Free Markets and Family Breakdown: lessons from Europe

Mark Movsesian, a law professor at Hofstra, emailed me to weigh in on the purported tension between free markets and traditional family structure (see earlier posts below). He notes that "European countries tend to be much more socialist, or communitarian, than we are," but that "the traditional family is in a lot of trouble there too -- no less than here, and maybe more." In Sweden, for example, there is widespread talk of the "end of marriage." Professor Movsesian suspects that secularization may have a greater role in the traditional family's demise than commentators like John Gray give it credit for.

The example of Western Europe does seem to suggest that more family-friendly economic intervention by the state is at best a necessary, but not sufficient, measure by which to reverse, or at least stabilize, the decline of the marriage-centered family. Undoubtedly a certain level of desire among citizens to maintain the family must also be present, and that is where the broader forces of secularization come into play. In Europe, the citizenry's inclination toward the marriage-centered family has long since dissipated, apparently. In the United States, perhaps the unfettered operation of the markets makes it more difficult to discern whether that inclination is still with us.

Rob