The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the cultural response to AOC’s egg freezing, the failure of Mayor Mamdani’s city-funded daycare proposals, a new study that posits singleness is better for human flourishing than marriage, and why being a parent leads to better financial planning.Part I (00:14 – 08:55)The Cultural Response to AOC’s Egg Freezing: Many in the Culture See This as a Win for the Left and For WomenHow AOC is upending norms around motherhood and political candidacy by USA Today (Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy)AOC’s Egg Freezing Is Suddenly a Bipartisan Conversation by The Wall Street Journal (Kara Voght)Part II (08:55 – 17:02)The AOC Illusion: This is a Direct Violation of Creation OrderPart III (17:02 – 21:17)The State Cannot Replace the Creation Order of the Family: Mayor Mamdani’s City-Funded Daycare Proposals Fails on Theological, Economic, and Logistical GroundsFunding Delays Threaten Rollout of Mamdani’s 2-K Program by The New York Times (Matthew Haag)Part IV (21:17 – 24:18)Do They Really Believe This? Study Posits Singleness is Better for Human Flourishing Than MarriageNew study reveals a major perk of being single by The Washington Post (Cheyenne Buckingham)Part V (24:18 – 26:58)Childlessness and Retirement: New Study Shows Americans Without Children Are Nervous About Retirement Savings – Turns Out, Parents Are Better at Financial PlanningChildless Americans are feeling uneasy about retirement savings too by USA Today (Medora Lee)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Wednesday, September 2nd, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. When you look across the mainstream media, oftentimes you see recurring themes, and of course you see all the fascinations when it comes to the mainstream media. And so you see what comes at the top of the hour in terms of televised or streaming news. And then you see what comes later on. You see feature stories and all the rest. What you often don't see are the most. important issues in terms of worldview concern. And that is to say that when you're looking at the media, the big worldview concerns are not necessarily their concerns. I think that's patently obvious. Nonetheless, they do sometimes rather accidentally, I think, back into a big story, or they acknowledge this is a really big story and, you know, it's going to have to be taken apart.

So one of those big stories has to do with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We're talking about the U.S. Representative from New York. And we're also talking about the fact that she's making headlines it's all over the fact, not for politics per se, but for freezing her eggs. And that turns out to be a really big story, massive worldview ramifications. And so I have right before me today three major newspapers, each of which has a major article on AOC, as she is known, and the egg freezing scheme. So I have USA Today, front page of yesterday's edition, the front page of the New York Times on August the 12th.

A big front page of the section when it comes to the Wall Street Journal. August the 15th. So we're talking about recent news, August 12, August 15, and now September 1, and we're looking at the fact that some of the most influential media sources in America, and of course, it's not just in print, it's also video online, etc. They are giving attention to the AOC story. So the headline in USA Today is AOC's egg freezing upending norms. The subhead political risks are involved with sharing journey. Now, I'm going to step back and ask the question, I have no idea what USA Today means by upending norms. I am not saying that AOC's egg freezing is not upending norms, but I have to wonder what the editors at USA Today consider a norm.

Now, let's just look further at this story. It has to do with the fact that in recent weeks, Representative Alexandria Ocasigo-Cortez has made big news by on social media and in other formats announcing that she has decided to freeze her eggs. Now, there is a very strange timing going on here. And it is acknowledged by almost every mainstream media source. So almost everyone's acknowledging this is coming at the very same time that she's being discussed as a likely candidate, a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008. So let's just say that I'm in no position to say that those two issues are so inherently linked that one is driving the other. I will simply say it is beyond my imagination to think that these two things are emerging with absolute independent. Something is

connecting all of this. But one of the things that clearly has connected is that the mainstream media think this is a big story. Again, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, prime real estate. Not one of them seems to know what to do with this in terms of these major media sources. So let's turn to the most recent. When the one that emerged yesterday at USA Today, the headline again, AOC's Egg Freezing upending norms. Well, again, what norms are upended? Here's how the article begins, armed with a cream-colored $15-dollar target lunchbox containing thousands of dollars worth of medication and needles. Representative Alexandria Acacio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, went about her business in the nation's capital. Here's what the article says.

