href="https://x.com/kangminlee/status/2033384463489466865?s=43">wrote</a>.
“This is the greatest expression of love between two healthy people,” conservative pundit Bethany Mandel <a href="https://x.com/bethanyshondark/status/2033468952936866079?s=43">said</a> of the “want to have 20,000 more babies with you” line. 
“Beautiful,” pro-life activist Lila Rose agreed. “Marriage isn’t a trap. Babies aren’t burdens. Motherhood is a gift.”
Buckley’s testament to family following her win stands in stark contrast to Michelle Williams’ infamous acceptance speech at the Golden Globes in 2020, when she said, &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t have been able to do this without employing a woman&#8217;s right to choose.”

Jessie Buckley

Best Actress Winner Praised For Pro-Family Message At Oscars

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This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
My first thought after reading the viral “I Regret Having Children” <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/women-regret-having-children.html">article</a> in The Cut was: “Wow, those are some young kids they’re complaining about.” The article consults three moms having second thoughts about their decision to become parents, and the oldest child among them is only 6. There are toddlers and babies but no older kids. That’s telling.
These sorts of articles are horrifying because they normalize a former taboo: admitting you don’t want the children you have. But more than that, they miss a fundamental point about parenthood: It has seasons.
This reminds me of when Chelsea Handler <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/extremely-sad-chelsea-handlers-day-in-the-life-of-a-childless-woman-spoof-goes-viral">made headlines</a> in 2023 for bragging about sleeping in and not shuttling kids to school in the early morning hours. Critics rightly pointed out that considering how the comedian was in her late 40s, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that if she were a mother, any children she had would be getting themselves on the school bus or even at college sleeping late and partying just like their mom.
The baby years are time-consuming and sleep-deprived, but they are also brief. Toddler years last a little longer and also get more rewarding as your offspring start developing their personalities even more and engaging with the world around them.
Those big kid years? They are challenging too, but also magical and rewarding. Any experienced parent will tell you they are nothing like the baby years. My own kids are getting older, with the youngest out of diapers and the oldest entering her pre-teen years. They pour their own juice, get themselves dressed, clean up after themselves (mostly), and even cook dinner sometimes. Our family is in a completely different rhythm now compared to just five short years ago.
One mom I talked to mentioned how having children is an investment in the future, and that resonated deeply with me. She said for all the sleepless nights, she’s thinking ahead to her Thanksgiving table in 30 years being filled with the family she’s started now. 
The moms interviewed by The Cut complain about missed career opportunities, flabby tummies, and less free time. 
“Having a kid turns you into a morning person the way being chased by a bear turns you into a runner,” one interviewee complained. Another recalls how she “hallucinated from lack of sleep” when her daughter came home from the hospital, while the third said of her one-year-old, “If there is a hell, I’ve been living in it since I gave birth.”
Those are all problems that parents would tell you are worth the trade-off of ensuring the continuation of the family line. But even for these women with more superficial concerns, their desires don’t have to be given up forever. The older the kids, the more independent they become, and the more time moms will have for personal fulfillment again. 
Fortunately, X users were mostly horrified by the views expressed in the article.
“A life focused on pleasure, comfort and money instead of love is ultimately a meaningless, miserable one,” pro-life activist Lila Rose <a href="https://x.com/lilagracerose/status/2030406697119105132?s=43">observed</a>. “You have a soul. You need love.”
“Motherhood has its rough parts, but this seems to be a consequence of our obsession with self-actualization not taking into account that some worthwhile things are hard, and that roles of service are often more meaningful long-term than those activities that provide instant gratification,” Daily Wire contributor Emily Zanotti wrote. “Motherhood—physical, spiritual, or otherwise—is just a *good and natural thing.* It’s not always fun, or fulfilling, or even interesting. But it doesn’t need to be those things *all the time* to be the best thing you will do in your life.”
“There is only one thing that will make you chronically miserable as a parent and that thing is selfishness,” Daily Wire host Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/2030668649569140807?s=43">wrote</a>. “Immense joys are available to parents—a unique kind of happiness that non-parents cannot experience—but those joys do require you to pull your head out of your own ass for long enough to experience them. If you can’t, or refuse to, then yeah you’ll be miserable all the time. But the good news (if you want to call it that) is that selfish people are miserable no matter what they do, whether they have kids or not, so there’s still no need to feel regret.”
Children are needy when they’re little. Then they become self-sufficient and later they become helpful. The precious baby you’re wishing wasn’t here so you could have uninterrupted Sudoku afternoons could become your best brunch companion in a couple decades—or sooner. The little boy climbing furniture and throwing tantrums will be helping clean your gutters in a blink. In Bryan Caplan&#8217;s 2011 book &#8220;Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think,&#8221; the economist asks parents take such a long-term approach: consider how many kids you&#8217;ll want to have had when you&#8217;re 60.
Regretting or questioning having kids, like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/since-when-is-cheating-a-lifestyle-the-nyt-dubs-polyamory-a-love-story">polyamory</a>, has become the latest norm-bucking trend. But like anything in life, parenthood doesn’t always, or even usually, offer instant gratification. Raising children is just part of the story. It’s a mistake to close the book before you’ve reached the good part.
***
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The Viral ‘I Regret My Kids’ Trend Is Getting One Big Thing Wrong

