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Those who are constantly wailing about how awful it is that the "nuclear family" is increasingly scarce, are conveniently forgetting that most of the people who are now choosing NOT to participate in such arrangements, did grow up in a "nuclear family" household.

Actually, I'd be willing to bet that most people choosing NOT to participate in a nuclear family were the products of dysfunctional nuclear families themselves. I would argue that many of these families were missing one vital component--an active religious life.

The traditional nuclear family by itself is not a panecea for all of society's ills. A nuclear family without God is just as likely to fail as any other random household unit.

I would argue that many of these families were missing one vital component--an active religious life.

Wishful thinking. Religion does not automagically fix all problems no matter how active and devout the religious life. Such assertions are vacuous platitudes that actively ignore reality.

I am the son of a small-town preacher in flyover country. Was an active religious life part of my family experience? Yup. Was my family dysfunctional? Yup. The religious aspect was almost entirely orthogonal to why the nuclear family was dysfunctional, and all the Christianity in the world wouldn't have fixed it (and didn't).

Not in my experience. Of the three nearest neighbor families where I grew up, that had clearly happy functional marriages and were religious and active in their churches, one has 3 children (2 male, one female), none of whom have ever attempted anything like a nuclear family; another has 4, of whom 1 (male) is part of nuclear family, one (female) is single and childless, one (female) had one child while in a lesbian relationship and another on her own after that relationship ended, and the fourth (male) I don't know about; and the third family had two boys, one of whom has never married or had children, and the other married and divorced a woman who already had two children by a prior marriage, and still keeps in touch with those (now grown) children. So at most, this is 33% of these families' children who grew up to try form nuclear families at all, and 22% who succeeded in maintaining such families. Per my unscientific neighborhood sample, this is only very slightly higher than the rate for the children of parents who were miserably married, divorced, or religiously inactive (or some combination of those).

I would argue that many of these families were missing one vital component--an active religious life. The traditional nuclear family by itself is not a panecea for all of society's ills. A nuclear family without God is just as likely to fail as any other random household unit.

Actually no, quite the opposite

Divorce by religion (from Barna)

Born Again Adults - 27%
All other adults - 24%

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Non-denominational Protestant - 34%
Jews - 30%
Baptist - 29%
Mormons - 24%
Catholics - 21%
Lutherans - 21%
Atheists/Agnostics 21%