Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
FATHERS, DAUGHTERS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE
Dear marriage supporter,
Last Saturday, Patrick Erlandson showed us how a father’s absence feeds both ends of the sex trade. This week, part 2 turns to daughters. Real marriage – one man and one woman, for life, and still the gold standard for families and society – is how a girl is most likely to grow up with a father who respects and protects her. Where he is missing, she may search to fill that gap elsewhere, and get it wrong. In a trafficked girl’s mind, Erlandson says, “every single guy is a potential customer. And it doesn’t matter, you could be a police officer, a judge, a priest, a father, it didn’t matter”. He runs Father-Con in Los Angeles. Watch the second half of our conversation here.
He names three things that set off alarm bells for him, and one is what came out of Me Too – “Everything is consent-centred.” Consent asks a girl one question, and it is a low bar: ‘Did she agree?’
When fathers aren’t in the picture, something else is teaching these girls. Last August, the Children’s Commissioner for England found the average age at which a child first sees pornography online is 13. When putting the statement “Girls may say no at first but then can be persuaded to have sex” to children, 44 per cent agreed – girls agreed more often than boys. Among the children who had seen pornography, it was 54 per cent of girls, against 41 per cent of boys. Without fathers, even the consent question is being worn away. That is not evidence about fathers. This is evidence about what teaches a girl while fathers are absent.
The repair runs the other way too, with a need for fathers to set examples for their sons. Erlandson tells of a boy who kept an empty picture frame beside his bed. Asked why, he said “that’s for my future wife”, and “I don’t want to do things today that I’m going to have to apologise to her for.” A boy raised to expect marriage is already protecting a girl he has not met.
C4M was founded to defend marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and this is one of the reasons why. So please watch the second half and send it to a father with a daughter. He is doing more than he knows.
If you are not yet supporting C4M financially, please help us defend marriage and the family by setting up a small monthly gift, or a one-off donation, using the donate button at c4m.org.uk
Dr Tony Rucinski
facebook.com/coalition4marriage
FATHERS, DAUGHTERS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE
Dear marriage supporter,
Last Saturday, Patrick Erlandson showed us how a father’s absence feeds both ends of the sex trade. This week, part 2 turns to daughters. Real marriage – one man and one woman, for life, and still the gold standard for families and society – is how a girl is most likely to grow up with a father who respects and protects her. Where he is missing, she may search to fill that gap elsewhere, and get it wrong. In a trafficked girl’s mind, Erlandson says, “every single guy is a potential customer. And it doesn’t matter, you could be a police officer, a judge, a priest, a father, it didn’t matter”. He runs Father-Con in Los Angeles. Watch the second half of our conversation here.
He names three things that set off alarm bells for him, and one is what came out of Me Too – “Everything is consent-centred.” Consent asks a girl one question, and it is a low bar: ‘Did she agree?’
When fathers aren’t in the picture, something else is teaching these girls. Last August, the Children’s Commissioner for England found the average age at which a child first sees pornography online is 13. When putting the statement “Girls may say no at first but then can be persuaded to have sex” to children, 44 per cent agreed – girls agreed more often than boys. Among the children who had seen pornography, it was 54 per cent of girls, against 41 per cent of boys. Without fathers, even the consent question is being worn away. That is not evidence about fathers. This is evidence about what teaches a girl while fathers are absent.
The repair runs the other way too, with a need for fathers to set examples for their sons. Erlandson tells of a boy who kept an empty picture frame beside his bed. Asked why, he said “that’s for my future wife”, and “I don’t want to do things today that I’m going to have to apologise to her for.” A boy raised to expect marriage is already protecting a girl he has not met.
C4M was founded to defend marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and this is one of the reasons why. So please watch the second half and send it to a father with a daughter. He is doing more than he knows.
If you are not yet supporting C4M financially, please help us defend marriage and the family by setting up a small monthly gift, or a one-off donation, using the donate button at c4m.org.uk
Dr Tony Rucinski
facebook.com/coalition4marriage