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This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
I’ve spent my entire life watching people’s eyes widen when they discover I have 10 siblings.
“Any twins?” they always ask.
&#8220;Nope.&#8221;
“All from the same parents?” they wonder.
“Yes!” I tell them.
“It must be loud around there,” they laugh.
It&#8217;s louder than you think. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So you can imagine my amusement when I stumble upon very-online big family debaters clutching their pearls over influencer Hannah Neelman — better known as Ballerina Farm — and her nine children.
Some argue that big families just aren&#8217;t for everyone. Others, like pro-abortion playwright Rebecca Reid, suggest parents of large families cannot give their children adequate “time, attention, and connection.”
Very few people, if any, are telling young women that they must have big families. We do hear constant warnings about how unfathomably hard and expensive children are and how children limit your freedom, your fun, and your time with your spouse. On the flip side, we also hear constant chatter about how women can balance career and family if they truly want to. Are we not allowed to hear about the women, like my mother, who defied the world and raised a clan at home?
As the oldest daughter and second-oldest child in a very large family, I can tell you firsthand that big families are not universally wealthy, and parents of such broods certainly aren’t calculating how much each child costs before they make the decision to have one more. These mothers and fathers look at life and family differently.
When you ask them how many children they are going to have, they’ll probably tell you with a big smile, “As many as God sends us.” And if you question how on Earth they plan to pull this off, they will probably say something to the effect of what my own mother told me: “God gives you the grace, one child and one day at a time.”
Families like mine don’t have a dozen children to “own the libs” or populate an aesthetic Instagram page. They’re open to life and to as many children as God blesses them with based on their deeply held religious convictions. They view each child as a gift from God, and they trust that He will provide for them.
I’m well aware that this reasoning sounds crazy to secular outsiders. But at the end of the day, does it matter? God has, in fact, provided for us, and my siblings and parents are the greatest blessings of my life.
<div id="attachment_1055369" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1055369" class="size-large wp-image-1055369" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_7618-2-768x576.jpeg" alt="" width="768" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_7618-2-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_7618-2-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_7618-2-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_7618-2-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />The author and a smattering of siblings.</div>
I could never imagine life without my six brothers: Tommy, Patrick, Michael, Barry, Daniel, and Seamus. I certainly can’t picture a world without my sisters: Catherine, Theresa, Janey, and Brigid. While we may all look alike, thanks to some good Irish genes, each one of us was uniquely created and brings a diverse array of talents, interests, virtues, and vices to the table. It has been my parents’ role to sort through all of that and to raise us to be the men and women we were created to be.
A large family necessitates a different kind of lifestyle than a smaller family might have, of course: My parents didn’t take our growing family on exotic vacations, and when I was a child, we had PB&amp;J lunches and spaghetti dinners probably more often than my father and mother would have liked. There isn’t as much room in the budget for going out to eat after sports practice or daytime kid activities. The other big families I have known throughout the course of my life are largely the same.
I have never wished for anything different. When I think about my childhood, I don’t really even remember the PB&amp;Js, except maybe the 11 I made for an infamous road trip. (The siblings still accuse me of sitting on them. I maintain my innocence.)
<div id="attachment_1055393" style="width: 877px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1055393" class="size-large wp-image-1055393" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/image1-867x576.png" alt="" width="867" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/image1-867x576.png 867w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/image1-300x199.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/image1-768x510.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/image1.png 1253w" sizes=" (max-width: 867px) 100vw, 867px" />The author giving piggybacks.</div>
What I do remember is eagerly waiting by the phone with my grandmother and the other kids as my parents called from the hospital to tell us that our ninth child would be a boy (Daniel, who now towers over me at 6&#8217;3&#8243; and texts me after my TV hits to say, “Well done, Marg”). Believe it or not, I cried that day because I wanted a girl. I got her when my mother had our 10th baby, Brigid, my goddaughter and close friend.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table with all the siblings, a toddler on my lap as always, as we begged my dad for stories about his childhood in Massachusetts, or standing, at his request, on the brick hearth of our fireplace with my sisters to sing Irish ballads to company.
I think of our cozy school days all working away in our makeshift classroom, my mom waking us up early to go to daily Mass, hours and hours of sister doll games, swinging the baby to sleep on the play set, and the fun we had teaching the little ones to walk, play games, and propose like Mr. Darcy (jury’s out on that one, but we tried).
In functioning big families, kids necessarily help out with chores, with babies, and with each other. We each had our designated chores every day, and we did them with gusto. To this day, we help each other review resumes, emails, job applications, middle school papers, you name it.
Eleven kids means 55 unique relationships between the siblings, and in big families, those relationships hold so many possibilities: the friend, the mentor, the confidante, the babysitter, the tutor, the partner in crime. As we grow older and start families of our own, those relationships necessarily evolve.
The constant in our lives remains the same: We are the Olohan family, and we will always be there for one another.
Of course, the life of a big family is not without its crosses. I grew up with a number of large families, including my own, who have dealt with hardship and tragedy. We know that nothing worth having is easily come by, and for my part, I know I’m very lucky to have been given the parents God gave me. As I’m sure my readers are well aware, every family is the product of the caliber of its parents, and mine are made of good stuff.
Being open to the children God sends you is absolutely a leap of faith. It’s a leap of faith that my parents took and the parents of most big families take. It&#8217;s a surrendering of your will, time and time again, and it&#8217;s a beautiful sacrifice with a beautiful reward. As my grandmother, the mother of 10, would tell us, “Love multiplies; it never divides.”
That is why failing to include God in the conversation about big families doesn&#8217;t make any sense. He’s woven into every step of the way.
***
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Father carrying baby son while pulling four children in a wagon

I’m One Of 11 Kids. Here’s Why The Internet Doesn’t Realize Big Families Are Great.

