Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought

1. Nature, Marital Unity, and Contract in Modern Political Thought

1 Chapter 1 nature, Marital Unity, and Contract in Modern Political Thought The Western world is experiencing unprecedented changes in how families act and in how they think of themselves. Well-documented declines in birth and marriage rates along with increases in divorce rates, illegitimacy rates, the incidence of couples living together outside marriage, and the number of people living alone bespeak a remarkable change in attitudes about children, procreation, sex, love, marriage, parenthood, and life itself. What Francis Fukuyama describes as the “great disruption” has brought us a new world—attempts to resurrect the old world seem doomed to failure and fraught with selective nostalgia. There is broad agreement that marriage and family life are being transformed , yet there are widely different evaluations of what that transformation means for marriage and family life. Some see the new family as a victory for genuine love, equality, affection, intimacy, and a freedom from predetermined family roles.1 others see it undermining genuine love, fostering inequality, resting on unstable emotional ties, depriving children of the stable family life that fosters responsible liberty, and contributing to various adult pathologies.2 our failure to reach consensus about the meaning of family life, magnified as we face controversies over abortion, same-sex 2 FaMIlY PolITICS marriage, a decline in birth rates, and new fertility technologies, is cause for deep concern. at stake in these controversies is the future of marriage and the family,3 or, to be precise, the end of the family—end in the sense of its meaning or purpose and end in the sense of its continued existence. Changes in laws and social expectations surrounding the family are part of a trend known, for brevity’s sake, as modernity.4 Modern individuals see themselves as persons independent of unchosen duties such as many of those associated with family life; history seems to be on the side of emancipating individuals progressively from impositions of society and nature. We seem to be working out the logic of consent, equality, and freedom— ever reconstituting the family to match modern ideas better. The conjugal or nuclear family, for instance, centered around monogamous marriage, represents an advance in individual liberty beyond the cramping extended family, and today’s family seems to be moving beyond conjugality, beyond monogamy, and beyond heterosexuality by securing greater individual choice in and out of marriage.5 Modern marriage’s emphasis on consent provides more space for personal choice than arranged marriages, and now marriage is being redefined as any close personal relationship of one’s own choosing.6 Yesterday’s emphasis on consent in marriage acknowledges female equality, and today’s aspirations to build a gender-neutral society and to encourage mothers to work outside the home seem to take that equality another step. Today’s freedom to divorce offers more options than the past’s indissoluble marriage, and barriers to exit have been removed as society moves from fault-based conceptions of separation and as governments offer greater public support for divorcees and erode the distinction between married and unmarried couples.7 as modernity progresses, marriage seems less a social institution centered on raising children or fulfilling a communal purpose than a personal relationship between consenting adults. aspirations for independence and self-sufficiency have led us to see marriage’s mutual dependence, childhood dependence, and human interdependence as somehow degrading. The reconstitution of family life is not confined to precincts of family law. Public policies often encapsulate a view of marriage and family life—its strengths and weaknesses, its capacities and limits. responsibilities and functions long central to family life and marriage have, in modern times, been exported to other institutions so family life and marriage better reflect the image of personal independence. government-run school systems are built, in part, on the assumption that parents should not educate their own children or are ill equipped to choose schools for their children.8 Social welfare support for the aged, a staple public policy in Western societies, implies that children naTUre, MarITal UnITY, anD ConTraCT 3 are freed from the burden of providing assistance for their elderly parents and that elderly parents desire to be free from dependence on their unreliable children . government aid for dependent children in most Western countries is dispensed in a way that undercuts the need for mothers and fathers to provide joint care for children.9 The best public account of where the transformation in...