One day she was in the green room of ABC News Washington Studio, pinching her belly to prep the injection site before jabbing herself with a needle. Another day she was standing at her kitchen counter saying, Welcome to my cooking show. Today we're making eggs as she laid out the ingredients, vials filled with medication and syringes, on a paper towel. Okay, so here where things get really interesting. We have talked about the fact that she's done this on the briefing already. Now we're talking about what we are learning about the culture and the response to all this. First of all, there is widespread media fascination with this. So if AOC, as she is popularly known, did this as a political strategy, wow, it's a winning

strategy. It is gaining a great deal of attention. It's also turning out in a way that the mainstream media at least says is unpredictable. So you have some who are identified as conservative activists who are saying, go AOC. And there are some on the more liberal side who are not so excited about all of this. But when you look at this, you recognize, okay, so evidently, this is a big issue. It is a turning point in the culture. It's a fascination of the culture. Part of it has to do with a fascination with AOC herself. She is a fascinating individual, and in so many ways she's one of the rising stars of the socialist left. But it is also interesting. that this is what we are talking about right now.

And so it is also very revealing that all of a sudden the national media conversation has tried to tie all of this together with politics and all the rest. So to what degree is AOC sending a signal about the fact she's going to run for president or not going to run for president? What does it mean that recent media reports indicate that AOC is now estranged from her former fiancé that lived together for years? And now we're told that for as much as a year they have been split up already, she has decided now to move ahead with freezing her eggs in light of a future opportunity to have a baby. She's politicized it by saying that at least a part of the context that is driving her to do this as Republican efforts to so-called limit choice. And so that comes right down again to the Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade and all the rest. So there's a political dimension to all of this.

And frankly, whether on the right or the left, when someone is in this kind of political position, and they themselves put out this kind of social media video. Trust me, it's political. But the politics of this may be a little unpredictable. All right. So the USA Today cover story yesterday is about the fact that this is about appealing to younger voters. And we are told, quote, appealing to younger voters

is something Democrats need urgently to do, according to the Democratic National Committee's autopsy of why the party lost the 2024 election. Released in May, it pointed to a huge drop-off in both turnout and democratic support among young voters aged 18 to 29. I think it's fair to say that that's exactly the political constituency the AOC is aiming for. But having to do with this issue in AOC in particular, the article cites Nadia Brown, chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University,

is saying, quote, for millennial women like AOC, conversations around freezing your eggs, surrogacy, and postponing childbirth until your 40s, adoption. There's a whole lot of conversations that are happening in public, this generation of women. But then Brown went on to say, quote, so AOC is keeping in line with that, knowing that the base of her supporters are typically younger voters. They are college-educated voters, and these are people who this comment would make sense for, end quote. All right, so that gets more interesting in worldview analysis. Now we're looking not only as AOC is an individual, we are told that this could be a calculated effort to create a connection with an awful lot of young people

in this generation, which is postponing, well, you can say adulthood, postponing or avoiding marriage, and postponing having babies. Okay, so that's where the USA Today article yesterday gets really, really interesting. So we are told, quote, choosing when and how to become a parent is one of the most deeply personal decisions a person can make, making Akosio-Cortez being open about freezing her eggs massively impactful. And that word is credited to Louva Gretchen, surely identified as founder and CEO, the Vote Mama Foundation. Another source said, quote, she is talking about it specifically because so many women go through this process in isolation and she is working to break down that stigma and shame. Okay. So why would there be stigma and shame

about this? Let's just take this apart for a moment because this gets really, really interesting. Because what we're really talking about here is the replacement of things even more fundamental than most people are recognizing here. What's missing from the equation? Well, the most obvious thing that's missing from the equation is marriage, a heterosexual couple, who might be a reproducing couple. Instead, what we're talking about is a woman as an individual who no longer even has a man with whom she is cohabitating and is now no longer engaged as a fiancé. There's no marriage on the horizon. There's no man on the horizon. And so now you have AOC presented as a model for at least many younger women who are basically postponing

their fertility, and yet they don't want to give up the opportunity forever of having a baby, so they're freezing their eggs in anticipation of a day in which they may have those eggs by in vitro fertilization transferred as embryos to them. But what's missing here, and I mean profoundly missing is marriage. And that's just so incredibly significant. Because you look at this and all of these cover stories want to say, there's something big going on here. Well, yes, there is, but it's a lot bigger than they think. Because we're talking about a redefinition of human relationships, a redefinition of human reproduction, a redefinition of human society. We're looking at an absolute redefinition of adulthood. And now you have adulthood, especially this article makes

