She's like the Grandma we all miss in our lives!

As a child who grew up in a single parent home I have suffered greatly in my life and in myself from not having two parents. It leaves you feeling tether less. So many of her point I deeply deeply resonate with I see in my own life. Just not having the roll modelling of that dynamic has been tough on every relationship I have had.

It's amazing that the world is so confused, yet the analysis that explains everything can be found on and obscure KZfaq video.

A tremendously important conversation. Thanks so much!

This is the best and most important interview so far.

It is very telling that such a profound and enlightening discussion only has 3600 view in one year. Baby boomers (including myself) need to face up to the fact that we screwed up and take responsibility for it.

Thanks Yoram, I wish more Irish people would look at these excellent discussions. Nothing of this calibre exists over here, thinking at another level.

I am convinced that Mrs. Eberstadt is correct.

This is a profoundly important discussion. Patrick Moynihan got into trouble in the 1960's expressing his concern about the destruction of the black family in America, which is now occurring in white families. This is an idea that hopefully, its time has come. It would also be important/challenging/controversial to take a look at the dysfunction in a family and a society where the father is brutal, authoritarian and the mother is brutalized and must be obedient, with no recourse to help.

Great talk. Thank you.

I think what Mr. Hazony says here about the pain of staying married -- of raising children -- is the key. It isn't only pain, of course -- maybe not mostly pain but there will large swatches of time where it is. Historically pain was taken for granted. Of course living involved a lot self denial -- a lot of doing what you don't want to pretty much most of the time. The alternative to the pain of family was much much worse and I think only people who've lived through times (like the world wars for eg., or just the usual amount of death and disease that has always been normal) saw family as much better than other 'pains'. But in affluent liberal societies -- we don't really get that living and pain are pretty much givens. And romance, has become one of the biggest ways to be so happy in western society because happiness is not only expected and assumed to be the point of life, it's a human right. But reality doesn't match this belief. I think what Jennifer Roback-Morse wrote in the Sexual State hits the issue when she describes the sexual revolution as anti-reality -- and thus anti-love. Her thesis is that 3 delusional disasters have created the nightmare for children in teh current affluent West. 1 - separating sex from procreation (the point of sex, after all -- right?) 2) separating child-rearing from marriage and 3) eliminating the difference between men and women.

As a Boomer ('49) who lived it, the 1960s social "revolution" was caused by the philosophical crisis that emerged from the secular Enlightenment. Despite their nominal Catholicism, my parent were relativists/liberals. Circumstances forced me to turn to Protestant Evangelicalism to find true meaning. Both Mary and Yoram might be the cultural heirs of enough of the Judeo-Christian framework and God's design for marriage and family that they are free to ponder "where the train left the tracks." It's not what they say is 'wrong', it just doesn't capture the bigger picture. Because of her more conservative Catholic background, Mary Eberstadt's view seems truncated by the "'60s Sexual Revolution" as the primary cause of contemporary problems.

Actually, I think the implications of the sexual revolution were even worse for us in Germany. Not only copied we everything American, we also struggled with our history. My parents's generation identified almost everything paternal with 3rd Reich. Nationalism was, and is, anathema sit. My siblings and I, in our unconscious need for having an ancestry, identified with several nationalities, ethnicities, regions and ideologies, desperately trying to belong. The role GER currently plays in the EU and inwardly IMHO is the direct result of the destruction of fatherhood in 1968.

Excellent conversation (beware loud, obnoxious music during the end credits, though).

How can someone understand the love of God if they did not have the love of their mother? Saying to someone that did not come from a loving home that "Jesus loves you" is meaningless to them.

Just read Eberstadt's article in The Spectator. Have not read Anything that so clearly nails the start of the trend that has culminated in today's political climate. Although, have to wonder if the schism she describes has been a constant in life at large and not confined to the historical period of post WW2 America.

This is a good reminder to have some sympathy for the progressive left - especially the young people.

53:46 and with that one quip you undid everything you argued before.

The problem is capitalism combined with brutal hierarchy

Interesting talk. But, you shouldn't count on conservatives to do much to support good ideas.

We can’t go back to the past but need to create new structures. Both religion and the family are anachronisms as they do not represent the fluid, changing nature of existence but posit an unrealistic stability in their static forms. We absolutely need caring and sensitive caregivers but not to make them conform to some kind of mother or father archetype. This is because the future lies in allowing for the uniqueness of each child to develop and helping them seek their unique place in the world. The same thing with the religious archetypes-they serve to close windows onto Existence as much as they might open some.