“The question, then, is this: can strong families, based on two parents but including extended family members, exist in a culture where individual choice is elevated to the highest value? I think the answer is no.”

Questions. Do we live in a culture where individual choice is elevated to the highest value? Are there strong families, based on two parents but including extended family members? Do you feel that these families then exist today a ruins of a past civilization? Given enough time do you believe they will cease to exist in our current culture? Is it passable to re-orient the culture to prevent this? If so how? Is not a return to traditional marriage merely an invitation to its destruction a second time? How would traditional marriage thrive when you believe it was crushed by the assent of modernity? What will make it a sustainable institution that was lacking previously?

It seems to me that when marriage is seen merely as a “life-style choice” based on mutual consent and a civil contract that can be broken at any time for any reason (no-fault divorce), marriage is not really doing the job it traditionally has done. Marriage as a sacrament or a solemn covenant entered into in the presence of God and only exited with much difficulty does, among other things, encourage stable marriages (but not always happy ones).

Ultimately, it seems to me that once the stigma of out of wedlock births was removed, and once sex and procreation was clearly, obviously, and easily separated, then the complex connections between sex, marriage, and children was lost. When those natural bonds were dissolved, then these things that were tightly joined and served to form families and keep them intact were lost. Sex, marriage, and children were all reduced merely to individual choice. The question, then, is this: can strong families, based on two parents but including extended family members, exist in a culture where individual choice is elevated to the highest value?

I think the answer is no. If that is true, then either a) we must be willing to forfeit the good of strong families on the altar of choice, or b) we need to find a good higher than individual choice. That points us back in the direction of teleology, God, religion, the common good. Such notions might warm the heart of a traditionalist but they will raise the hackles of plenty.

A good read and I think you’ve right that larger issues of family and culture are often neglected in the political debate regarding the family. Unsurprisingly I think traditionalists need a greater appreciation for the argument that,

“the so-called traditional family is merely a form of patriarchal power masquerading as domestic bliss and that we can choose better arrangements built on mutual respect and equitable distribution of power.”

This is not the sum of the family as you rightfully argued. The debate should be about how we live together, how to best hand down culture, and how to preserve human dignity. Traditional marriage has often been a tool of patriarchal power that has violated human dignity.

The most obvious example is the tradition of spousal rape which is often legally sanctioned (It’s illegality is very new and counter to the tradition of spousal sexual obligations). In many states in this country it is a lesser crime, often falling under mere spousal abuse.

I also second your concerns about the dissolution of extended family living. Actually, this is an area where Marx (or a Marxist point of view) is revealing and sympathetic. I interpret it as a question of the family economy–not family production but the non-money economy of nurture, learning, moral formation, and intergenerational support. The value of these activities–call it our combined family capital–is not small compared to the value of market goods and services. The problem is, this family value is not commercial. Locally-centered extended families expand the amount of time and energy devoted to non-market exchange. They create too much decommodified space, time-use, risk-pooling, etc., for capitalism to thrive.

thx,Lew

The Pursuit of Happiness planted a seed that oddly bears a fruit called ennui.

Medaille, you lucky dog. My kids have yet to produce the grandkiddies and will likely delay it until I’m enfeebled because during a moment of peevishness, I once suggested that I could not wait till they had kids themselves so I could show up with a Trampoline, some Twinkies and Peppermint Schnapps and re-pay them their various and sundry insurrectional behaviors.

But then, I am prejudiced. I have two-and-a-half grandchildren, and as the old saying has it, if I had known that grandchildren were this much fun, I would have had them first.