clear a lot of young women are postponing having a baby. They're also postponing marriage, which often isn't even mentioned here. And they are doing so because they are committed to their career. So the article makes very clear that a big wave is now present in the social horizon in which you have women deciding they're not going to get married, they're not going to have children for some time, they're going to establish themselves as professionals, and then one day, however, they still want to have babies. It isn't clear how many of them even have an indication of marriage, but you have here an open acknowledgement of the fact that this is a redefinition of adulthood in terms of what has been the uniform human experience going back millennia. That's no small thing. I think for Christians,

we need to look at this and see, the world thinks this is a big story. We have to see this as a far bigger story. The impact of this story is, in worldview terms, absolutely staggering. Now, at the same time, USA Today and along with other major media, are recognizing there's a big set of issues here. So, for example, the article says, and I quote, the fertility rate in the United States dropped to an historic low in 2025, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and experts cite a wide range of reasons, including delays in marriage, more women entering the workforce, economic uncertainty, and an absence of supportive family policies. Okay, several things mentioned there. Let's take them apart. The first thing, delays in marriage.

Wow, massive, huge, we discuss it often. The delay of marriage comes with all kinds of consequences, social, moral, and the issues, of course, are theological, biblical as well. The next thing it is mentioned here is women entering the workforce. Now, women aren't just now entering the workforce. But what is happening now is that at least in some generational cohorts, there are actually more women than men in the workforce at certain ages. And when it comes to college education and all the rest, there are many young women who are surpassing young men. And so you have a gender reversal in many situations. Now, what plays into this in such a big way is that the more traditional, and this is what they're against. The more traditional arrangement was that you had young men go to college, get established in professions, and be able to provide for a family. And now you have the situation in which in the name, first of all, equality, but beyond that now, you have young women who are dominating in many fields, and they're dominating in terms of the college admission classes as well. And thus you have marriage falling on the wayside. And frankly, it's not even mentioned by some of these young people, especially these young women, as an expectation at all.

Now, we also know that there's another big thing going on here, and that is that in this generational cohort, we have a very clear division between the young men and the young women when it comes to values, moral judgments, and especially politics. And so in that twofold direction, you have more young women identifying in more liberal directions and more young men identifying in more conservative directions. One of the big things that shows up in this article is that some who identify as conservative in the name of, well, it's a good thing to have more babies, even if it's late, and even if it involves IVF, and even if it involves egg freezing and all the rest, that's a good thing that people want to have babies. Well, as Christians who want to say, well, in a limited context, that's right. It is a good thing to want to have babies. But in a scriptural biblical worldview, that's always in a context. That's not just having babies. It's in the context of marriage. Therefore, a man shall leave his mother and father and so cling to his wife, and they should become one flesh, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And it's given to a married couple, that command and that context.

There's another big news angle in this. And to its credit, USA Today puts this right in the article. Listen to this. Quote, fertility and women decreases gradually but significantly at age 32 and rapidly after age 37, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. So for women delaying childbirth, and this is where the article is just very clear, access to assisted reproductive technology of which IVF is considered to be the most effective becomes a crucial part of the journey to motherhood. Wow. And so that is another very big admission.

Did you notice what's said there? It has to do with, in particular, women, gaining access to assisted reproductive technology, which IVF has considered the most effective. And it's about women in terms of the decreasing natural pregnancy coming by age. And the big breakpoints are 32 and 37. And so, as I said, there is a gradual but significant drop off at age 32 and then rapidly after age 37. Okay, so one of the things that becomes very evident in all of this literature, and by the way, I have news stories here from the Washington Post, from the Telegraph in London and

so many others. This is a big story. And by the way, AOC is the catalyst for a lot of this news coverage. But to their credit, a lot of media sources are asking, well, what's behind this? What does this really represent? Well, we are now a society that is talking about a very well-known woman who is, by definition, a single woman, who is a major political figure in the United States, and in this case on the Democratic left. And she is now gaining a lot of attention because she is claiming her personal autonomy in protecting what she sees as her future reproductive options and freedom by freezing her eggs. what's not on the horizon in any of this is the entire context given in scripture for all of this. I will tell you one of the most distressing things is that some of the people identified in these

national news articles as conservatives, and many of them are women, they don't sound very conservative. In other words, their conservatism is, I think, without a very clear foundation or set of guidelines. In other words, they are saying, you know, this is a woman who at least wants to talk about being a mother. And yes, I will tell you right up front from a Christian word. Roleview perspective, that's a good thing. But it's not a good thing separated from the context in which a woman is to become a mother. And it's not something that's a good thing isolated from the fact that you are talking about a reproductive revolution that itself comes with all kinds of moral dimensions and moral challenges and IVS at the top of that list. But you're also talking about the fact