Religion

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
In the first two months of 2026, there were <a href="https://x.com/GunDeaths/status/2026794212671332570">more than 50</a> mass shootings in the U.S., many in schools and churches. Assassination attempts on public figures have swelled. We see constant talk about syndromes such as &#8220;gender dysphoria&#8221; that were once almost unknown. At elite institutions such as Stanford University, four out of 10 students now <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-university-student-accommodation/684946/">claim</a> they have a disability. These occurrences illustrate a troubling paradox.
Americans today are wealthier than ever before. We&#8217;ve jumped ahead of Europeans and other developed nations in national economic growth and household income. Our technology has dramatically improved. Our houses are much more comfortable. Our medical care and diets are richer. Yet all around us, especially among the young, we see record levels of depression and loneliness, addiction, crime, educational failure, economic disappointment, and community decline.
There is a root to these social and psychological maladies: the explosion of out-of-wedlock births, divorce, single-parenting, father flight, careerism, and child neglect that began in the 1960s. More than half of all young Americans now live separated from one or both of their parents for at least part of their childhood. Millions of kids from all income levels, races, and localities bear scars from family instability.
Youth suicide jumped 62% from 2007 to 2021. Drug-overdose deaths among young people were nearly twice as high in 2022 as 10 years earlier. In 2023, 4,450 kids were killed by guns, most of them by other youths. Family breakdown now drives many of our collective social problems: poverty, homelessness, street crime, drug abuse, educational failure, and economic lags.
These heartaches and these social problems will not go away until we manage to knit mothers and fathers and children more tightly together in natural families (biological parents committed to each other and their children). Such families are not perfect, but as a source of human happiness and success, they greatly surpass single-parent families, step-families, scientifically designed group homes, hired care, and every other alternative that has been tried.
You see, we Homo sapiens have a serious biological problem called childhood. As Harvard scientist Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, &#8220;Human babies are born as embryos, and embryos they remain for about the first nine months of life.&#8221; If humans were born at the stage of development more typical of other mammals, a baby would remain in utero for up to a year longer than the nine months it already does. The reason we are born &#8220;premature&#8221; instead is elemental: Very few female pelvises could expel a neonate the size of a one-year-old infant. Human labor is already quite difficult compared to that of other animals, and newborns are only 40% the size of the average one-year-old.
Premature birth solves a human physiological dilemma, but it creates a cultural one. Monkey infants can navigate independently and find and cling to their mother when they need her. Newborn horses can run from danger just a few hours after birth. Other animals can hunt, dig, swim, or fly within days of their arrival into the world. But human young remain utterly helpless for an extended period, unable even to control their own temperature, see clearly, grasp, or roll over. Even the healthiest of babies thus requires intensive care and supervision.
And the incapability of humans extends far beyond infancy. It is a long time before we are finally able to survive on our own. Most mammals are autonomous and essentially full-grown within a single season, but it takes our brains about 15 annual cycles to reach their final capacity, and our bodies even a little longer. We are far slower to develop to independent maturity than any other living creature.
This problem is made even knottier by the fact that human culture is so complex that no individual can begin to be a competent citizen until he or she has undergone years and years worth of intensive acculturation. We must absorb millions of bits of information from our progenitors — on everything from desirable foods to language — before we can safely navigate our world.
The combined result of our premature launch and our heavy dependence upon cultural transmission is an extraordinarily long and demanding childhood. Absent a critical cultural adaptation, human beings could never have thrived in the face of this constraint. But they did fashion an adaptation, and a brilliant one: the family. The traditional family was a way of capturing the energy of the male parent as well as the female and channeling it into the rearing of the young.
In this way, mothers gained an ally to help them through their vulnerable periods of pregnancy and lactation. Frail youngsters won the benefit of not one but two protectors, producers, and caretakers. And under this joint nurturing structure, reproductive success soared. Even prior to the advent of the civilized era, one out of every two human babies survived to adulthood, thanks to the aid of their families. This compares to between 10 and 30% for other primates and group-hunting carnivores, which lack any counterpart to the nuclear family. And parent-guided humans turned out to be unusually competent creatures, bearers of a rich culture.
By stitching fathers to mothers and mothers to fathers, and weaving both to their children in a mission of mutual aid, the traditional family allowed humans to transcend brutish self-interest and produce higher civilization in its full splendor.
The evidence for this is ample and ancient. In 1978, anthropologist Mary Leakey made a breathtaking discovery in a fossil lava bed in East Africa: the first human footprints, 3.6 million years old. They clearly indicate two creatures walking upright, between four and five feet tall, one larger than the other, apparently a male and a female. They were walking next to each other, perhaps holding hands, Leakey thinks. There is also a third set of prints, much smaller, belonging to a child. These are carefully placed within the larger prints — as a youngster playfully following his parents through soft ground would do. Leakey&#8217;s find disputes the claim that the traditional family was invented in Victorian Europe, or some other moment, and forced on humanity by narrow-minded manipulators.
Over the last generation, heaps of research findings have proven the irreplaceable benefits of the natural family, particularly when it comes to raising healthy children. I recently collected some of this evidence in a book, and it demonstrates clearly that where the traditional family is in trouble, there will be trouble all across society. This is no longer scientifically controversial. It is merely inconvenient for ideologues promoting the kind of radical individualism, sexual autonomy, and economic selfishness that are incompatible with loyal family life.
As I summarize in my book, biology, human history, recent psychological discoveries, and much more demonstrate that the traditional family is a natural and irreplaceable component of human society. It will be with us so long as our civilization flourishes. And if natural families continue to crumble, no amount of money, technology, personal liberation, artificial intelligence, or wishful thinking will be able to fend off the chaos that results when wounded youngsters grow into our next generation of citizens.
***
Karl Zinsmeister is author of the new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Family-will-never-obsolete/dp/B0GQBD7JV3">&#8220;The Natural Family Will Never Be Obsolete.&#8221;</a> He has written 20 other books and served in the White House and U.S. Senate as a policy adviser.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-1345161790

