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Marriage & Family
We must insist once again that bringing children into the world entails a moral
responsibility to provide, not only material necessities, but also moral education and
character formation.
Moral education is not a task that can be delegated to baby sitters, or even
professional child-care centers. . . .
Fathers and mothers, consumed by "making it" and consumerism, or
preoccupied with personal advancement, who come home too late and too tired to attend to
the needs of their children, cannot discharge their most elementary duty to their children
and their fellow citizens.
. . . Child-raising is by nature labor-intensive.
. . . It follows that widespread divorce, when there are children
involved, especially when they are in their formative years, is indicative of a serious
social problem. . . . . Divorce laws should be modified, not to prevent divorce, but to
signal society's concern. . . .
--The Responsive Communitarian Platform
Communitarians have been in the
forefront of efforts to strengthen and rebuild the family and to restore a child-centered
focus to both our marriage culture and our public policy. At the same time,
communitarians have sought to strengthen marriage in a way that preserves the rights of
both women and men, favoring a "peer marriage" in which partners cooperate as
equals. Rather than coerce a new marriage contract, communitarians have tended to
favor changes in economic and other incentives under the law that will encourage the kind
of strong families that society needs.
Reading and Links
Read A Communitarian
Position Paper on the Family--How can we enable parents to be parents, shore
up commitment to the family, and track down deadbeat fathers? This position paper examines
these issues and numerous other pro-family policies. Prepared by William Galston, Mary Ann
Glendon, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Enola Aird, Amitai Etzioni, Martha Minow, and Alice Rossi.
Linda J. Waite summarizes the evidence showing the importance of healthy marriages to
the health of society in Social Science Finds: Marriage
Matters from The
Responsive Community.
In The Task of
Religious Institutions in Strengthening Families --Don Browning introduces the
idea of a "critical familism" for religious institutions, and reviews ways in
which religious institutions can support families and help prevent family crises. Browning
makes specific public policy recommendations, many of them novel, including suggestions
for rearranging the work week for dual-income couples.
A
Comprehensive Approach to Removing Marriage Penalties C. Eugene Steuerle of
the Urban Institute has written a paper on the tax penalty on marriage. Steuerle examines
the "crazy quilt" of tax and expenditure policies that impact married couples
and families, the conditions that have led to a tax penalty on marriage, and options for
removing or reducing marriage penalties.
For Further Exploration
Brown, B. Ricardo. "Objects of Desire: Communitarianism and the New Politics of
Family and Community." In Unraveling the Right: The New Conservatism in American
Thought and Politics, eds., Amy Ansell. Westview Press, 1997.
Browning, Don S., Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Pamela D. Couture, K. Brynolf Lyon, and
Robert M. Franklin. From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American
Family Debate. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.
Freshman, Clark. "Privatizing Same-Sex "Marriage" Through Alternative
Dispute Resolution: Community-Enhancing Versus Community-Enabling Mediation." UCLA
Law Review 44 (1997): 1687-1771.
Glendon, Mary Ann. Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1987.
Regan, Milton C., Jr. Family Law and the Pursuit of Intimacy. New York: New
York University Press, 1993.
Regan, Milton C., Jr. "The Boundaries of Care: Constructing Community After
Divorce." Houston Law Review 31 (1994): 424-50.
Schneider, Carl E. "Marriage, Morals, and the Law: No-Fault Divorce and Moral
Discourse." Utah Law Review (1994): 503-85.
Stahmann, Robert, and William Herbert. Premarital and Remarital Counseling.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997.
Ver Eecke, Wilfried. "A Refundable Tax Credit for Children: Self-Interest-Based
and Morally Based Arguments." The Journal of Socio-Economics 25
(1996):383-94.
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