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Betty Friedan started the feminist movement in 1963 with a book that purported to describe "the problem that has no name," i.e., the frustration of the middle-class housewife who lived without a career of her own and under her husband's name. Social trends, and particularly male-female attitudes and relationships, have changed a great deal over the last 40 years, and now Jennifer Roback Morse has identified the current problem as the "laissez-faire family." Instead of a wife subordinating her material wants to the demanding tasks of motherhood, we live in a do-your-own-thing generation, with each family member pursuing his or her own self-interest rather than the good of the others. This is not a liberal-conservative dichotomy. The liberal feminist movement, indeed, promoted liberation from home, husband, motherhood. But family attitudes of conservatives have been deeply influenced by the libertarian view of personal freedom. Dr. Morse analyzes the family from the viewpoint of libertarian economics (in which she is a believer) and finds that the family doesn't fit into that mold. Dr. Morse shows that marriage is not just an economic contract. What makes the family different from every other economic enterprise in the free-market economy is the arrival of babies, helpless, needy, immature, and wholly dependent on others for life itself. These little humans are simply not capable of functioning without extraordinary and constant daily care and decision-making by someone else. And the needs of the baby are not merely material; they need love and caring. Dr. Morse concludes that there is no substitute for the family in helping demanding, self-centered infants develop into cooperative adults. The notion that children can thrive without fathers she labels "the mother of all myths." Dr. Morse uses all the lingo of a free-market economist, which she is. Advocates of socialism once dreamed that their scientific management would allow them to organize the entire economy more efficiently than the decentralized market mechanism. We now know that the socialist model is a failure. Dr. Morse asserts that "raising children collectively is comparable to centrally planning an economy." It just doesn't work. Each child is unique and each family is unique. As a professional economist, Dr. Morse cites many of the research studies that underscore the failure of institutionalized daycare as a substitute for family care, but principally she analyzes the competing philosophies and finds that laissez-faire families are not as successful as those based on love, commitment and self-sacrifice. (Spence Publishing Co., Dallas, 2001) |
Basing family life on the political and economic philosophy of individual autonomy rather than self-giving love and commitment results in social and family turmoil, and individual unhappiness, too.
