Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 7: Family

Why are the nature and structure of family life so heatedly debated?

This question can often be overshadowed by the rancor of contemporary disputes about family matters (such as cohabitation or marriage and wealth), but it is important to ask.  It is a question that arises in my mind frequently.  I wonder if exploring an answer to it might lay the groundwork for more constructive and less rancorous dialogue about these substantive topics than we sometimes have.

James Q. Wilson's discussion of the family, which occurs in a different context that is not about moral debate per se, may help us to pose an answer to this question.

Quite simply, one reason the nature and structure of family life are so heatedly debated, it seems to me, is because "[t]he family is a continuous locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school for moral instruction" (The Moral Sense, 162-63).  The fabric of the family ineluctably shapes the fabric of its members' morality.

This occurs for the straightforward reason that human morality is tethered to human emotional life, and vice versa.  If it is the case that we are intuitive moralists -- if, that is, our emotional and not just intellectual senses prompt and explain our moral responses to people and events -- then where our intuitions, emotional as much as (and perhaps more than) intellectual ones, are formed will mold our morality.  Here is the fuller context of the quotation that appears in the previous paragraph:

Families perform all sorts of functions -- supplying sex, managing production, educating children, supervising property, allocating patrimonies, and (historically of greatest importance) negotiating relations with kin. ...

     In the process of serving, however imperfectly, all of these functions, the family becomes a world that does far more than socialize babies and thus has far greater moral and practical significance than one would suppose from reading those texts on child development that stop when the child begins adolescence.  The family is a continuous locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school for moral instruction. (162-63)

"Families," according to Prof. Wilson, "are the world in which we shape and manage our emotions" (162).  Therefore, they are simultaneously the world in which we shape and manage our morality.  To alter the nature, structure, and operations of the family is to alter the nature, structure, and operations of our moral senses.  Potential changes to that world -- the world in which we "socialize babies" and do much more -- are not easy to come by and are not unimportant.  They are significant.  We hold this primal web of emotions, family, and morality closely, because, well, it matters.  To change what matters, and what may in fact matter most to us, is something that is reasonable to question and, if necessary, to contest.  In fact, it is also responsible to do so.

All of this matters most to us because the nature and function of family is integral to society.  Consider this lengthy paragraph from Prof. Wilson, who was writing in 1993 before the present disputes about marriage and family:

     In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children.  The kinship ties invariably imply restrictions on who has sexual access to whom; the child-care responsibilities invariably imply both economic and non-economic obligations.  And in virtually every society, the family is defined by marriage; that is, by a publicly announced contract that makes legitimate the sexual union of a man and a woman.  Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation.  It is desired by the partners and expected by society.  Marriage, in short, is not simply a way of legitimizing sex, and so it cannot be dispensed with just because sexual activity need not be made legitimate.  Marriage exists because people must take responsibility for child care and assume economic obligations.  Marriage, and thus the family that defines it, is a commitment.  (158)

Child care is at the heart of marriage and family.  And to put a central point another way, what gains a legitimate place in the family will gain a legitimate place in society.  By "legitimate" I mean that it will become morally acceptable.

If a family is seen to function legitimately in one way, or if room is made for it legitimately so to operate, then that function or manner of operating will have gained equal moral status with other functions and ways of family operation.  And so the nature of the family's function (what purposes it serves), in addition to its moral operations (how it serves those purposes), will also have been redefined.  What is redefined is both the family's function for itself specifically and for society generally.  The private life of the family spills over into the public life of society.  It is the family's members, after all, who become society's citizens.

To redefine something is to change it.  Sometimes the change is small, sometimes sweeping.  If the nature, function, structure, and operations of the family are redefined, then the type of "unending school for moral instruction" that the family is will have therefore, as it were, a necessarily different syllabus.  This is a sweeping change.  And the new moral syllabus that the family teaches will be debated. 

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This is what is happening, for instance, with the contest over same-sex "marriage."  I use quotation marks because the meaning of the term is part of what is disputed.  The word, concept, and family institution of marriage is being redefined from being an exclusively heterosexual conjugal union of a certain intrinsic and functional type into a purely emotional union that is not exclusively heterosexual and is therefore of a different intrinsic and functional type.  The topic of the definition of marriage is so contentious because the stakes are so high:  the moral nature, function, structure, and operations of the nuclear family unit and its moral standing in society.

Because of the high moral stakes, which extend from generation to generation, it is worthwhile for us to explore this topic a little more fully.

Some advocates of redefining "marriage" to involve same-sex couples are more explicit than others that they ultimately seek moral parity for homosexual relationships and sexual activity.  "Marriage," on this revisionist view, "is the union of two people (whether of the same sex or of opposite sexes) who commit to romantically loving and caring for each other and to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life" ("What Is Marriage?", 246; sometimes this view is referred to as modern marriage or hedonic marriage).  Its central function is claimed to be "domesticating men and providing reliable caregivers."

