The proportion of children born into families in Britain where the parents are unmarried is fast approaching 50 per cent. Across Europe, the overall percentage of such children is 40 per cent and rising, with the United States not very different. This is by far the biggest move away from the traditional Judaeo-Christian patterns of family behaviour, compared with which gay marriage, for instance, is statistically insignificant. Some of the countries with similar figures to Britain, like Ireland, Spain, Austria and Portugal, are places where the culture might be classified as fairly conservative and where the Catholic Church still has influence. Yet the recent Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome gave relatively little attention to these fundamental shifts in how people are living their