Family Politics and Policy

The reading for an anthropology course the other day was “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage.” The professor then proceeded to place “marriage” as the last topic which the class was to problematize, looking at the underlying structures which are leading to its breakdown within socially accepted norms. He called this the “denormalizaton of marriage”: changing division of labor (mentioning the “stalled revolution”), increasing childbirth out-of-wedlock and increasing rates of cohabitation. His lecture thus points to the exact topic of this week’s articles, highlighting the power of institutions to change individual perceptions on personal motivations and actions. However, as seen in the Skinner article, it is important to see the reflective action of individual’s actions on state and national policy. While Kiernan points to the fact that “marriage has had an important gate keeping function between the personal and the societal,” it is interesting to see how far marriage, and subsequently the family, has been moved from a privileged retreat away from the public eye to a point of contention loaded with governmental and community involvement (985). Issues such as ART and adoption point to the extent with social policy now overlaps with personal decisions.

Important to note, as Hochschild does, is the ways in which social policy can also work to limit couples’ ability to delineate the boundaries of their relationship. Although all the articles point to the wide variety of policies present globally, I found it interesting to note that even Hochschild sees a continuation of this cool modern approach. I would hope for a bit more optimism. Understandingly though, any change is going to have to come from multi-faceted shifts on individual, communal and national levels, as each becomes increasingly overlapped in both the public and private sphere. At the end of this anthropology class, a girl raised her hand and asked “Why are the laws of cohabitation and child-bearing out-of-wedlock so controversial?” The professor, in a slightly stunned way, answered “Well, that’s a bit of a hard question. There is the religious answer, the moral, the economic and the political answer. Actually I could teach a course on this topic alone.” I was tempted to raise my hand and give her the course code for this class.

Q1: What other factors outside the two mentioned [cohabitation and same-sex marriage] in Kiernan’s article do you see as being forces in redrawing the boundaries of marriage relationships?

Q2: An article I read for another class talked about the changing norms of families and how this may lead to changing norms for reconstituted and blended families. How do you think national policies will affect the establishment of new norms for non-traditional family types, bearing in mind ideas of exclusive status and the parental rights doctrine?

Q3: Gerson highlights that “Self-reliant women also concur that if a worthy relationship ultimately proves out of reach, remaining single need not mean rejecting motherhood or becoming socially disconnected” (744). If, hypothetically speaking, the “stalled revolution” eventually ends with a closing of the “lag time,” what do you think will happen to the value of marriage? Will it lose all value as an institution or strength in a position of prestige and exclusivity?