The Family Has Changed — And It Shows

Why Strengthening the Home Is the Most Urgent Work of Our Generation

Over the last 100 years, the American family has shifted more than it did in the thousand years before it. And we’re living in the consequences — spiritually, emotionally, and generationally.

Let’s talk about it plainly.

We love our families. We sacrifice for them. But the world we’re raising our children in is not the world our grandparents grew up in. The foundations have cracked, and if we don’t rebuild them with intention, our kids will inherit the rubble.

1. Parents Are Spending Less Time at Home — And Our Kids Feel It

A century ago, 70% of American families lived and worked in the same space — farms, small shops, homesteads. Today, most parents spend the majority of their waking hours outside the home.

Modern stats are sobering:

• The average American parent spends less than 40 minutes of uninterrupted, present-time interaction with their child per day.

• Meanwhile, children spend 7.5 hours a day on screens.

We didn't choose all of this — culture drifted, technology exploded, and families got caught in the undertow.

But the result is the same: homes with people in them, but not truly connected.

2. The Generational Gap Has Become a Generational Canyon

Once upon a time, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors lived less than a mile away. Today, only one in five Americans live near extended family.

What used to be passed down — wisdom, watchfulness, emotional safety, shared responsibility — has been replaced with isolation.

We see the fallout in our kids:

• Rising anxiety and depression

• Lack of resilience

• Identity confusion

• A hunger for belonging that social media cannot feed

We are raising a generation overstimulated but under-supported.

3. Emotional Intelligence Is Declining — Even Though We Talk About It More

Here’s the irony: we talk more about feelings than any generation before us… yet emotional intelligence is going down, not up.

According to Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence:

• Students today report higher stress, more overwhelm, and less emotional clarity than students in the early 2000s.

• Adults are mirroring the same patterns.

Why?

Because emotional intelligence isn’t taught through vocabulary.
It’s taught through presence.
Through modeling.
Through being raised in homes where adults are emotionally grounded themselves.

You can’t disciple what you don’t have — and you can’t pass down what you’re too exhausted or disconnected to model.

4. The Birth Crisis Is a Family Crisis

And then there’s the foundation of the whole family — birth.

Right now:

• The U.S. has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world.

• Black mothers are 2–3x more likely to die during childbirth.

• Roughly 1 in 3 births ends in a C-section, many preventable.

• Over 60% of birthing women report feeling unheard or dismissed by providers.

Birth is where family begins.
When birth is mishandled, ignored, or treated like an inconvenience, the family suffers from the very first moment.

At The Village of Virtue & Victory, we believe birth is sacred.
Not sentimental — sacred.
Holy.
A moment designed by God to usher new life into generations.

And right now, that moment is under attack.

5. So What Do We Do Now?

We don’t despair — we rebuild.

We strengthen families by strengthening homes.
We strengthen homes by strengthening mothers, fathers, and the generations rising behind them.
We create places where families can breathe again — and belong again.

That’s what The Village of Virtue & Victory is called to do.

To reconnect what has been fractured.
To restore what has been forgotten.
To remind our nation that legacy begins in the home — and if we lose the home, we lose everything.

But if we rebuild it?
If we strengthen the foundations?
If we return to virtue, reclaim victory, and raise our children with intention and faith?

We can turn the tide.

One family at a time.
One home at a time.
One act of courage at a time.

And maybe — just maybe — our great-grandchildren will look back and say,
“They were the generation that rebuilt the village.”

XO

LadyBec