A child is not created by an abstract idea of parenthood. A child comes from a man and a woman, from sperm and egg, from the male and female reality of human life. This biological fact should not remain only a fact of conception. It should also be reflected in the child’s daily environment.
In modern society, we often speak about the rights of adults: the right to love, the right to marry, the right to form a family, the right to live according to one’s identity. These rights matter. But when a child enters the picture, the discussion must change. A child is not an extension of adult desire. A child is a new human being, and society must ask first what the child needs.
My position is simple: every child must have daily presence of both sexes at home.
This is not an argument against homosexuality. Homosexuality is normal, as normal as heterosexuality. Nor is my argument that a child raised by a same-sex couple will become homosexual. That is not the issue. The issue is deeper. A child needs the male and the female presence not as decorative symbols, but as two different human realities.
The motherly presence and the fatherly presence are not identical. They do not have to be described in a rigid or primitive way, but they are not interchangeable either. A child needs the human world to appear in both its male and female form. The child needs the security, tenderness, and inner world often connected with the maternal presence, and also the outward movement, separation, limit, and social opening often connected with the paternal presence.
Matthaios Giosafat expressed a related idea: the mother first gives the child the protected inner world, while the father helps the child move outward into the world. Whether one agrees with every detail of this view or not, the central insight is important. The child does not merely need “care.” The child needs a complete human horizon.
Therefore, society should not treat the absence of one sex from the home as irrelevant.
This principle should apply to every case, not only to same-sex couples. It should apply to a single mother raising a child alone. It should apply to a single father raising a child alone. It should apply to a household with two men. It should apply to a household with two women. It should apply after divorce, death, abandonment, adoption, or assisted reproduction.
The principle is universal:
Every child has the right to daily male and female presence at home.
If one of these presences is missing, it must be substituted in a concrete way. Not through vague words such as “role models,” “community,” “mentors,” or “relatives.” These are often empty expressions. The solution must be specific.
The missing sexed presence should be provided at home for three hours every day.
If a child lives without a daily male presence, then a certified male home-presence figure must visit the home for three hours per day.
If a child lives without a daily female presence, then a certified female home-presence figure must visit the home for three hours per day.
This person would not automatically be called “father” or “mother.” The role would be more precise:
Certified Male Home Presence
or
Certified Female Home Presence
The role would be official, trained, supervised, and long-term. It would not be a random visitor, and it would not be a symbolic arrangement. The same person should remain connected with the child for a substantial period, preferably at least one year, so that the child experiences continuity and not a rotation of strangers.
The three hours should take place inside the home because the home is where childhood is formed most deeply. A school teacher, a sports coach, or a psychologist may help a child, but they do not replace the daily atmosphere of the home. The home is where the child eats, speaks, plays, studies, rests, and forms their first understanding of life. If the missing male or female presence is to mean anything serious, it must enter that ordinary daily world.
The role would be practical. The certified person may help the child with homework, talk with the child, eat with the child, read, play, walk with the child when appropriate, participate in family routines, and offer the missing male or female presence in a stable and visible way.
Of course, such a system would need strict rules.
There should be background checks, training, licensing, supervision, and regular review. There should be written records of visits. There should be clear child-protection rules. There should be no bedroom isolation, no bathing or dressing of the child, no physical punishment, no ideological manipulation, no sexual or intimate behavior, no overnight stay, and no attempt to replace the legal parent.
The parent should first have the right to propose a suitable person of the missing sex. If the parent cannot find such a person, the state should provide certified candidates. The parent should be able to choose among approved persons, but the parent should not be able to cancel the child’s right entirely without serious reason.
This is the difficult point. Many people will say that the state must not enter the private home. But the state already enters the home when a child is abused, neglected, or endangered. The principle is already accepted: the home is private, but it is not above the child’s rights.
If society accepts that a child has a right not to be beaten, not to be abandoned, and not to be psychologically destroyed, then society can also discuss whether a child has a right to a complete male and female human presence. The home cannot be treated as the private property of adults when the development of a child is at stake.
This proposal may sound strange today because modern culture has become afraid of saying that the male and the female are both necessary. We are encouraged to speak only about love, consent, equality, and adult freedom. These are important, but they are not the whole truth. A child does not grow only through love in the abstract. A child grows inside a structure. And the most basic human structure is male and female.
The purpose of this proposal is not to punish anyone. It is not to stigmatize single parents, widows, divorced families, or same-sex couples. On the contrary, it gives society a concrete way to help the child when one side of the human presence is missing.
The state should not simply say, “This family is incomplete,” and then do nothing. Nor should it pretend that every family structure is identical. The honest position is different:
When one sex is absent from the daily home life of a child, society should repair the absence as much as possible.
Three hours per day at home is not a perfect replacement for a mother or a father. Nothing can perfectly replace a mother or a father. But it is a serious attempt to recognize the child’s need and to answer it concretely.
The child must not be sacrificed to adult ideologies, whether conservative or progressive. The child must come first.
And if the child comes first, then we must have the courage to say this:
Every child should grow up with both male and female presence at home. When one is missing, society must provide a safe, trained, daily substitute — not in theory, not occasionally, but concretely: three hours per day, inside the child’s home.
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