Big business against the natural family

Christian social thinkers have urged the development of a humane economy that provides justice for workers and support for families. Unfortunately, big businesses today appear to have little sense of how to achieve this, even when they are trying to be generous to their employees.

My Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Alexandra DeSanctis and I recently completed a report examining the family policies of Fortune 100 companies. Despite the many differences between these companies, there was an unmistakable trend toward policies that conflict with the principles and precepts that have been repeatedly articulated by Christians, most clearly by the Catholic Church.

The most obvious of these clashes was the widespread support for elective abortion among Fortune 100 companies. Close to half of them responded to the Dobbs decision by announcing that they would pay the travel expenses of employees who have to cross state lines to get abortions. And it is likely that many more companies include such coverage for abortion tourism in their standard insurance plans, but they have declined to wade into the culture war by drawing attention to it.

Although some companies are reticent about any of their employee benefits, there were a fair number whose public support for abortion contrasted with the lack of transparency about the family benefits they offer. It is notable that some companies, such as Nike, thought it important to make their support for abortion public, even while providing limited information about, say, the maternity leave they offer. Likewise, providing full coverage for abortion contrasts with the much more limited support many companies provide for adoption, where the full expense is rarely reimbursed.

The Fortune 100’s conflict with Christian precepts is not confined to subsidizing abortion, for the corporate idea of generous family benefits is often unmoored from a sound understanding of human nature and well-being. For instance, many companies that (laudably) offer extensive paid maternity leave also subsidize IVF and commercial surrogacy, often as part of a sexual diversity agenda that is incompatible with Christian teaching. Thus, we see two competing visions of what generous family benefits mean and are meant to accomplish beyond employee recruitment and retention.

The first vision, that of the secular corporate world, is that benefits are meant to enable employee self-actualization. Employees should be empowered to have the family life, especially regarding children, that they desire. If they do not want children, then the company will pay to ensure that none are born to them. If they do want kids, the company will cover the costs of procuring them, whatever form that might take.

This view contains an implicit (and sometime explicit) commodification, and therefore dehumanization, of children. It suggests that if unwanted, they may be violently disposed of in utero, and that if wanted, they ought to carefully timed for career optimization. However, it also asserts that barriers to adult desires for children (e.g., a homosexual couple that is by nature unable to beget children together) can and should be solved with the application of cash, technology, and perhaps some purchased gametes and a rented womb.

This might earn companies diversity points, but it is not what most people want or need when it comes to family benefits. And its treatment of children as commodities reveals an ideology that is rooted in subjective human desire, and is disconnected from genuine human goods.

In contrast, a Christian understanding of family benefits is rooted not in personal desire, but in the goodness of the natural family and children, who are of inestimable worth in themselves, regardless of adult desire. In this view, the purpose of family benefits is not only to attract and keep good workers on staff, but to treat them as complete human beings, rather than mere units of labor. Supporting workers as they have children and care for family members is an expression of a broader understanding of human flourishing.

This perspective recognizes that true well-being is not just about fulfilling desires—indeed, that sort of indulgence is often inimical to living well. Rather, there is a natural order to human thriving, and family is an essential part of this. We are meant to love and care for each other, and to find fulfillment more in relationships than in indulgence. Indeed, indulgence is often harmful, sometimes catastrophically so, to genuine human flourishing, and to children in particular.

Children and family are not goods to be consumed, but persons to be known and cherished. And so a truly humane and pro-family approach to family benefits must be in accord with this natural order, rather than rooted in subjective desire.