In her 2023 book, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, author Mary Eberstadt explores the aftereffects of the sexual revolution on men, women, and children. Today there is considerably less family commitment and nurturing relationships than in the past. She writes:
Children today are considerably less likely to have siblings — and by extension, cousins, aunts, and uncles — than they were sixty years ago. Almost 30 percent of all households consist of just one person. Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home. Such momentous, ubiquitous changes to kinship have had and continue to have momentous and ubiquitous consequences. How could they not? A world of fewer and weaker family ties is one in which deprived people are furious about things they do not have or no longer know.
The National Review summarizes her main points:
To put it more starkly, in the name of human freedom, we have perhaps unwittingly created a society in which children on the whole experience less love and commitment in their lives than ever before. There are literally fewer people in their lives who are bonded to them by familial ties. This means fewer role models. Fewer chances to connect with the one odd cousin, aunt, or in-law who shares a peculiar passion or trait. It means less practice at socialization. It means fewer chances to practice sharing joy, and grief, with people whose bonds are natural and durable.
Eberstadt discloses the undeniably shocking consequences:
The vast majority of incarcerated juveniles have grown up in fatherless homes. … Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other tragic outcomes.
