THE FUTURE OF FAMILY LAW: Excerpts from the new report.

[More excerpts Monday. Email joshua@imapp.org if you want a copy.... --Eve]

Clashing Models of Marriage
What are the competing models of marriage that are at odds in today's family law debates?

1. The Conjugal View
The model of marriage broadly reflected in law and culture until quite recently can be called the "conjugal model." Marriage in this view is a sexual union of husband and wife who promise each other sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and the joint parenting of any children they may have. Conjugal marriage is fundamentally child-centered. Theorists of liberal democracy from John Locke to John Rawls have underlined the important, generative work that conjugal marriage does for society. This normative model of marriage is under attack in these recent reports.

2. The Close Relationship Model
This competing vision of marriage has emerged in recent decades. In it, marriage is a private relationship between two people created primarily to satisfy the needs of adults. If children arise from the union, so be it, but marriage and children are not seen as intrinsically connected. ...

This view of marriage radically sidelines the main feature that makes marriage unique and important as a social institution--that is, the attempt to bridge sex difference and struggle with the generative power of opposite-sex unions, including the reality that children often arise (intentionally and not) from heterosexual unions. ...

...A "close relationships" culture fails to acknowledge fundamental facts of human life: the fact of sexual difference; the enormous tide of heterosexual desire in human life; the procreativity of male-female bonding; the unique social ecology of parenting which offers children bonds with their biological parents; and the rich genealogical nature of family ties and the web of intergenerational supports for family members that they provide.

more info here
posted by Eve at 4:39 PM | link

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