More on Free Markets and Family Breakdown

In response to my post (below) on free markets and the breakdown of the traditional family, CUA Philosophy Professor Bradley Lewis (again) offers some valuable insight, as well as some good leads on resources for those interested in exploring the area more thoroughly. He writes:

I think the tension you indicate [between the market and the viability of the traditional family] is quite real. The philosophical origin of it seems to me relatively evident since the first cogent statements of the arguments for capitalism and the disposable family are found in the very same work, Locke's Second Treatise. The first and still most powerful argument for capitalism is in ch. 5 of the treatise, "On Property" (86 years before Smith); and Locke's discussion of marriage in ch. 7 argues that the only natural bond between husband and wife is the welfare of their children and that once the children have grown there is no "natural" reason for the parents to remain together if they do not wish it. Once individual choice is allowed to disolve the marriage bond, even in this limited case, it seems to me a relatively short distance to a much broader set of conditions under which marriage is defeasible. Indeed, the distance can be measured with some precision in the history of philosophy: 169 years separate the publication of Locke's Second Treatise and J.S. Mill's On Liberty, in the fifth chapter of which Mill argues for complete personal freedom to enter and leave relationships, including marriage--he explicitly criticizes the argument that people should remain together for the sake of their children.

Sociologically/institutionally, I suspect the nexus between capitalism and family breakdown has got to do with industrialism, since that literally broke up the family, i.e., the husband going off to work during the day (to the factory initially, later and for the upper classes, to the office). This was important not only because of the temptations that may face the husband away from his family, but because it eventually ends the independent economic value of the household as a productive enterprise. That leaves only emotional attachment, a very valuable thing, but also more fragile and subject to disruption. Also it is easier to later interpret it as simply determined by individual choice. . . . I have very little to say about how to solve all this, since the alternatives to liberal market societies that one can point to as real possibilitites today have little to recommend them. Nevertheless there still seems to be a responsibility to grapple with the problems.

For those interested in further grappling (as I certainly am), Professor Lewis recommends an essay by Wendell Berry, "The Body and the Earth," in The Unsettling of America, as well as There's No Place Like Work by Brian Robertson (Spence, 2000), and Wealth, Poverty and Human Destiny, edited by Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler (ISI Books, 2003).

Also, MoJ reader Matt Festa points out that free markets still employ a variety of incentives, and that those incentives can tilt toward or away from the traditional family's maintenance. For the past 30 to 40 years, Mr. Festa contends, the American incentive structure has tilted decidedly against marriage, as reflected in the "marriage tax," in welfare policies that effectively penalize recipients who decide to marry, and in our "no fault" divorce laws. He contends that, "It is entirely possible to keep our current open market economy and our traditional family values."