232. Katy Faust: Adults Should Do Hard Things So Children Don’t Have To

Katy Faust returns to the podcast, and this time the conversation goes somewhere I didn’t expect. Katy founded Them Before Us to defend children’s right to their mother and father, and she opens by laying out the three principles that drive her work: children have a right to life, children need their mom and dad, and children should not be bought and sold. Those convictions put her at odds with almost everyone at some point, which is exactly why I wanted to talk with her again.

What makes this episode different is how personal it gets. Katy asks me, as a therapist, whether children ever really get over losing a parent. That question opens into a long exchange about ego strength, earned secure attachment, and why a twenty-year-old can’t yet see what a forty-year-old can about the childhood in their rear view mirror. I share more about my own psychic foundations than I have before on this show, picking up on the personal disclosures in my recent conversation with Soad Tabrizi.

We also get practical. Katy shares what it took to help the son they adopted at age two to finally feel secure after neglect and abandonment. Katy explains the “no flinch rule” from her book on parenting, why self-esteem comes from doing hard things rather than hearing praise, and why American parenting has the freedom-to-constraint ratio backwards. And we talk directly to parents who built their families through donor conception or surrogacy: how do you hold the complexity of loving your children while staying open to what they may be grieving as a result of your choices?

Katy Faust is Founder and President of Them Before Us, a global movement defending children’s right to their mother and father. She publishes, speaks and testifies widely on why marriage and family are matters of justice for children. Her articles have appeared in outlets including Newsweek, USA Today, Fox News, The Federalist, Public Discourse, WORLD Magazine, First Things, and the Blaze. She is on the advisory board for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. She detailed her philosophy of worldview transmission in her book, Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City. Her third book, Pro-Child Politics was published September 2024. She is spearheading Greater Than which aims to retake legal marriage on behalf of children. She and her husband have raised their four children in Seattle. Katy previously appeared on this podcast in episode 145. Putting Children’s Needs Before Adults’ Desires with Katy Faust.

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