I.THE CHALLENGE TO MARRIAGE AND FAMILY TODAY

The Witherspoon Institute

Marriage – considered as a legally sanctioned union of one man and one woman – plays a vital role in preserving the common good and promoting the welfare of children. In virtually every known human society, the institution of marriage provides order and meaning to adult sexual relationships and, more fundamentally, furnishes the ideal context for the bearing and rearing of the young. The health of marriage is particularly important in a free society such as our own, which depends upon citizens to govern their private lives and rear their children responsibly, so as to limit the scope, size, and power of the state. Marriage is also an important source of social, human, and financial capital for children, especially for children growing up in poor, disadvantaged communities who do not have ready access to other sources of such capital. Thus, from the point of view of spouses, children, society, and the polity, marriage advances the public interest.

But in the last forty years, marriage and family have come under increasing pressure from the modern state, the modern economy, and modern culture. Family law in all fifty states and most countries in the Western world has facilitated unilateral divorce, so that marriages can be easily and effectively terminated at the will of either party. Changing sexual mores have made illegitimacy and cohabitation a central feature of our social landscape. The products of Madison Avenue and Hollywood often appear indifferent to, if not hostile towards, the norms that sustain decent family life. New medical technology has made it easier for single mothers and same-sex couples to have children not only outside of marriage, but even without sexual intercourse. Taken together, marriage is losing its preeminent status as the social institution that directs and organizes reproduction, childrearing, and adult life.1

The nation’s retreat from marriage has been particularly consequential for our society’s most vulnerable communities. Out-of-wedlock birth, divorce, and single motherhood are much more common among lower-income African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic Americans, in large part because they often do not have as many material, social, and personal resources to resist the deinstitutionalization of marriage. The latest social scientific research on marriage indicates that minorities and the poor pay a disproportionately heavy price when marriage declines in their communities, meaning that the breakdown of the family only compounds the suffering of those citizens who already suffer the most.2

The response to this crisis by activist defenders of marriage, while often successful at the ballot box in the United States, has had limited influence on the culture, and in many cases those who deliberately seek to redefine the meaning of marriage or downplay its special significance have argued more effectively. Too often, the rational case for marriage is not made at all or not made very well. Appeals to tradition are rarely decisive in themselves in the American context today, especially among those who believe that individuals should choose their own values rather than heed the wisdom and ways of past generations. Religious appeals, though important in the lives of many individuals and families, have limited reach in a society that limits the role of religious institutions in public life. Appeals to people’s feelings or intuitions, however strong, are easily dismissed as appeals to prejudice, unjustly valuing some “lifestyles” over others. And in a society whose moral self-understanding has been formed by the struggle to overcome racial prejudice and promote equal rights, such appeals not only fail to persuade but seem to indicate bad faith.

In this context, we think there is a pressing need for scholarly discussion of the ideal of marriage, defended with reasons that are comprehensible in public debate and that draw upon the full range of social scientific evidence and humanistic reflection. At issue is not only the value of marriage itself, but the reasons why the public has a deep interest in a socially supported normative understanding of marriage. Marriage is under attack conceptually, in university communities and other intellectual centers of influence. To defend marriage will require confronting these attacks, assessing their arguments, and correcting them where necessary. We are persuaded that the case for marriage can be made and won at the level of reason. The principles outlined below and the evidence and arguments offered on their behalf are meant to make that case.

We are aware, of course, that the debate over the normative status of marriage in our society necessarily acquires an emotional edge. No one is untouched by the issue in his or her personal life, and we can readily agree with the critics of marriage that questions of sexual identity, gender equity, and personal happiness are at stake. In arguing for the normative status of marriage, we do not suppose that all people ought to be married or that marriage and family are the only source of good in people’s lives. Nor do we wish to deny or downgrade society’s obligation to care about the welfare of all children, regardless of their parents’ family form.Still, we think that, particularly as university teachers and on behalf of our students, we need to make this statement, since marriage is above all a choice for the young: they need arguments to counterbalance the dominant arguments now attacking marriage as unjust and undesirable, and they need to know what marriage is in order to sustain their own marriages and raise their own children. Just as it did in earlier cultures, the marital family provides the basis for a settled pattern of reproduction and education that a large, modern, democratic society still surely needs. Our principles mean to summarize the value of married life and the life of families that is built upon marriage – a choice that most people want to make, and that society should endorse and support.

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© The Witherspoon Institute 2006