that there is at least in these articles, and most of them, somewhere if buried in the text, an acknowledgement that a lot of this actually doesn't work. In other words, when you look at the numbers, and again, the ages that are given here, when we looked at the fact we're talking about young women at 32 and 37, that's not all that old. And we're talking about how fertility and successful pregnancy rates go so far down after that point, those are also the years that many of those young women are deciding they're going to devote to profession in the idea that they will put motherhood off for later. and I think there is going to be an enormous amount of tragedy in this, an enormous amount of heartache and loss in this, because I think those young women who buy into this without reservation are going to discover that a lot of it is based upon what is entirely a false promise. Just because AOC popularizes this in terms of online postings in which she's giving herself shots to exercise her personal autonomy at some point on her own terms to become a mother, if ever she decides that's what she wants to do, all of that presents to women.

I think what is an illusion and a false argument. And at the very least, Christians ought to show up and say, let's just remember how we know we have to think about these things. This is just one of the issues that is really right now very much on the front page of papers that should have some attention. I want to tell you, another article appeared just in recent days. This was Saturday of last week. Just going into the weekend, here's a headline,

funding delays in peril rollout of Momdani's child care plan. And we're told that many providers are being asked to front-porn. costs. Okay, so this is an article about the fact that the Democratic Socialist Mayor, DSA-identified mayor of New York City, Zoram Mandani, he is now advocating, of course, for the city to offer what amounts to eventually a universal child care program. Okay, now one of the points I just want to make before we go any further is no city can afford this period. It's just impossible. And so even when it comes to this rollout, we're talking about a very limited rollout, and this is for two-year-olds. And it was supposed to begin, this program was supposed to begin at least a rollout about two weeks ago.

But it's not going to happen. And it's because it is very difficult to come up with the explanation as to how it could happen. One of the things is that you're going to have to have an awful lot of qualified workers. And I mean, in a city like New York, you're talking about thousands of qualified workers. You're going to have to have facilities. You're going to have to have an entire infrastructure. And I think the New York Times is at least honest and crediting and admitting the fact that that infrastructure does not yet exist. There's also a giant cost.

And so one of the things that is most remarkable to me is how much cost we are talking about. One of the authorities cited by the New York Times says that for a couple to be able to basically have rent and food in much of New York and then provide child care for a child. you are talking about an income that may be required as something topping $300,000 a year. Now, in most parts of the country, you know, that's going to get a lot of blank stairs. In New York City, you do have an escalation in terms of salaries in many professions. On the other hand, if you're talking about that is something of a minimum necessary in order for parents to, you know, to raise children in the city like New York, you're talking about something that's absolutely massive. Now, that's with parents paying for child care.

It's one of the reasons why Zoramandani was quite popular. in saying, well, the city, we'll take this on. I'm just pointing out a deeply Christian principle, which is the state can't replace the natural creation order institution of the family. It can't. And you can say it can, but of course, at emotional levels, at relational levels, it just can't. It cannot. But even at the financial level, you're talking here about costs that are absolutely sky high, spectacular, almost unimaginable. And even a city like New York, I can just tell you, it's going to have a very hard time coming up with anything close to enough money to actually pay for this. Now, many observers looking at this say, well, what's going to happen is Mayor Mamdani's going to have to kind of back up and recalibrate and all the rest.

The problem is this is now something that he has basically sold to the voters of New York City. And many of them, if not most of them, are now looking for him to come up with a way to do this. It's sort of like his idea of city-owned grocery stores. Somebody thought that was a good idea. Somebody thought it sounded good, but actually, by the time the city goes into the grocery business, it is having to use false economics in order to justify the entire endeavor. The bottom line acknowledged in most of the news coverage is that every child would require thousands, thousands of dollars of tax-supported money in order to pay for anything like this.

