Darrow Miller and Friends

Radical Feminism and the End of the Family: Mission Accomplished?

family the target of radical feminism

The nuclear family must be destroyed … Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process,” says author and woman’s rights activist Linda Gordon.

She is joined in that view by author and feminist activist Robin Morgan: “We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.”

Radical feminists regard the family as a barrier to women’s success. They thus set out to free women by weakening or destroying the family.  Their target was the traditional family. What some have called the natural family. By either name, we’re talking about the first human institution, engraved by God in human nature. The family is the basic building block of society. It is the voluntary, lifelong, covenantal union of a man and a woman and the offspring which are normally the fruit of that union. Marriage is patterned after the cosmic archetype: Christ and the church.

The World Congress on Families describes the benefits of the natural family:

  • Satisfying the longings of the human heart to give and receive love;
  • Welcoming and ensuring the full physical and emotional development of children;
  • Sharing a home that serves as the center for social, educational, economic, and spiritual life;
  • Building strong bonds among the generations to pass on a way of life that has transcendent meaning;
  • Extending a hand of compassion to individuals and households whose circumstances fall short of these ideals.

The family structure is weakening. In the eyes of society, the definition of family is changing. Today there are a variety of “family” models: blended, single parent, same-sex parented, childless-by-choice, et al. It’s politically correct to promote non-traditional families. But if the natural family model was what God designed for human beings, its destruction will bring profound consequences.

The recently published Schriever Report on women and poverty reveals the consequences of radical feminism’s deconstruction of the family (as reported by The American Thinker):

  • Nearly 70% of single mothers and their children are either living in poverty or teetering on the edge.
  • Women are two-thirds of the primary and co-breadwinners in American families.
  • Women are nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers.
  • 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income.
  • Out of a “groundbreaking bipartisan poll” of 3,500 adults only 37% of the women polled living on or over the brink of poverty were married.
  • Only a fifth of our families have a male breadwinner and a female homemaker.
  • More than half of babies born to women under 30 are born to unmarried women.
  • Women are three times more likely to be raising a family on their own, without a partner.

In her article “Feminists Shoot Themselves in the Foot,” M. Catharine Evans writes of the combined impact of fifty years of radical feminism (intended) and the war on poverty (unintended): “Spending over $20 trillion to date on government handouts to the poor in areas such as health, education, and job training have failed miserably with regard to lifting them out of poverty. Nevertheless, breaking down family structures has been successful.”

Many people deny that ideas matter. They are wrong. Richard Weaver captured the actual truth in his famous dictum, “Ideas have consequences!”

If we affirm that God created the universe with a certain order, and that this order includes the father-mother-child family, it follows that abandoning this order will trigger consequences for individuals, communities, and nations.

If a people or nation “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18) and seek to redefine the family, unintended consequences will result. Radical feminism has largely achieved its goal: the destruction of the natural family. The consequences abound in the painful reality of broken families, shattered lives, and growing poverty.

Darrow Miller writes about the family– Darrow Miller

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About 
Darrow is co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance and a featured author and teacher. For over 30 years, Darrow has been a popular conference speaker on topics that include Christianity and culture, apologetics, worldview, poverty, and the dignity of women. From 1981 to 2007 Darrow served with Food for the Hungry International (now FH association), and from 1994 as Vice President. Before joining FH, Darrow spent three years on staff at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland where he was discipled by Francis Schaeffer. He also served as a student pastor at Northern Arizona University and two years as a pastor of Sherman Street Fellowship in urban Denver, CO. In addition to earning his Master’s degree in Adult Education from Arizona State University, Darrow pursued graduate studies in philosophy, theology, Christian apologetics, biblical studies, and missions in the United States, Israel, and Switzerland. Darrow has authored numerous studies, articles, Bible studies and books, including Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Culture (YWAM Publishing, 1998), Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women for Building Healthy Cultures (InterVarsity Press, 2008), LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day (YWAM, 2009), Rethinking Social Justice: Restoring Biblical Compassion (YWAM, 2015), and more. These resources along with links to free e-books, podcasts, online training programs and more can be found at Disciple Nations Alliance (https://disciplenations.org).
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