There is a reciprocal relationship between families and society (including law and government); they influence one another. This becomes obvious by examining the disastrous effects of war to see how government policies can immediately and profoundly affect families.8 Unwise economic policies similarly affect family welfare. For example, policies that devalue or discourage social contributions made by mothers and housewives can deprive a generation of the quality of parenting that prepares them most effectively for individual security, productivity, and responsible citizenship." Additionally, unwise fertility policies can create demographic implosion in just one generation. For example, the United Nations (UN) Population Division recently issued a report predicting that "virtually all the countries of Europe are expected to decrease in population size over the next fifty years." 3 It notes that sixty-one nations now fall below fertility replacement and this number is expected to increase by another nineteen nations in the coming years."

The UN study predicts that, over the next half century, the median age of the Japanese population will increase from forty-one years to forty-nine years, and the percentage of Japanese elderly (over sixty-five) is expected to climb from seventeen percent to thirty-two percent." The UN also predicts that, in Italy, the median age is expected to climb from forty-one years to fifty-three years, and the percentage of the population over the age of sixty-five will grow from eighteen percent to thirty-five percent. 

Thus, it comes as no surprise to learn that the "President of the European Commission[] has warned that by 2025 nearly a third of Europeans will be collecting pensions as a result of falling fertility rates and ... aging European populations."'87 The First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, writes "[i]t takes a village to raise a child."88 The presence or absence of interest or commitment of the "village" (i.e., agencies of the government and community) in the welfare of the family profoundly affects the quality and success of family relations and family life. For example, the degree to which a government protects the privacy of the intact and functional family influences family welfare. By recognizing and respecting parental authority, the law may erect a barrier against the state's power to shape children and standardize child rearing.89 Similarly, by protecting children against child abuse and serious neglect, the state underscores the community interest in, and validates the individual's social worth, even as a child, and fosters a sense of belonging.' ° Totalitarian governments tend to isolate families and destroy natural communities that might foster competing loyalties.9' One of the most terrible manifestations of such regimes is the separation of parent and child. Centrifugal forces teach children to distrust and betray their natural protectors, 

parents, and siblings." The distrust bred can destroy a generation. In fact, hostility to the family may be the inevitable tendency of all government. Sociologist Jack Douglas notes, "bureaucracies may begin with fervent expressions of intentions to aid the family, but regardless of good intentions, they must wage war on the family in order to build their own power.' 13 Case studies of the dynamics of repression can be taken from many accounts written during and after the fall of totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. For example, the great Czech writer, Vaclav Benda, wrote insightfully about the corrosive effect of totalitarian government upon citizenship and family openness in his famous essay, Catholicism and Politics, published shortly after the Charter 77 Declaration. 

 He observed that under the communist government in Czechoslovakia "the overwhelming majority [of citizens] retreated from civic life into the close circle of family and friends [into] a ghetto, [and made] a voluntary resignation of openness and universal sharing of responsibility." ' Benda described his country and communism since 1968 as "callous, gloomy and all-consuming [with] the spirit of deception and deceit and eternal fickleness [and] mass exodus into private life and utter indifference to ... official pseudo-politics." Inept and oppressive family policies can create tension between family and government, thereby disrupting the natural harmony between the family and democracy.97 High taxation imposes economic hardship on families, leaving them with less disposable income to meet the financial needs of family members.

Welfare programs in North America and Western Europe provide substantially richer rewards for unmarried mothers than for mothers married to low income fathers. Such programs provide strong incentive for poor women to give birth out of wedlock and become single parents (two sources of enormous social problems), which encourages long-term welfare dependency." Government policies designed to encourage women to enter the labor market or to slow population growth often penalize childbearing and child-rearing."° The willingness of couples to have children-to assume the personal and financial responsibilities of parenting-appears to be affected by the government's structure, as indicated by the world-leading rates of abortion in Eastern Europe during the era of communist repression and poverty."' The American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Stalin's repression in the U.S.S.R. also brought dramatic changes to families and family values, increasing the number of incomplete families and unmarried mothers. 2 Similar social devastation has occurred in the Balkans where civil war has flared off and on for the past decade."3 As one academic commentator has written.