MFP 347 Families Under Fire - Facing Cultural Challenges

Messy Family Podcast : Catholic Conversations on Marriage and Family

Mike and Alicia Hernon : Catholic Marriage Parent and Family

Parenting, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity, Kids & Family

4.9 • 841 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The family is where children discover how to be human. - Archbishop Charles Chaput

Summary

In this episode, Mike and Alicia tackle some of the toughest family challenges with honesty, humor, and hope. These questions were submitted to us at the Midwest Family Conference, but we never got to them! We talk about things like how to respond to a loved one with a temper or a dysfunctional family that seems to fight constantly. What practical steps can parents take to guard their family culture when outside influences pull in the opposite direction? Mike emphasizes the irreplaceable role of fathers—especially in having honest conversations with teenage sons about life's toughest issues. Alicia offers encouragement for wives supporting their husbands as spiritual leaders, even in the messiness of daily life. Together, they share practical strategies for cultivating virtue—reminding parents that even when kids bring out our weaknesses, God uses family life to make us holy.

Key Takeaways

We always need to start with ourselves when we come up against difficult relationships in the family.
All of us are to work on helping other family members - spouse and children - to grow in holiness.
Your family culture needs to be strong to inoculate your children against the culture of the world.
Parents' love for each other and joy in their relationship is essential in bringing peace and positivity to the home.
The father's role in the life of his teen son and in the spiritual leadership of the home is irreplaceable.
It is not your job to make your kids into saints - its their job to make you into a saint!

Couple Discussion Questions

What do we need to work on in our marriage to bring more love and joy into our home? How can we be a better example for our kids?
Are there issues with our kids that we need to discuss? What do we need to improve in our family culture?

Resources

Anger in Parenting https://messyfamilyproject.org/mfp-076-anger-in-parenting/
Preparing for Adolescence: https://messyfamilyproject.org/mfp-005-preparing-your-tween-and-yourself-for-adolescence/
Women Wonderfully Made Webinar

Catholiccouplesgetaway.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Family, all in this together.
0:08.2	Family, we're taking a chance.
0:10.8	Family, like birds of a feather.
0:13.3	Family, you got my shoes and dance.
0:15.4	Hey, we are Mike and Alicia Hernin.
0:17.4	We have 10 kids and grandkids too, and we are here for every parent.
0:21.4	Because we are on a mission to empower moms and dads to embrace their sacred calling. So join the
0:26.0	conversation.
0:31.8	Welcome to the podcast. We're so glad you joined us today. This is a, we get questions all the time. We love questions.
0:41.7	And we want to respond to the relevant and kind of pressing issues or challenges that families are under.
0:51.4	But we were at a conference in the Midwest and we got a lot of questions
0:56.6	that we couldn't get to during the conference. We had 33 questions. Those are the ones that we
1:01.1	have like that we haven't responded to. But there's some that we've already responded to.
1:05.5	And in a lot of these questions too were upvoted. Yes. And so there was yes, there's a lot of questions and we felt bad that we
1:11.7	didn't get to all of them. So all of you who went to the Midwest Family Conference who heard us there
1:16.1	were answering the questions that we didn't get to now. And if you think that these are relevant
1:22.0	questions that I think this is going to be for everybody, right? You know, because some of these
1:26.1	questions we hear over and over again. Yeah. And, but we want to make it, we're going to be for everybody, right? You know, because some of these questions we hear over and over again.
1:25.3	Yeah. And, but we want to make it, we're going to do some, some of them maybe rapid fire responses to give you some quick response. It's very hard for us to do rapid fire. We're not rapid fire. I know. I know. It takes a half hour just to say hello, you know. All right. before we jump into the topic, uh, to,
1:26.0	uh,
1:26.2	invitations that we have for you.
1:48.7	First is you're doing something beautiful for moms.
	...

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