The observance of this year’s Global Day of Parents on June 1, 2018 offers occasion to reflect on the indispensable role of parents and the support they need in providing the “special protection” and “love and understanding” to which children are entitled, enabling them to “develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity”(Declaration of the Rights of the Child).
We are especially cognizant of the many single parents, mostly mothers, who faithfully, and often in the face of great hardship, care for and nurture their children. “Mothers play a critical role in the family,” said former Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and “the mother-child relationship is vital for the healthy development of children”—so vital that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.”
Such care and assistance for mothers and children should first and foremost be provided by the fathers: “Governments should take steps to ensure that children receive appropriate financial support from their parents by, among other measures, enforcing child-support laws. Governments should consider changes in law and policy to ensure men’s responsibility to and financial support for their children and families” (ICPD 4.28). Nor is it merely financial support that children need from their fathers. “Fathers play an indispensable role in forming vital, whole families,” said President Ronald Reagan. “They serve as models and guides for their sons and daughters and help to pass on to the next generation the heritage of our civilization.”
The need for both mother and father is acknowledged in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child stating that every child should, “wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of his [or her] parents.” More recently, a study by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution states, “Most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes”(Brookings, “Mobility and Money in U.S. States: The Marriage Effect,” December 2015).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls the family—which it says is “entitled to protection by society and the State”—“the natural and fundamental group unit of society.” According to Professor Richard Wilkins, “As reflected in the precise and elegant terms of the Universal Declaration,” the word “natural attests that the survival of society depends on the positive outcomes derived from the natural union of a man and a woman,” making it “the cradle—not only of human rights—but also of society and civilization itself.”
We urge you to promote, both in the United Nations and in your own nation, policies and practices that encourage the formation and strengthening of the family founded on the marital union of a man and a woman. We further urge you to resist all proposed policies and practices—even (or especially) when advocated in the name of “rights” or “freedom”—that ultimately undermine the family and harm children by depriving them of a father or a mother. We hope this Global Day of Parents will be a time to recommit to provide what the Declaration of the Rights of the Child says children deserve: “Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.”
International Organization for the Family
Center for Family and Human Rights, USA
United Families International, USA
American Family Association of New York
Latin American Alliance for the Family, Venezuela
Novae Terrae Foundation, Italy
FamilyPolicy.RU Advocacy Group, Russia
Family Policy Institute, South Africa
CitizenGo, Spain
Family First, New Zealand
Australian Marriage Forum
Power of Mothers, USA
Family First Foundation, USA
Institute for Family Policies, Spain
