33 Books to Build a Family & Home

My favorite titles on cultivating meaningful traditions, creating family culture & making a home

Feb 13, 2025

Even before my first child was born, I was a voracious consumer of books on parenting, childhood, and building a family and home upon a foundation of faith with the creation of a beautiful, lasting legacy top of mind. I remember churning through Kim John Payne’s Simplicity Parenting, Sally and Sarah Clarkson’s The Lifegiving Home, Erica Komisar’s Being There and more, many months prior to the physical needing to implement their sage advice, finding within their pages a balm of mentorship from afar.

Perhaps it has been my lifelong steak of idealism, or the way that traditions helped to hold my childhood together despite the divorce of my parents, or the desire to set many things right for my own children in light of the loving, yet broken home I was raised in, or the faith I found as a young adult that insists on restoration and redemption and generational healing…or, most likely, some providential amalgam of all of the above, but cultivating a meaningful home life and faith-filled family culture that will ripple across generations has always mattered deeply to me.

There have been a few phrases that I’ve heard over the years that have captured my imagination to this end—an Epiphany house blessing prayer from our rector a couple years back that within our home our children would find a “joyful and spiritually rich childhood,” or St. Josemaria’s vision for Christian families to pray for God to help them cultivate a “bright and cheerful home.”

Lofty and beautiful ideals, to be sure. But how to attain them?

Alongside wonderful mentors and deep friendships and earnest prayer and soaking up scripture, it is through books that I have found a way to begin doing so.

And this is my earnest desire for every family and home—whether you find yourself continuing to build a legacy upon the shoulders of giants who came before you (as all of us truly have the ability to do through our family of faith) or borrowing a few things from your family of origin while reinventing most everything else, or starting, seemingly, entirely from scratch—that you would find the resources and the support to build something beautiful and true, something sturdy and lasting…a multi-generational legacy for the glory of God and the good of others.

No book (save for one) contains all of the answers, and I most certainly have not agreed with every sentence read across the spectrum of those listed here. But maybe one title speaks to you today, and you toss is in your Amazon cart or pick it up from the library and it helps you in the small way that each has helped me in the formation of your family and home life. And what a gift that would be!

I’ve organized these beloved books into categories here as best as possible, though many of them transcend category in their holistic approach (and those might be my favorite because they are the most reflective of how life really goes). I hope you’ll find encouragement for the noble pursuit of motherhood and making a home amongst their pages.

Happy Reading!

Books on Family Traditions

The Liturgical Home series by

Ashley Tumlin Wallace

Sacred Seasons by Danielle Hitchen

Living the Seasons by Erica Tighe Campbell

Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family by Maria Von Trapp

Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noelle Piper

The Joy of Family Traditions by Jennifer Trainer Thompson

The Book of New Family Traditions by Meg Cox

Seasons of a Family’s Life by Wendy M. Wright

Memory-Making Mom by Jessica Smartt

Books on Family Culture & Legacy

What is a Family? by Edith Schaeffer

For the Family’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

The Duties of Parents by J.C. Ryle

The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliot

The Lifegiving Home by

Sally Clarkson

and

Sarah Clarkson

Habits of the Household by Justin Whitmel Earley

Habits for a Sacred Home by

Jennifer Pepito

The Creative Family Manifesto by Amanda Blake Soule

Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne

To the Tenth Generation by

Ray Ortlund

and Jani Ortlund

The Intentional Legacy by David McAlvaney

Heaven in Your Home by Soren and Ever Johnson

Modern Parents, Vintage Values by Sissy Goff and Melissa Trevathan

Family Field Trip by

Erin Austen Abbott

Family Adventures: Exploring the World With Children edited by Gestalten (I purchased this years ago at a much lower price, a beautifully inspirational coffee table book for travel with children if you can find used!)

The Most Important Place on Earth by Robert Wolgemuth