Recently I’ve been reading “How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization” by Mary Eberstadt. The central thesis is that family and faith are the invisible double helix of society – two spirals that when linked to one another can effectively reproduce, but whose strength and momentum depend on one another. Below is a short quote from the book:

“As secularization theorists correctly point out, urbanization is closely linked with smaller families. Following the industrial revolution, many Western people started having smaller families, and more chaotic families on account of their moves into cities.

Then came another series of shocks that further weakened family bonds: the legalization of divorce, the particularly momentous invention of modern contraception, the consequent increasing destigmatization of out-of-wedlock births…Many of these changes were then given even more force by related changes in Protestant theology…that unwittingly amounted to more blows against an institution already being roundly battered. Thus the severly weakened Western family ceased to transmit Christianity among its shrinking generations as it once had.”