Family values

One of the soap box subjects that you often hear conservative Christians banging on about is "family values", you know, protecting the nuclear family of a man, a women and 2.5 children against the temptations and informalities of a secular world. A reasonable aspiration you may think until that is you look at the rate at which these same people seem to contradict themselves and break up nuclear families by getting a divorce! It would seem that breaking up families has little to do with God and much more to do with cultural trends and modern expectations, particularly of better educated Women. Unfortunately for the Christians who so frequently use this rather blunt intellectual club to batter secularists on matters of legal reform, the rate of divorce among atheists is less, you could say that being an atheist is better for the family!

It seems obvious to objective observers that on the whole humans are pretty much the same and influenced by pretty much the same hopes and desires, why atheist marriages are more successful who knows, perhaps having a perspective that gender role models aren't handed down from on high by some supernatural deity helps to more fairly negotiate who's doing the washing up!