Italy and Germany experienced a decrease in religiosity during the twentieth century. How did Catholicism deal with these challenges? The Catholic family vision and the male breadwinner model had been the fundamental backbone of the Christian welfare states. Italian and German Christian Democratic parties implemented similar family policy regimes in the 1950s. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, these male-breadwinner–centered family policies resulted in low shares of working mothers, low fertility rates, and a low woman voting for the Christian Democrats. Only Germany responded to these challenges with reforms. Why did both countries follow so different developments? In Germany Protestants had changed their ideas on early childhood education from conservative to progressive from the 1970s onward. The Catholics had stayed put on a very conservative interpretation. With reunification a new electorate became available for the Christian Democrats. The East-German electorate was secular but from a Protestant cultural heritage. The Christian Democratic party was after reunification no longer constrained on relying on the Catholic core voters but could now compensate them with secularized Protestants electorate in Eastern Germany. This allowed them to reform early childhood education and parental leave. In Italy instead, the absence of Protestantism allowed the Catholic Church to block all family policy reform attempts.