Liberalism corrodes the family
Why it cannot account for the reality of the family
It is hard to understate the importance of strong families in building strong communities. A child develops a relationship with his mother before he even grasps the sense of self. The relationships that one experiences with their family will color the relationships they have later on in life.
If you were to measure how strong families in America are, what statistics would you use? Divorce rates, out-of-wedlock births, abortions, and the fertility rate come to mind. In a society where families are able to flourish, we would expect divorce rates, out-of-wedlock births, and abortions to be low. The fertility rate would be a sustainable level, or perhaps slightly above. What we have is a high divorce rate, which peaked in the 1980s, not due to any real improvement, but rather more commitment to perpetual singlehood. Out-of-wedlock births soared during the 1980s and peaked in 2009, but remain incredibly elevated from historic norms. Many of these children are born into fatherless homes. The abortion rate is not at historic highs, since they started tracking it in 1973. However, it is high, with roughly one out of every five pregnancies ending in abortion. Meanwhile, the birth rate is at a more than two-hundred-year low.
The decline in the health of the family in America likely has many sources, spanning economic to personal, but here I would like to examine one ideological source: Liberalism. Why is the family struggle in a Liberal society of America, when Liberal societies are supposed to promote human flourishing? (This is not to say, of course, that the family is thriving in illiberal places like Russia or China. I make no such claim.)
Thomas Hobbes
Although technically not considered “Liberal”, Hobbes articulated proto-Liberal versions of individual rights, social contract theory, and equality, and thus is our first case study. Hobbes also popularized the term “state of nature”—that is, the state of pre-government, pre-society humans—in his magnum opus, Leviathan (1651). This state of nature is a war1 of all against all brought on by competition, distrust, and the pursuit of glory. In this state, “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Where does the family fit into this? Hobbes carves out a bit of an exception for the family, saying that the only government to be found in societies that are in this state of war (the example he gives is the Americas) is the family. Although a family is not a proper commonwealth, Hobbes does draw a comparison between the governments of cities and kingdoms to families, which he sees as small governments. In his chapter on paternal dominion, Hobbes's gives his account for governance in the family:
Dominion is acquired two wayes; By Generation, and by Conquest. The right of Dominion by Generation, is that, which the Parent hath over his Children; and is called PATERNALL. And is not so derived from the Generation, as if therefore the Parent had Dominion over his Child because he begat him; but from the Childs Consent, either expresse, or by other sufficient arguments declared.
It might seem strange to say dominion by generation is acquired by consent, but this is Hobbes’s claim. Throughout the book, Hobbes does a lot of gymnastics in order to reduce everything to consent.2 However, in the case of the family, he is willing to make an exception to the rule of consent, and that is with dominion by education:
If there be no Contract, the Dominion is in the Mother. For in the condition of Meer Nature, where there are no Matrimoniall lawes, it cannot be known who is the Father, unlesse it be declared by the Mother: and therefore the right of Dominion over the Child dependeth on her will, and is consequently hers. Again, seeing the Infant is first in the power of the Mother; so as she may either nourish, or expose it, if she nourish it, it oweth its life to the Mother; and is therefore obliged to obey her, rather than any other; and by consequence the Dominion over it is hers. But if she expose it, and another find, and nourish it, the Dominion is in him that nourisheth it. For it ought to obey him by whom it is preserved;
Already in proto-liberal thought we can see a tendency forming that refrains from seeing the family as a purely natural institution. Instead of children belonging to their parents by the mere fact that the latter begat the former, which are the natural biological facts of the situation, it is reframed as being the result of education or the child’s consent.
John Locke
John Locke earned the title “the Father of Liberalism” with his most famous and influential work, the “Second Treatise of Government” (1689). In it, Locke’s “State of Nature” is decidedly more positive than Hobbes's; it is one of equality, perfect freedom, and liberty. Despite being an empiricist, Locke’s theoretical conception of the state of nature struggles to accommodate the reality of the family, especially children. The tension this creates is quite apparent in Locke’s words:
Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal.
The tendency to refrain from seeing the family as a natural fact of the world, who goes so far as to say that parent’s power over their children “so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them.” Like Hobbes, Locke grounds parental authority in a transaction: “nourishment and education” for the child’s obedience. Unlike Hobbes, who views the family as a small government or monarchy, Locke distinguishes between political and paternal power, which he says are perfectly distinct and separate.
Locke is not wrong that parental authority diminishes and eventually ends in normal circumstances, and cases of neglect can also trigger that. The duties of a parent to a child and child to a parent are correlated, but not causal. They are both caused by a third thing: the natural relationship of parent and child.
