Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal

New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bethke delivers a powerful critique of the Western notion of the nuclear family and calls us to a sweeping new paradigm that brings not only longed-for stability but also radical blessings to the world.

The West’s multi-century experiment with the nuclear family has failed. Its toxic hyper-individualism has left us with an unprecedented number of broken homes and rampant confusion over what a family is supposed to be. Jefferson Bethke delivers the solution we’ve been seeking: a plan for taking back our families from the modern myth that has derailed us and a vision for returning to the life-giving, biblical model of multi-generational teams.

In Take Back Your Family, Bethke uncovers the historic events that led to our obsession with the nuclear family, then exposes the devastating effects of our current me culture. Now, writing from the visceral perspective of a father with three young children, he shares the values and strategies he and his family lean on in their quest to live as a community bonded by a shared mission, committed to mutually growing and thriving together. By returning to God’s original design for families on earth, he says, we can participate in the kingdom work that restores and fulfills our innermost desires for connection, contentment, and meaning.