America’s Kids Are In Crisis — One Cultural Shift May Explain Why

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Conservatives have a lot of opinions on how many children a woman should have. But, if they really cared about increasing the birth rate, perhaps they wouldn&#8217;t.
This week, Hannah Neeleman caused a stir after announcing she was having her ninth child. Dubbed “<a href="https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-sunday-times-magazine/article/meet-the-queen-of-the-trad-wives-and-her-eight-children-plfr50cgk?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqcIWiomL9m6qEpeJqI0-L-Y4eUtFrKd1z-kaPqT1lmL-Q1POKloXT3ocfezY3Q%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69a79562&amp;gaa_sig=RXICRL1HgipIN974mMksBv3HDXm8U_orOlf-radgwXjYxFWjYvJvREPmMuMsyiHn_6WfDSFjSnbOg95qt9CXeA%3D%3D">queen of the ‘trad wives,</a>” Neeleman creates content of her family’s life running a beautiful farm for her more than 10 million Instagram followers. A viral <a href="https://x.com/rebeccacnreid/status/2028157735892631620?s=46&amp;t=ZAoIkqhiKpZyQayFV_2XbQ">tweet</a> responding to Neeleman’s announcement of her ninth baby questioned if two parents could give nine children the love and connection they need. 
Conservatives rightly rushed to her defense — after all, in an age where children are no longer valued, this gorgeous former ballerina is spending her millions raising a big family, and that&#8217;s something to celebrate.
&#8220;What the heck do you know about having 9 kids?&#8221; American Principles Project President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/terry-schilling">Terry Schilling</a> <a href="https://x.com/schilling1776/status/2028495979838591475">asked</a>. &#8220;You should talk to a big family or a kid from a big family about their experience. You really get a lot more attention in a big family than a small one. And kids from big families are way more stable and less anxious than kids who need everything to be perfect for them.&#8221;
But just because the Neeleman family has the desire and resources requisite for nine kids, that doesn&#8217;t mean everyone needs to have enough children to fill a baseball field.
Simple math provides the basis of the viral question: The more children two parents have to care for, the less time they have to spend individually with each child. Sociologists call this resource dilution, which <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11413873/#:~:text=The%20resource%20dilution%20model%20suggests%20that%20parental,the%20effect%20of%20siblings%20on%20intellectual%20development.">one study</a> described as an acknowledgement that “parental resources are finite and that as the number of children in the family increases, the resources accrued by any one child necessarily decline.”  
I’m not suggesting there are only negatives to having a big family; the internet is filled with testimonies of their joys. But, like most things in life, having a big family brings pros and cons. This used to be something conservatives were allowed to <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-kids-large-families-have-pros-and-cons/">talk about</a>. The suggestion that big families might have any downsides drew the sharp ire of conservatives and pro-birth pronatalists alike, who wholeheartedly defended big families, with some seemingly expressing contempt for smaller ones. 
&#8220;If you had a large family like mine, you would know that plenty of time without the searching eyes and drilling attention of the mother of two is one of the best thing you can give your children,&#8221; doctor and writer Grazie Pozo Christie <a href="https://x.com/gchristiemd/status/2028499223763620256?s=46&amp;t=ZAoIkqhiKpZyQayFV_2XbQ">said</a>. &#8220;Oh and siblings! Don’t forget about the incalculable blessing of siblings.&#8221;
An account called Meta Trav was more direct in its criticism of small families, <a href="https://x.com/meta_trav/status/2028590350844207293?s=46&amp;t=ZAoIkqhiKpZyQayFV_2XbQ">tweeting</a>, &#8220;The modern obsession with &#8216;adequate time and attention&#8217; per child is a broken framework. Two parents hovering over one or two kids produces anxious, poorly socialized children who never had to negotiate with a real peer group.&#8221;
This response makes sense when you understand that a certain branch of the pronatalist movement views having many children not only as an example of peak womanhood but also as an example of good morality. Many parts of the conservative movement have adopted this messaging. You’ve probably heard someone telling young people to get married and have more kids than they can afford, while saying next to nothing about the stress and finances needed to raise a large family.
Big families are a luxury good, particularly if you can afford a large family on one income. The average yearly cost to raise a child in America <a href="https://smartasset.com/data-studies/cost-raise-child-state-2025">grew</a> to $27,743 in 2025. That’s $83,229 a year to support three kids or $249,687 to support nine children. Estimates show the <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/09/median-household-income.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Current%20Population%20Survey's%202025,by%205.5%25%20*%20**Black**%20Decreased%20by%203.3%25">median</a> American household income is around $84,000. While I’ve seen conservatives brush off the financial concerns that affect family formation, the real-world consequences of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34504382/">financial stress</a>, such as marital instability and health deterioration, can be devastating.
Neeleman not only runs a very successful business but is also the daughter-in-law of a multi-millionaire and, foreseeably, has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ballerina-farm-controversy-rustic-videos-family-wealth-critique-tiktok-2024-1">access to resources</a> of which most middle-class families could only dream. Being able to afford family support, such as nannies and house cleaners, can make having a large family seem easy. I have yet to see an online influencer with a big family delivering pronatalist messaging share her monthly income, her extended family support, and the number of full-time nannies she employs. This information would be helpful to young people wanting to achieve a big family.
Building a family isn’t simply about birthing children. It’s about parenting well and raising adults who will, one day, parent their own children well. That’s how you create a generational legacy. 
If you have the familial, emotional, and financial resources to provide for and parent nine kids, that’s incredible. Go for it! Every one of those nine children will be a blessing to your family. But not everyone is equipped or called to have nine kids. And the number of children you have, whether it&#8217;s zero or nine, isn’t a reflection of your morality. It’s a personal calling between you, your spouse, and God — not the internet. 
I would strongly advise young people to take advice on family formation from parents, family, and mentors — the people who will help raise and support your children — rather than online influencers.  The conservative movement is doing young families, in particular young women, a great disservice by pushing a message that having and caring for many children is easy and blissful. Real motherhood isn’t a beautifully curated online fantasy. 
Being a mom, particularly a new mom, is hard. Experiencing sleepless nights and huge hormonal shifts while small people depend on you to meet their every need is no small task. And the identity shift — learning to completely center your world around the needs of a baby — is a lesson in servanthood for which no one can prepare you. 
The message I tell my own daughter is that, if she is blessed to become a mother, raising kids will be the hardest but best thing she will ever do. And I will do everything in my power to support her.
Conservatives need to understand that normal, middle-class young women who are scared of having kids or struggling with young motherhood need encouragement and support — not scolding about how many children they should have. Offering to babysit regularly for a struggling young mom will be much more effective in helping her grow her family than telling her why she should have more kids. We are all tired of that anyway.
***
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