Where Locke goes wrong is in his state of nature. When he philosophizes that it is a state “of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,” he is ignoring the most “natural” relationship one can conceive of: the parent-child relationship. Children do not have perfect freedom to order their actions. They are not equal (as Lock also claims the state of nature is) to their parents, neither by any empirical standard, nor by the theoretical equality that Locke defines (equality “in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another”), since children are born under the jurisdiction of their parents.
This creates a tension. On one hand, you have the family, which prior to Liberalism was viewed as the oldest natural institution, and the fundamental building block of society. On the other hand, you have Liberalism, which redefines everything in terms of the theoretical idea of an individual in a state of nature, and attempts to incorporate even the family into this theory. This tension, however, is resolved by Rousseau, who presents some of the most consistent and mature Liberal thought.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Influenced by Locke, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) contains his most detailed treatment of the state of nature. His view is even more positive than Locke's. Primitive man “lived free, healthy, honest and happy, as much as their nature would admit,” in this natural state of independence and equality that was absent of property and labor. But what is most interesting is his treatment of the family.
Unlike Hobbes, who carved an exception for the family as the only government in his state of nature, and unlike Locke, who denied that but nevertheless tepidly carved out a small exception for children in his state of nature, Rousseau, in his description of the state of nature, takes a third approach that resolves the tension between the family and Liberalism:
In this primitive state, as there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, every one took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one night in the same place; males and females united without any premeditated design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them together, nor had they any great occasion for language to make known their thoughts to each other. They parted with the same ease. The mother suckled her children, when just born, for her own sake; but afterwards out of love and affection to them, when habit and custom had made them dear to her; but they no sooner gained strength enough to run about in quest of food than they separated even from her of their own accord; and as they scarce had any other method of not losing each other, than that of remaining constantly in each other's sight, they soon came to such a pass of forgetfulness, as not even to know each other, when they happened to meet again.
For Rousseau it is the fault of many philosophers (and I presume this includes Locke), that when reasoning on the state of nature, they transfer to it “ideas collected in society, always consider families as living together under one roof, and their members as observing among themselves an union, equally intimate and permanent with that which we see exist in a civil state.” Rousseau makes no such mistake, arguing that it was only after the development of industry, language, and houses, which brought about society, that the family, along with private property, was introduced. “Social constructs” is what we would call them today.
Although Rousseau’s position may seem extreme, it illustrates how fundamental the tension between the family and Liberalism is. And it is this way for one core reason: The family is an illiberal institution. There is no freedom or choice involved in which family you are born into, who your brothers or sisters are, or what your lineage is. When reasoning out a state of nature that lends support to Liberalism, it will necessarily undermine illiberal things, such as the family. Unless you are willing to be a little less ideologically pure, and carve out exceptions for families and children. Rousseau himself not only believed in his Liberalism, but he also lived it. He abandoned all five of his children to a foundling hospital, where they likely died before the age of five.
Rousseau is forever loved or hated as the author who most inspired the French Revolution. One can look at the Revolution to see what an early attempt to bring the family more in line with Liberalism looks like practically. During the French Revolution, a “modern” form of divorce was legalized, and marriage was transferred from the Church to the State, secularizing it into a civil contract. Under the ancien régime, families were largely autonomous, the state only intervening when necessary. But with the Revolution, the role of parents was in many ways superseded by the state, which took on the functions of physical protection, education through the French Republic Schools, and material assistance upon the death of their parents. But when one sees the family as a contractual social construct, there is no reason the state cannot take the place of parents.
In America, things are different, but Liberalism has slowly seeped into everything. I once watched The Dead Poets Society, expecting it to be a movie celebrating the liberal arts. To my chagrin, a major theme was how oppressive family is and the need to self-actualize oneself against it, even to the point of committing suicide. There are many such cases of movies and shows portraying the family as oppressive, and the liberation from it as an unqualified good.
Human flourishing begins with families flourishing. If we want to reverse d`ecades of decline, both among families and communities more broadly, we will have to begin by working with the institution of the family, not against it. What exactly this entails will be the subject of further research and articles. One thing is certain: the family—with its unchosen nature—has been foundational to societies and communities since ancient times, and we would do well to build a political philosophy that seeks to uphold it, rather than explain it away.
By “war”, Hobbes doesn’t mean only active fighting and battles, as is commonly thought. He also means times when people are disposed and ready to fight. Thus, he gives the example of locking your doors at night as proof that the natural state is one of distrust and war.
It turns out, as you read the Leviathan, that dominion is acquired by neither generation nor conquest, as Hobbes first says. It is all acquired by consent in the final analysis, even conquest. The dominion of conquest is derived from the consent of the vanquished, who consent out of fear of death.