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When my daughter-in-law said sometime ago that she was going to a 'baby shower', I had no idea what she was talking about. The explanation was simple: it's a party, organised by mainly younger women to give a mother-to-be the kind of emotional support that only a feast of cup cakes can deliver, to shower her with a few practical and a few frivolous gifts, and to do all this without the benefit of men. A good time, apparently, is had by all. Now scarcely a week goes by without some young friend or relative mentioning a baby shower. So I wasn't at all surprised to learn from the Office for National Statistics last week that the UK is facing a tsunami of babies. It has been building for some time; but by 2012 we had the largest increase in births for forty years contributing to the biggest population rise of any EU country. Among the many reasons for this it does seem that there has been a shift in attitude towards having children. After years of agonising over whether both parents could have careers, foreign holidays and a family, we have decided that we will have children and we'll make it work. Religion has generally regarded children and families as a good thing, contributing to our well-being . Judaism is unequivocal. 'Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,' says the psalmist, 'are the children of one's youth. Happy is he that has his quiver full of them'. Christianity is more ambivalent. Jesus never married or had children , and so models something more than simply family life. Indeed, on one occasion he insisted that his family also included those beyond his biological family. Non-famial relationships matter as well...