World Premiere Of “Truth & Treason”

Nine Kids? That’s Fine — But There’s One Thing The Debate Is Missing

Birth Rates

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
I told myself it was motion sickness. The tour bus had lost air conditioning, my entire college chorale sweating our way back to campus from a tour of New England. I tried to distract myself in conversation, but nausea won out and I ran for the tiny bathroom at the back of the bus. “Did you get your reading report turned in, yet?” A friend asked as I whizzed by. I shook my head.
When we got home, my husband and I stopped to grab groceries and a pregnancy test. I didn’t keep them stocked because I had no intention of needing one for over a year — when I would graduate with a journalism degree. We wanted to start our family young, just not before graduation.
I had ignored early symptoms until fatigue consumed me a few days into the tour. I pushed on in denial, trying not to throw up lobster rolls and clam chowder. The positive pregnancy test didn’t surprise me much, but it did send shockwaves through our little world. We were grateful and humbled (so much for natural family planning).
My journalism professor’s reaction captured my own tension between delight and overwhelm.
“Oh are you?” He asked with a congratulatory smile. “But how are you going to do all of the things I need you to do?” I laughed and assured him that, God permitting, I would do it all.
Conversations about <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/get-married-young/">the benefits of getting married young</a> are cropping up all over the internet recently. Pronatalist activists are encouraging people to have more kids, and sooner. Simone and Malcolm Collins are a pronatalist couple warning about the birthrate crisis and aiming for 14 children through IVF. They recently <a href="https://x.com/SimoneHCollins/status/2017242647195205732">argued</a> for having kids in college, especially if universities better support parents. They even imply that college could be an ideal context in which to have kids: “Late night wake-ups with a baby are no problem for college students who are used to pulling all-nighters,” they say.
I believe children are a gift from God, and I was given remarkably favorable circumstances for finishing school with a baby. But I learned that college and kids are a difficult, not an ideal, combination. You just can’t do it all. 
At least attempting to graduate was a no-brainer for me.
I once wandered a park with my boyfriend and our conversation drifted to whether we could get married while still in school; he could graduate a year before me and work while I finished up. But I worried that dragging debt into a young marriage was unwise and impractical. Would it be too much of a burden? He listened thoughtfully before responding. 
“If you really want this, I’ll work hard and we’ll get through it,” he said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you finish.”
We got married two years later over Christmas break, and jumped back into classes together. Fast forward to April, and we discovered our baby was due at the beginning of Christmas break (a truly providential due date). I hoped that professors at my Christian conservative school would be supportive. I still wanted my degree and one more year in a community I loved. But that year would look starkly different from my dreams. My paradigm would shift from “soak in senior year” to “survive.”
I carried a bag of almonds with me through the end of the spring semester like a talisman to ward off nausea. I nibbled them behind the piano at strategic moments during chorale concerts. Getting out of bed in the morning felt impossible, and I drove home to sleep through classes I couldn’t sit through. I only made it through finals thanks to weeks of extensions from professors.
My husband helped me prepare for my new normal. Stress about academics was not an option. Health was the priority for me and the baby. Previously nicknamed “Hermione” for my type-A approach, I would need to settle for passing grades.
Extracurriculars had been the frosting to my college cake. I loved chorale, moot court, and drama, and I’d even started an a cappella group. Now I had to cut back or let go. Before I told my close friends my news, I told my moot court coach. My goal had been to secure a competitive partner and shoot for the national championship. But now that I likely couldn’t compete in January, I didn’t want to disappoint an ambitious partner.
I front-loaded an immense credit load for senior fall to make the spring semester with a newborn a little easier. I registered for 17 credits plus another 8 credits of intermediate French online. I waddled around in maternity blouses and slacks, battling brain fog. All that French I paid thousands for? It’s pretty much gone. I qualified for nationals in moot court, but made the painful decision to opt out.
I finished finals before my due date and emailed professors to make sure I could bring my baby into class. Then I slept, curb-walked, and pulled my first all-nighter birthing my daughter into the world. 
I had no idea how the spring would unfold. My mother-in-law flew out for three weeks to help me resume classes. She stocked our freezer with food. I stocked the stroller with burp cloths, pacifiers, and nursing covers, taking notes when I wasn’t breastfeeding or walking hallways.
Nighttime feedings weakened my academic abilities. <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10204456/#sec4-clockssleep-05-00022">Research suggests</a> that sleep deprivation impairs your brain’s ability to retain new information. I’d stare at a single physics problem for an hour, my mind just as blurry as my tear-filled eyes. Before the baby, I had been reveling in a rich education. Now I was just hoping to secure a degree. 
I also felt cut adrift from class camaraderie. I was known to one student simply as “that girl with the stroller.” I skipped social events and felt my wit and energy wither. My classmates were soaking in their college experience. I was savoring quieter moments with my family of three.
Community looked different, but it was still sweet. Some friends took slots to play with my daughter each week while I tackled assignments. They helped me with diaper blow-outs during physics lab. They endlessly encouraged me. Guys in my classes helped me wrangle the stroller in and out of classrooms. My daughter became a mascot in classes, cooing happily on her blanket while I took notes. I dreaded being a distraction, but she brought smiles and baby fever everywhere she went.
Just a few weeks before graduation, we got strep throat. I spent days in bed tending a feverish baby and feeling the weight of late assignments with every excruciating swallow. My mom flew across the country to help me catch up. Through it all, my husband worked full-time, washed countless dishes, rocked the baby, and folded laundry.
By God’s grace, I walked across the graduation stage with my 5-month-old in attendance. I’ve already forgotten my final grades. I don’t even remember the GPA threshold for the honors tassels I earned. I do remember the pink tassel I found hanging in my apartment before commencement. My husband bought it to represent an honor that wouldn’t be recognized on my diploma: bringing life into the world and nurturing it. I couldn’t do it all, but the sacrifices were worth it.
***
Clara York is a freelance reporter and poet writing on family and religious issues. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two young daughters.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Woman pushing baby in a pram

