Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, accused the New York Times newsletter, titled “The Gap Between the Families We Have, and the Ones Conservatives Want”, of missing the point on marriage and children.
The head of took to X to share her lengthy contrasting view and said, “This @nytimes op-ed completely misses the point on the purpose of marriage and children and completely misrepresents my views in the process. The entire article is laced with viewing family through the lens of money and career as if those things bring fulfillment and purpose.”
“When you’re on your death bed, your money and your career won’t be whispering in your ear ‘I love you’ as you take your last breath. The material goods and fortune of this world mean nothing when we go to our eternal resting place,” Erika wrote.
In her X post, said the author “conveniently leaves out the part of my Hillsdale commencement speech where I said ‘marry young, not rushed, but young’.”
Erika said people shouldn’t put off having kids — “We serve a God of order, and when you live a life ordered, there’s a double portion of grace. Meaning marriage first, then kids, and everything else.”
“Timing matters because life is shorter than you might think, and you never know what could happen. The point is, don’t put it off. Don’t rush it or force it if it’s not right, but don’t put it off,” Erika wrote.
Erika married her husband in 2021 at the age of 32. was 27 at the time, which she neither viewed as too old nor too young. However, Erika said she wished they had met sooner and could have started their family sooner.
“There is no such thing as perfect timing to have kids. Financial struggles are a part of life, but the problem is a lot of Americans are self-surviving, not self-sacrificing, and they expect to live a very distinct lifestyle based on what they see online,” she wrote.
“When Charlie encouraged young people to have more kids than they can afford, he wasn’t saying to recklessly bring a child into this world and have them on welfare. He was saying children aren’t a luxury item to have once you meet a certain tax bracket threshold. You don’t need a mansion in order to build a family,” she added.
What did the NYT piece say?
The NYT op-ed by Jessica Grose specifically cited Erika Kirk’s comments at the Hillsdale College commencement ceremony in May.
“Erika Kirk said if her late husband were alive, he would have encouraged them to get married young,” according to Jessica. She had also said Charlie would have said, “Have more kids than you can afford.”
Jessica said, “Kirk pitches her message as countercultural, and in a sense, it is. A 21-year-old married speaker at Turning Point’s Women’s Leadership Summit in June said she was going against the culture by proclaiming her husband as the head of her household and feminism as a ‘psyop.’ But a young marriage isn’t what most Americans want.”
She argued, “Encouraging more Americans to have families doesn’t have to involve a stubborn, unwanted return to a patriarchal, midcentury Christian idea of marriage.”
“By casting the ideal 21st-century relationship in antiquated terms, conservatives are ignoring the glaring reality of how Americans actually want to live and are living their lives,” the NYT article read.
Jessica cited Stephanie Coontz’s book, “For Better and Worse,” throughout the piece, which argued that marriage varies across cultures and eras.
“I take conservatives at their word that they want more people to get married and for those people to have more children than they are currently having. But it makes absolutely no sense to create a definition of marriage that excludes the desires and ideals of a substantial majority of Americans,” she said.
