Dr. Phil Says Kids’ ‘Best Shot’ is With Two-Parent Home That Goes to Church
By Movieguide® Contributor
Strong families and a strong relationship with God are key factors in building a healthy society, says TV personality and author Dr. Phil McGraw.
“Family in America is under attack. We need to fight back with the tools we have, and one of the tools that we have is our active relationship with God,” McGraw told Pastor Ed Young at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas.
“If you are married and you do have two parents in [the] family and you are going to church, that’s your best shot of those children going into a lifestyle that will be drug-free, alcohol-free, abuse-free, divorce-free, that’s your best shot,” he explained.
McGraw shared the statistics on the link between the decline of church attendance and the effect on the family.
“Church membership in this country has dropped below 50% for the first time in our country,” he said. “And I have pretty good observations empirically supported as to why and that is people are worshiping something other than God.”
“The divorce rate among families that don’t worship together, aren’t members of a church is 70% higher than those who do. Married men, on average make at least 30 or 40% more money than unmarried men,” McGraw added. He’s been married to his wife Robin for nearly 50 years.
Other studies in the past corroborate Dr. Phil’s observation between church attendance, marriage and mental health.
A study done by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) found that, although there was a general increase in unhappiness across demographics after the Pandemic vs. prior, the mental health of those who were married and those who attended church regularly were not as affected.
“Unhappiness rose just 8 percentage points for married young adults, versus 18 percentage points for the unmarried,” Lyman Stone reported.
“Among people who attended religious services at least two times per month, unhappiness rose only 4 percentage points, the smallest increase of any group. Among those who attended less often, unhappiness rose 15 percentage points,” the study also found. “This difference was highly statistically significant, suggesting that participation in religious community may serve as a useful buffer against adverse events in life.”
“The church brings something to the family unit that causes cohesion, that causes values to be thought of and talked about and prayerfully considered,” McGraw stressed.
Dr. Phil has shared how vital the family is and how his faith has influenced how he raised his two children.
“As a Christian, I have raised my family based on the core teachings that I received growing up, and I always knew that the family is so important, and it’s absolutely biblical that the family is the future. The family is everything to humankind and keeping everything together,” McGraw said in an interview with TBN.
“It was important to me, as a father, to model to those children that they see their father in a prayerful relationship with the Heavenly Father, because I won’t be here forever,” he said. “I know in my heart that when I’m gone, they won’t be alone because they will have a well-practiced relationship with their Heavenly Father.”
Dr. Phil, in partnership with TBN, launched his own TV network called Merit Street Media to combat the false narratives that are often found in the mainstream media. Movieguide® recently reported:
“I’ve always said to parents, you’re not going to be the only voice in your child’s ear, so you need to make sure you’re the best voice in your child’s ear,” the DR. PHIL host said in a March PRAISE episode. “That you’re telling them the vital information they need to make the right choices at the right time. And right now, we’ve got people telling them ‘Oh, you know, that’s not important.’”
“We’ve got college universities that I have come out and said are doing nothing but fostering intellectual rot. They’re not preparing them for the next level of life,” he said with conviction.
He believes that American media sources weren’t candid about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They shut this country down for two years, and what they say today is we did the best we could with what we knew. No you did not do the best you could with what you had. You got power, and you abused it,” McGraw said.
“And nobody is calling them on it,” he said. “And they’re continuing to do that in this category, in this category, in this category…”
But his new broadcasting network will change that.
“Merit Street Media is calling that stuff out,” he claimed. “We’re calling them on it and were going to put it out in front of people so they have the information they need to make the decisions in an informed way.”
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