‘That Girl With The Stroller’ — I Loved My Baby, But College Was Never The Same

College

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
My parents still live in my childhood home, and I live one street away. It is common for my dad to stop me on jogs for a quick catchup. My wife and I often joke that we can’t escape my parents’ presence. But we don’t want to. At 40, I cannot imagine a life where my father isn’t present. That didn’t happen by accident.
Unfortunately, I am becoming part of a shrinking group. A <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10254574/">2022 study reveals</a> that by adulthood, 28% of daughters and 24% of sons are estranged from their fathers, while only 6% are estranged from their mothers. With so much talk surrounding a myriad of childhood crises these days, I propose we have a fatherhood crisis.
When I was growing up, my dad was hard on me. I was pushed to play sports and always required to have a summer job. But when I’d come home from practice or bussing tables, he was always there. My dad constantly told me he loved me, almost to my exhaustion as I was encouraged to repeat it back. He was teaching me both to be loved and how to love. 
Even when I went far from home to play college football, my dad attended every game. Presence was a priority. He taught me that closeness was normal. I have no memories of my dad not being there, and thus I couldn’t envision any other way of life. My dad didn’t just provide; he stayed.
So why are so many men losing their adult children? We can start with divorce. Nearly one-third of American children <a href="https://www.nber.org/digest/202508/parental-divorce-and-childrens-long-term-outcomes">experience</a> divorce before adulthood. Fathers are far more likely to become the non-resident parent post-divorce. Less time equals weaker bonds. 
But while divorce affects the quantity of a dad’s time with his children, it does not explain resignation. Even married fathers can be emotionally absent. This is when the culture takes over instead. I know from the countless times I hear “Daddy, watch me!” that kids want to be seen. When they aren’t seen by their parents, they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kids-dont-need-more-online-monitoring-they-need-involved-dads">resort to social media and gaming,</a> where their presence is validated and celebrated. One <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5700711/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">multi-year study found</a> that as gaming increases, the perceived quality of family relationships tends to deteriorate — especially when parental bonds are weaker. If dad doesn’t see his kids, the algorithm will.
The good news is the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12025700/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">same studies indicate</a> that stronger parental attachment (emotional closeness and social support) is linked to lower levels of gaming addiction in adolescents, suggesting that weaker attachment may be associated with more compulsive engagement with games. If you&#8217;re a dad, ask yourself, how many times a day do you tell your kids you love them? Are you leading them toward you or pushing them away?
In a society that is constantly turning its back on institutions, perhaps one of the oldest institutions, the church, may help families the most here. The Bible tells us in Malachi 4:6, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”
<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249707705_Religious_Participation_Religious_Affiliation_and_Engagement_With_Children_Among_Fathers_Experiencing_the_Birth_of_a_New_Child">Studies looking at fathers specifically</a> find that factors such as church attendance and broad religious participation are positively related to paternal engagement with children — meaning men who are more involved in religious communities also tend to be more engaged with their kids. The church provides families with shared rituals and a shared moral language. Families that pray together, stay together.
While a lot of quality time is important for fathers to prioritize with their sons, ultimately, boys go to college and eventually graduate into manhood. They will have to think and act for themselves. My dad prepared me for this in a way I’m trying to emulate for my four kids. My dad was always there. Presence, not perfection, was the standard. Time, not money, was our family’s currency. I literally can’t think of a childhood memory that doesn’t have my dad in it. 
My dad vocalized his expectations often and held incredibly high standards for me. Any time I’d say I couldn’t do something, his response was always, “Why not?” Win district tournaments in wrestling in just my first year? Why not? Get a job at a top financial firm with no experience? Why not? Become president one day? Why not? Pressure isolates, but expectations build identity. And a lifetime sitting at the feet of my father has been one defined by expectations. 
Finally, and maybe most importantly, we shared our future with one another. That future involved both of us. We’d talk about our lives ahead and include both of us in the story. I remember conversations about future milestones in my own fatherhood and how my dad couldn’t wait to be a grandpa. As a child, I couldn’t envision adulthood without my dad.
If nearly a quarter of adult sons cut their dads off, something foundational is breaking. And it’s the job of a dad to build a solid foundation. The best thing you can give your kids is a reason to stay. Share meals together. Go to church together. Talk about life and the future. Tell your kids you love them and expect great things for and from them. Hug them and kiss them. Live your life with your kids, not just for them. Build independence in them without emotional distance. Teach them how to love by loving them first. 
We don’t have a boy crisis. We have a dad problem. And it’s fixable. I live one street from my dad because he never gave me a reason to leave.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Angry Black Elderly Father And Son Fighting With Each Other. Disagreement.

