Yes, Family is More Important than Career

J.D. Vance faced a firestorm of hate last week over an interview he gave a few years ago in which he suggested that our ruling class is becoming filled with a “bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives.”

Although he has since tried to clarify and soften the statement, it’s worth pointing out that, as a broad generalization, this is simply true. The civil service agencies that have some of the biggest impact on our day to day lives, for example, such as the Departments of Education, Housing and Treasury, employ far more women than men. And to get ahead in those careers, women have to put childbearing on the back burner.

Jennifer Roback Morse of The Ruth Institute has been making this point for years and spoke to me about it when I interviewed her for the documentary Unprotected.  

Unfortunately for them, achieving career success at the expense of children is not making women happy. As fertility rates have fallen, so have happiness levels. First Things has published two excellent articles on this recently by Mary Eberstadt and Rachel Bovard, and I touch on several reasons for women’s discontent in this extended clip from Unprotected.1

While childless women seem to be getting the focus of this conversation, it is essential to understand that family is more important than careers for both men and women, and this is true regardless of whether a person ever gets married or has children. In other words, it is more important for you to focus on successfully living out your identity within your family than it is to focus on achieving career success, and this applies whether you are a man or a women, married or single, parent or childless.

It is more important for you to focus on successfully living out your identity within your family than it is to focus on achieving career success, and this applies whether you are a man or a women, married or single, parent or childless.

Here is what I mean. We all born into relational identities. We start life out as a son or daughter at the very least, and then depending on our situation and our choices, we may also develop other relational identities throughout our lives: granddaughter, grandson, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, husband, wife, mother, father, grandfather, grandmother. So we are born as part of a family; there is no choice involved. However, we then get to choose a) how much we want to expand those familial identities and b) how we will live within the ones we already have.

Modern Enlightenment Liberalism tells us that that we should downplay, avoid, and even escape these familial relational identities, as they are oppressive and keep us from finding happiness in other pursuits, such as chasing sex, money, and power. “Be a rebellious son or daughter,” we are told, “then don’t tie yourself to someone else in marriage, at least until you have achieved these other goals, and certainly don’t get dragged down having to raise expensive and annoying rug rats. Just focus on your desires and having fun.”

Traditional Christianity teaches the opposite. It tells us that familial relations are an integral part of being made in the image of God, and that living in family teaches us how to become less selfish and more aware of the concerns of others. Put another way, our family is intended to help us become holy.

I’ve seen a simple example of this on mornings in our house in those seasons when everyone is living at home and has to get out the door at the same time. The kitchen, bathrooms, and hallways become the stage for a strange looking dance as my wife and I, our two young adult daughters, and our two school age children all try to get ready, eat breakfast, and pack lunches without getting run over or running into others. To make it work, everyone has to look out for everyone else. In doing so, each of us, at least to some degree, gains the perspective of everyone else, and to make it work really well (it doesn’t always, certainly) everyone has to consider how they might help the other people succeed.  

There is a word for that: it’s called love.

Family is where love is initially incubated and where it grows to fulfillment. As we lean into living together as a family, we become more loving. And since love is the meaning of life and the secret to happiness, to live without family is to seriously hinder one’s chances at happiness. Damon Owens has some great insight into this.

Now, let’s be clear that this doesn’t mean Christianity teaches that everyone must get married, have children, and be the head of your own nuclear family. Certainly that is the norm, but there are many examples in scripture and Church tradition in which people fulfill their calling in life apart from marriage and children. Following Jesus may involve staying single and childless for life. Indeed, many people are unable to have children at all through no choice of their own. But notice that those instances do not mean that God ever wants you to abandon the essential duties of your familial relations in order to chase after worldly success.

I have a friend who is in his fifties and has never been married or had children. He would like to do both, but it just hasn’t worked out so far. However, he recently moved cities and changed jobs in order to take care of his elderly mother. This is a great example of what I am talking about. He may not be a husband or father, but he is doing an amazing job of living out his identity as a son, and that is a more valuable act than anything he could do career wise. And although his actions have led to hard work, extra troubles and a few hardships, they have also brought him a lot of joy.

Want another piece of evidence in support of this point? Go walk through a cemetery and read the headstones. They tell you what identifiers people consider truly important in life, and I’ve never seen a dead person described in stone for posterity as a “Successful Stock Trader” or “Girl Boss.”  Rather, here is what you see: “Loving Mother, Father, Son, Daughter…”

I gave a talk to a group of school age children recently and asked them a question they hear often in our society: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I got the usual array of responses. Firefighter, astronaut, You-tuber. But I suggested to them that they were thinking about the answer to that question all wrong. Those are careers, they are tasks that you do for a living. But they are not what you are. What you are is a child of God, made in the image of him. What you are is a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister. And someday, Lord willing, you may be a mother or a father. Your goal as you grow up can and should include training to work in careers, but they are not what is ultimately important. What is ultimately important is that you grow up fulfill your role in your family to the very best of your ability, and as you do that, you will find the happiness and joy that comes from being what God has created you to be.

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