Invincible Family by Kimberly Ells

It’s still true: the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

By Kimberly Ells and Carolyn Moynihan

Aug 22, 2021

Primary Publisher: Mercatornet

Anyone who has thought about the fundamental role of the family in society is aware by now that the basic social unit is in trouble. Many also believe that the problem comes not only from neglect but from the deliberate efforts of movements which see the family as an obstacle to social change and newly-minted rights.

Among the latter is Kimberly Ells, author of The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win. In it she uses a wide-ranging analysis and experience as a policy adviser for Family Watch International – a group with observer status at the United Nations – to argue that motherhood is both the chief target of radical movements and the reason why they will fail.

The following Q&A with Carolyn Moynihan highlights her key ideas.

* * * * *

Your book is a passionate defence of the family and, in particular, of motherhood. What experiences made you take up this cause?

Two things drive my passion for the family. First, I came to realize that mothers occupy the position of greatest power in the world and that narrative needed to be told. Second, I became acquainted with the children’s sexual rights movement which strikes at the heart of the family, and I decided it would not exist in the world without me fighting it.

The title speaks of a “campaign to crush motherhood and fatherhood”. It is obvious that the family – that is, the one founded on the lifelong marriage of a man and a woman – is in trouble. But is there really an organised effort to crush it? Who is leading the campaign and what methods are they using?

Yes! There is an organized effort to legally and culturally crush the family. I didn’t fully understand this until I went to the United Nations and saw it for myself. Some of the major weapons being wielded against the family by United Nations agencies and their partners are deceptive “gender equality” initiatives, the global hijacking of education, comprehensive sexuality education programs, and corrupted feminist ideology that pits women against their own children and against the family itself.

If the family is ultimately invincible, you suggest, it is because of the mother-child bond. Your argument for this is quite original – could you summarise it for us?

When a baby is born, it is always tethered to its mother by a cord—the umbilical cord. No child is born without being attached to another person and that person is always a woman. This tethering of mother to child establishes a relationship of belonging and stewardship which is indelible and is most likely to foster the condition we call love.

We take this situation largely for granted, but the anatomy of women working in tandem with men is key to the ordered functioning of free society. The preexisting and preeminent biological connection of mother and child undergirds the political, economic, and social structures of the world. If everything else in society is reduced to rubble, society will be rebuilt by and through families.

Another key idea in your book is that the mother’s “possessorship” of the child is the origin of the right to private property, and the reason why society should be oriented to the private sphere rather than collectivism. Doesn’t this analogy imply that parents “own” their children?

Parents do not own their children. Parents and children belong to each other in a most profound and permanent sense. The belonging of a child to its mother at birth has been recognized and honored in virtually every culture and in every age, which strengthens people’s desire to claim and care for that which is most intimately theirs: their children. This is the reason society is inescapably privately oriented, and it is the reason why every effort to redesign society on collectivist terms ultimately fails. If my child is “mine,” then collectivism is already doomed and private possessorship is triumphant from the womb.

You identify socialism as one of the forces undermining, if not outright warring against the family and its rights. Apart from the remaining communist countries, where is socialism exerting this power today?

Unfortunately, there is a huge socialist presence in education that is threatening to raise up the next generation to prize collectivism rather than individual rights and responsibility. This movement originates at the global level and is steering societies toward catastrophic collapse as I expose in the final section of the book.

Feminism is obsessed with the question of power. What is the movement missing in its quest for women’s empowerment and equality? What is the real power of women?

Vladimir Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” If this is true, and I submit that it is, then the person who gains the love and allegiance of children is in a prime position of influence. Since the design of anatomy grants the children of the world directly to women, this places women in a position to establish the foundational beliefs of societies, nations, and the world one child at a time. There is no greater power than this. Whatever else a woman does—and she can do many things—her position as mother is perhaps the most dynamic and the most enduring.

In Part III of your book you sketch “the road to a non-biologically ordered society” – one littered with new sexual rights and demands. What are the key victories of sexual radicals?

Key victories that erode and explode the family are extramarital sex, abortion, gender-neutral marriage which undermines children’s rights to their biological parents, the triumph of changeable gender over biological sex, and the children’s sexual rights movement.

Some of your most passionate language is directed at the international organisations – notably the United Nations and the OECD – whose effect on the family you describe as a “global onslaught”. This certainly seems the case where you describe sex education programmes for children: What on earth are “children’s sexual rights”? What does UNESCO have to do with them?

The global push for children’s sexual rights is spearheaded by several entities including UNESCO and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). The crux of the movement—which I didn’t believe until I saw it myself—is that children have an inherent right to sexual pleasure at all ages. For instance, UNESCO’s “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education” published in January 2018 makes these statements:

“[Young] people want and need sexuality and sexual health information as early and comprehensively as possible.”
Children should have “agency in their own sexual practices and relationships.”
Comprehensive Sexuality Education can “help children … form respectful and healthy relationships with … sexual partners.”

As for IPPF, its Exclaim! Young People’s Guide to ‘Sexual Rights: An IPPF Declaration’, document says, “Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important parts of being human for everyone — no matter what age, no matter if you’re married or not and no matter if you want to have children or not.” IPPF pushes this position because getting kids to have sex early and often brings a steady line of customers seeking abortion, contraception, and sexual disease testing right to their hideous doors.

Tell us about “social and emotional learning” for schoolkids. What is the ideology behind it?

While “social and emotional learning” (SEL) often sounds good and some programs may offer benefits to some children, the global trend in SEL is subtly or overtly anti-family and anti-freedom. It seeks to assess and shape not only children’s emotional skills, but their attitudes about political, environmental, and social issues.

Despite the odds there is a solution, which you describe in the last part of your book. It takes the form of a story about families in communist Hungary teaching their children “in the cellar” each night to counteract the daily indoctrination at school. Those who value the traditional family today don’t have to hide in the cellar – yet – but what should mothers and fathers be doing to counteract indoctrination of their children?

The story of these passionate Hungarian parents is one of my favorites in all of history. Their example is inspiring and relevant because they succeeded in preserving their children’s character amid a climate of severe indoctrination. One concrete and very do-able way we can follow their lead is by procuring books that tell the stories and teach the truths we want our children to espouse, and helping our children fall in love with those stories. Family libraries should include fiction, non-fiction, classics, historical sources, and any other books that fire our souls.

In terms of the wider society you call on women to take the lead. What do you want them to do?

First and foremost, mothers must deliberately and frequently teach their children what they believe about sex, marriage, gender, and the family regardless of what is broadcast as politically or socially correct. Second, mothers—in cooperation with fathers—must position themselves as the unabashed experts on their children’s wellbeing and refuse to buckle to pressures telling them that mothering is not “socially productive work,” regardless of whether they work outside the home. Third, women must influence policy makers at all levels to support the family as the fundamental unit of society that deserves legal recognition and protection.

The mothers of the world—over two billion strong—are the most influential world power. Now is the time for mothers to rise up and joyfully speak, write, organize, and advocate in favor of children, marriage, and the family.