I grew up as an ultra orthodox Jew - where people have 5+ kids and there is a lot of focus on religious life and community. There are plenty of extremely bitter people who might love their kids but feel trapped by the lifestyle (they don't want to leave their kids, spouse but it gives them no space for anything else). And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.
Different religion, but my ex-wife's family were all baptists and I've never met women as angry at men as the older women in that family. They had obeyed and submitted and got angrier and angrier as the decades wore on. Didn't help that, despite the strict religion, there was a good bit of alcoholism amongst the men.
They did have very good food at the family reunions, and a big family, but that's about the limit of positive characteristics I can enumerate. (Not that everyone was bad, a few cousins managed to join the modern world of loving-kindness and science).
I am somewhat familiar with Orthodox Jews, though probably a different area than what you grew up with.
I think what's been lost in places is that living an outwardly religious life is one thing[0], while being deeply religious inwardly is the next level. The second thing is harder to teach or even talk about so it gets ignored, vs ritual etc.
It's maybe the same as the difference between "dragging yourself to the gym"[0] and "loving fitness."
//And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.
This seems like the crux of the difference between deep and superficial engagement with religion. In my experience, a deeply religious person (of any religion) sees a profound amount of connectivity and meaning in everything in the universe, and sees their family and community life in the context of contributing to that meaning. The statement you made is analogous to me to "working out doesn't make you fitter" - it puts a big question mark around the exercise you're doing.
[0] While obviously connecting deeply is the goal, there's a lot of benefit to even the less deep engagement. Your friends whom you describe as bitter - you can imagine that the secular society is full of bitterness too, plus no community or kids. Likewise, even if you "drag yourself to the gym" you're way ahead of those who don't, even though you may hate it.