Why So Many Grown Kids Are Cutting Off Their Fathers

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***
Shortly after the birth of my third son, I was talking with my grandmother, whose homemaking without computers, air conditioning, and a host of other modern conveniences was beginning to seem miraculous. I admitted to her how often my husband and I resort to takeout for dinner and how I struggle to find time to make even three or four home-cooked meals a week. How she managed to get meals almost entirely from scratch on the table with far fewer resources at her fingertips, and with four children at that, was beyond me. I asked her how on earth she did it.
What she said shocked me. She responded by asking me the same thing. My grandmother said she didn’t know how I balanced everything. She said life was slower back then, and she wasn’t as busy as I am.
While she may have some rose-colored glasses when it comes to remembering her past, this interaction nonetheless made me view my reliance on technology in a new light. The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I am that the very technological advancements that make my life easier — the most recent being <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/artificial-intelligence">artificial intelligence </a>— actually contribute to a busier, more overwhelming life.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that AI has proven and will continue to prove beneficial to society in many ways, particularly through its ability to expedite human ingenuity when employed wisely in the professional sphere. I saw this firsthand when I worked in the intelligence community. But in the personal sphere, I’m skeptical of AI’s overall benefit, and I worry that its promise to make everyday tasks easier may come with more strings than we care to imagine.
Even simple tasks offloaded to AI lead to large amounts of wasted screen time. A few months ago, I asked ChatGPT to generate a meal plan for a week of healthy, easy meals. It spit out some good recipes, and while not overly complicated, one poke bowl-style recipe included pickled onions. I rarely ever use pickled onions, and I ended up making another inquiry to find other meals to make with the pickled onions that would inevitably be left over. I also asked where certain ingredients came from, researched their calories, and checked my grocery app to make sure my preferred grocery store carried pickled onions. ChatGPT often leads to tangents and extended phone time beyond the simple task at hand.
Perhaps more sinisterly, AI platforms encourage this continued use. Anyone who engages with AI regularly knows how its answers are regenerative, encouraging users to extend their searches by further refining or even redirecting users toward new inquiries. AI programs such as ChatGPT or Grok often suggest targeted follow-up inquiries based on the original prompt. Would you like a lower-carb version? An exportable recipe list to share? Suddenly, I’m considering that one of my other busy mom friends would like one of the recipes ChatGPT has given me, and I begin texting the recipe link out to other moms who I think may appreciate them. So there I am, 25 minutes into meal prepping, and I haven’t begun at all. I’m still on my phone.
Technology has an uncanny way of making life busier while making specific tasks easier. Although you may not have spent 30-plus minutes on ChatGPT meal plan tangents like I have, you probably know what I mean. Facebook Marketplace, Google Classrooms, community or city websites, even weather apps — they all make life easier and facilitate incredible information sharing, but they have an unparalleled way of consuming our time. We’re drowning in digital to-dos and an overwhelming amount of online information that we feel obligated to check on a daily basis.
Enter ChatGPT, and we’re only further compounding our digital busyness in the name of expediency. A Pew Research study last fall <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-americans-lives-awareness-experiences-and-attitudes/">found</a> something interesting: While Americans express concern over the amount of control AI has in their lives, over half of them use AI daily, and an even higher percentage — 73% of Americans — say that they are willing to allow AI to assist them, at least to some small degree, with day-to-day activities. In other words, while Americans are concerned about AI, it is becoming increasingly woven into our already digitally maxed-out lives. 
This got me thinking, if I hadn’t turned to AI for recipe help, what would I have done instead? Brainstormed harder to come up with some on my own? Asked a friend for her go-to meals? Experimented with recipe creation in an entrepreneurial trial-and-error process? Whatever I would have done, I am convinced it would have been better than the time I spent on ChatGPT searching for meals and embarking down other AI rabbit holes.
In a post-pandemic world, we know all too well the profound shallowness of digital dependence. Using AI to assist with daily tasks and decisions will make life easier in the same way that social media allows us to connect with other people: It will be far less rewarding than ways that we could pursue the same ends offline. Screens flatten genuine human connection and chip away at self-discipline and contentment. AI further liberates us from everyday dependence on friends and family, minimizing the need to ask another human for small matters of advice in decisions for which we now use AI. It also liberates us from the rewarding process and intrinsic fulfillment that comes from brainstorming things ourselves.
And in thus liberating us, it robs us of the everyday joys that come from these mundane human interactions and from the power of organic ideas. As a society, we desperately need to ingest the truth that engaging in activities — whether those be simple matters of housekeeping or artistic and intellectual endeavors — in a way that cultivates wisdom, virtue, self-discipline, and genuine human relationships is the true measure of time well spent. The next time I’m tempted to turn to ChatGPT for recipe ideas, I’m going to call my grandmother and ask her instead. 
***
Rebekah Bills is a freelance writer and mother of three. She previously served as a civilian intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency.
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The AI Convenience Trap No One Warned Moms About

