2025 | Week of December 22 | Radio Transcript #1650

In October, Wisconsin Family Action’s Legislative Director, Sam Krebs, presented before the Speaker’s Taskforce on Protecting Kids about the importance of family for child wellbeing. The focus of this taskforce is preparing parents and protecting kids in a digital age. No doubt rapidly changing technology and the world at their fingertips through the internet and social media has introduced perils to innocent children. The purpose of the taskforce is to consult experts and knowledgeable individuals about the topic of protecting kids from digital threats and then to recommend legislation to the Assembly in the spring.

While some might expect this taskforce to introduce legislation that enforces digital protections for children, we believe that any taskforce looking at protecting children must start in the home. That’s why we shared that children more than anyone else pay for the breakdown in marriages and the fragmenting of families and urged policymakers to prioritize the family rather than undermine it. The safety of children begins with stabilizing the home.

At this hearing, Krebs urged lawmakers to look long term – to consider the effect that each piece of legislation will have on the nuclear family. Just as a mountain cannot be climbed in a single leap, making Wisconsin a family-first state will require years of focus, consistent emphasis, and buy-in from leaders across society and government.

Good marriages and strong families are the foundation of a successful community. Yet for decades, society has steadily and intentionally moved away from the very core principles that once underpinned our success.

Over the past 50 years, Wisconsin has experienced a notable decline in marriage rates not seen since the Great Depression. The statistics tell a stark story. Between 1990 and 2024, Wisconsin's marriage rate fell from 8.0 to 5.2 per 1,000 residents—a devastating thirty-five percent decline.[i]

Marriage delivers irreplaceable benefits to society that no other relationship or social institution can match. Most importantly, marriage has a measurable benefit on child development outcomes. The single most reliable indicator of children's long-term success is being raised by married, biological parents. Nothing else comes close.

In 2012, Ron Haskins—an expert in welfare reform, child care, child support, and marriage—noted, “Many of the problems we associate with failures of American economic policy — especially the persistence of a high poverty rate despite the billions of dollars a year we spend on relief efforts — can also be attributed to family breakdown. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that America's social problems and its economic problems are thoroughly intertwined with the decline of marriage and the rise of single parenting.”[ii]

Haskins's comprehensive review of decades of research documents the cumulative disadvantages children face when raised outside intact marriages: heightened risks of delinquency, reduced high school and college completion rates, higher early pregnancy rates for girls, significantly higher incarceration rates for boys, and substantially elevated poverty levels throughout their lives.[iii]

Looking at the numbers, children in single-parent households face four to five times higher rates of poverty compared to children in two-parent families.

Given this overwhelming evidence, the question isn't whether Wisconsin can afford to support marriage and family formation—it's whether we can afford the generational costs of ignoring what research makes unmistakably clear. Every policy choice either strengthens or weakens family formation and as a result keeping our kids safe. Wisconsin must deliberately choose families first.

Furthermore, Wisconsin's approach to family-first policy must acknowledge the powerful intersection of faith in God and family stability in producing positive social outcomes. Ultimately, every proposal and policy idea has built-in limitations because character cannot be legislated. Without virtue rooted in faith in God, our efforts can only address symptoms, not causes. A return to faith isn't just helpful—it's the foundational element upon which all other solutions this taskforce investigates will depend.

Achieving a family-first Wisconsin will take an all-hands approach and priority change in the minds of our leaders. We hope that the Taskforce on Protecting Kids will take this challenge seriously.

For Wisconsin Family Council, this is Daniel Degner reminding you that God, through the prophet Hosea, said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

[i] https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/stats/marriages.htm

[ii] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/marriage-parenthood-and-public-policy

[iii] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/marriage-parenthood-and-public-policy