And then you also see how everything expands. So if you're thinking about, say, this kind of child care program at one level, you think, well, of course, it's tied to something like a school schedule. And so you're looking at something, you know, eight in the morning until what, five or six perhaps later in the evening. But then you have the complication that many parents are operating on a different kind of work schedule. So in order to meet their needs, you're looking at something that's quite different than that. And there are people who are acknowledging that's just not going to be possible. Well, you know, if you have promised this as a government service coming up now and saying maybe that's not going to work out is going to

ring rather hollow. I think the bigger danger is that an increasing number of Americans, and this includes younger Americans, are buying into the idea, are premising their life decisions on the idea that something like this is one day possible. All right, before we end today, I want to point to a couple of other articles also in the mainstream media that are just incredibly explosively revealing. One is an article that appeared just this week in the Washington Post. The headline as being single could be a great opportunity for personal growth study suggests. Okay, okay. So now we're being told explicitly in this article that being single can come with some self-actualization advantages over being married. A great opportunity for personal growth. Some of this research is

tied to Simon Fraser University and the research was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the edition of August 2006. Listen to this quote, self-expansion theory has assumed that self-expansion happens in the context of close relationships. While that is true, the researcher said, our findings also highlight the potential benefits of personal growth and expansion during solo activities. Okay, just to cut to the quick, this is an entire article about the fact that the single life may be for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, superior to the married life. It is a permanent lifestyle. And this is one of the things we're seeing that, especially in younger cohorts and younger generations in the U.S., an increasing number of people say they really

don't intend to get married at all. And when I talk about those numbers, I mean, just tell you, the numbers are absolutely staggering as reflected in this. You're talking about the fact that at certain age levels, you have about half of some adult population saying that at this point they just don't really expect to get married. Again, as Christians, let me point out. And by the way, when I say as Christians, it's not just Christians. This is where I also want to say the worldview level, theists. So we're talking about conservative Jewish folks, and we're talking about conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants. here's one area of a very common approach. This can't work. It can't possibly work. The future of the human race doesn't work. If all of a sudden singleness is held up as a lifestyle, they may be even superior

to marriage in terms of personal growth and self-actualization and all the rest. This is another sign of where we have a society that is trying to come up with ways to say, you know, we can absolutely reject creation order and do fine, thank you. And some of it, by the way, it's just so absolutely vacuous. It's hard to believe that anyone's reading this and taking it seriously. But the Washington Post took it seriously. Here's a news story. Listen to this. Quote, solo travel, here's a quote from the article. Solo travel is known to be a great opportunity for self-expansion as it fosters the full exercise of personal freedom, decision-making, self-reliance, and socializing outside of your usual environment, end quote. So now we're being told that being a single tourist can be fantastic for self-expression.

The absolute exercise of personal freedom, decision-making, and all the rest. Well, of course, it can. And of course, you can do it more cheaply as a single person. But you are going as a single person. You are defined as a single person. And that's actually what the news article finds interesting about you is that you are a single person. As if this is all there is to it. No one's acknowledging everything that's missing from this picture. Okay, then USA Today, again, a very interesting barometer of the culture. I'm going to have to make this fast. But it recently ran an article, here's the headline, Childless Americans are feeling uneasy about retirement savings to Medora Lee is the reporter in the article. It came out just a matter of days ago. And it is really interesting. Listen to this. Just more than half, 52% of Americans without children said they were confident about saving for retirement, lower than the 72% of adults with children who said the same according to the 2006 annual retirement study from the Alliance study for the future retirement. Okay. So why is this interesting? Well, we're being told that Americans without children are actually less confident about their retirement.

than those with children. Those with children have paid an awful lot of money. Again, about a $300,000 cost is indicated here, the cost of raising a child. Now, don't take that at any kind of financial face value. It's a symbolic number. But it's interesting that they published at the cost of raising a child to 18 years, includes college and all kinds of other things. But my point is this. There's the acknowledgement in this study, and now the acknowledgement by USA Today that parents who spend even hundreds of thousands of dollars raising children. are better at saving money and feel better about their retirement than others. And why would that be so? I'm going to argue that it is so because when you have a married couple and when they have children,

and again, there are couples that can't have children and our heart goes out to them. There are people who are called to be single for gospel deployment and we celebrate them. But the vast majority of people we're talking about here are people who should be married and they're not getting married. They should have children and they're not having children. And here we are told that one of the effects nonetheless of not having children is that people are spending more money and saving less. I just want to point out the obvious, and that is having children. With the prospect one day of gloriously having grandchildren lengthens your horizon, I think you are likely to be much better with your money if you think it will affect future

generations, and I think you are likely to be more careless with your money if you think it all ends with you. Now, I would say that a part of this is just operating on a hunch, but that hunch just turned into a major news story at USA Today. I thought you'd find it interesting. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmohor.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtskleeu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boys'college.com.

I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.