Artificial Intelligence

Technology

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Before we picked up calls from our pockets or our earbuds, entire families were put on edge by the raucous ringing of the telephone. Kids everywhere were haunted by the realization they might have to pick up the receiver and route the call to the right family member.
In spite of these inconveniences, old-fashioned phones are once again ringing across the country, and there are good reasons for the landline resurgence.
The wall-mounted, hardwired communication method has unique benefits we’ve lost in the smartphone era. The main reason behind the revival is that parents are increasingly skeptical of handing their children a portal to the wide-open internet in the palm of their hand.
A company called TinCan has created a beautiful device that allows your children to talk to their friends directly from your house. It only lets you make calls to approved contacts during certain times using home internet. The idea is that you put their device in a public spot in the house and they can talk to their friends as they please. TinCan is so popular its services crashed this Christmas as kids around the country tried making calls to their friends.
It’s becoming more popular, especially as advocates and scholars raise concerns about the effects of smartphone usage on children and teens. New York Magazine’s editors said they’d bought it for their kids and tested it out to much praise. The cutesy pastel colors and retro designs TinCan offers are great, but the parental controls may be limiting for the entire family or for older kids. And it’s not going to help if there’s an emergency in the middle of the night.
I’ve seen self-described millennial users on Reddit say they’re adding phone lines to their house. I get it. I’ve wanted a landline myself because my parents have had one for as long as I can remember. For years, that number was saved as “Home” in my contacts. That’s one of the biggest perks about a landline: It brings a sense of landing with it. You know that if someone is home, awake, and able, they’ll pick up. Unless they’re already talking with someone. Then they’ll call back.
When we finally purchased a landline, it was way more entertaining than I expected. It’s fun to see my girls pick up the phone and talk to their grandparents. It’s also handy to be able to call your cell phone when it&#8217;s lost.
When I was a kid, I dreaded getting the phone. You never know who was going to be on the other side. When my parents got caller ID, it was even more annoying because you knew who it was and you’d have to make pleasantries with them in the time between answering and handing the phone to mom or dad.
But without a landline, kids aren’t likely to get the experience of navigating these awkward moments, learning how to hold a stranger’s attention for a few seconds with small talk. You need these skills in the professional world. As an intern, I screened calls for a morning talk radio show. I answered five or six dozen phone calls a day every day of the week, from 5 to 9 a.m. I learned there that landlines are preferred for radio interviews because of their superior clarity; you don’t cut out or have dead zones when you’re connected to the telephone wire the way Alexander Graham Bell intended.
Now this might not be in the budget for everyone. My internet provider wanted something like $60 a month on top of the $80 internet bill I already pay. If you’re made of money or just really crave that physical wire servicing your house, go for it. The rest of us are likely to get something called a &#8220;voice over Internet Protocol,&#8221; which allows you to run your telephone over your home internet. This is essentially what TinCan uses. Providers like Ooma offer this service for free if you buy their device (you just have to pay taxes and service fees). There is a host of these services to choose from, so feel free to take your pick.
Another option is a home base. It’s basically a cell-powered home phone line. You just plug your analog phone in the back and voilà — you’re ready to roll. I like that it doesn’t require the internet to run, which is a great option when you want your lines of communication to be open when a storm takes everything else out.
In a world that’s increasingly disconnected, landlines show it’s possible to reverse the trend. You can stay connected without being distracted or risk exposing your children to the internet. And it’s wonderful to hear a telephone ring. It’s even more wonderful to hear my children running and trying to answer it first. There’s security in knowing I can call when I’m out to ask if we need more milk and that our families can reach us in the night. Landlines are a number you can always use to call home.
***
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer. He scours the Mitten State for stories and sweet treats with his wife and three kids in their Honda Odyssey.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The Old-School Gadget Making A Quiet Comeback In American Homes

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