Whatever marriage may entail for participants privately, marriage is special because it performatively declares the relationship's official status publicly.  To make legitimate homosexual marriage, given the public nature of marriage as a social institution that Prof. Wilson explains, is ultimately to make legitimate homosexual sex.  Why?  Because this is one thing that marriage does in society as part of its social function:  it makes publicly legitimate the sexual union of the participants.  This legitimate sexual union seals and symbolizes the public acceptance of each relationship.

This is one reason that the contest is over marriage and not similar legal provisions, like hospital visitation, via civil unions.  "Marriage" does something morally that a "civil union" does not.  Advocates of this redefined conception of marriage wish for homosexual relationships and sexual activity to have in society equal moral standing with the heterosexual relationships and sexual activity that form the nucleus of the family, which is, again, the world in which we socialize babies and morally do much more. 

Moral parity is, I am persuaded, an often unstated goal of the revisionists.  And it makes sense.  It rests on the explicit assumption of the redefinition that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are basically the same -- equal -- in all respects except for the gender of coupling participants and natural procreative orientation, which are not held to be meaningful differences.  Anything less than "marriage" for same-sex couples, on this view, is unjust and sexist.  This is why the argument to redefine "marriage" is framed as a civil right in terms of fairness, in particular fairness as equality.

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Those in favor of retaining the definition of "marriage" as pertaining to opposite-sex couples ultimately seek fairness, too.  This might be surprising to some people, but I am also persuaded that it is the case.  It is perhaps less evident on first glance, although no less real. 

Both sides seek fairness.  How do advocates of marriage as a heterosexual conjugal union also seek to promote fairness?  There are several ways.  A key one seems to be as follows, and it turns on the nature of marriage.

Marriage as a heterosexual conjugal union is constitutive of a specific sort of family nature, function, structure, and operations.  "Marriage," on this conjugal view, "is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally (inherently) fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together" ("What Is Marriage?", 246).

To put this slightly differently, marriage as a conjugal union is "a union of a man and a woman, committed [exclusively] to sharing their lives together on the bodily, emotional, and rational-volitional levels of their being, in the kind of community that would be naturally fulfilled by having and rearing children together" (Lee, George, and Bradley).  It is, therefore, intrinsically and functionally different from a relationship defined as a non-conjugal union.  This is because same-sex partners do not form a biological union of the unique type that is inherently oriented to procreation and is naturally enriched by "the bearing and rearing of children" (see "What Is Marriage?", 255).  Opposite-sex couples by contrast do form such an intrinsic and functional biological union (they mate), even if, for whatever reason (infertility, old age, etc.), no children issue forth from that union.

One basic feature of fairness is proportionality.  Proportionate contributions to something yield proportionate outcomes on the merits.  If participants contribute distinctly to distinct outcomes, all those distinctions are respected and evaluated according to the differences, commensurate with what results.  If the coupling of distinct participants (heterosexual couples and homosexual couples) results in distinct types of relational union, then, to be fair, those distinctions should be respected and evaluated commensurately.  On this view, what results from the different gender combinations of the coupling participants (same-sex unions, on the one side, and opposite-sex unions, on the other) is in fact a meaningful difference.  

The "families" that result from opposite-sex and same-sex unions do not have the same nature (conjugal union oriented to procreation), function (cementing the type exclusive heterosexual relational union that is intrinsically good in part because it is naturally fulfilled by having and rearing children who participate in society), structure (opposite-sex participants), and operations (male/female interaction of this conjugal sort).

Advocates of a conjugal view of "marriage," therefore, seek to respect these real differences, in part by evaluating them on the merits, doing so equitably according to their distinctions.  It is unfair, on this view, to regard and to call a relational union that does not have the conjugal nature, function, structure, and operations the same thing as the type of relational union that does.  The two things are basically dissimilar.  It is not fair to insist that they are similar and to deal with them as if they were.  The attempt to be fair by means of equality ironically results in unfairness.

Such an attempt at redefinition, then, is not proportional, or commensurate, with the type of relationship that is inherently constituted by same-sex couples and with how it functions relative to a union by opposite-sex couples.  So proponents of this conjugal view do not approach same-sex unions in the same way that they do opposite-sex unions.  And this is precisely for the sake of fairness.  Advocates of the conjugal view of marriage wish not only to preserve fairness but also to promote it, in particular fairness as equity.

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At risk of oversimplifying, we can summarize each side's insistence on fairness in this way.  

• Those in favor of redefining marriage as an emotional union wish for fairness in morality (i.e., moral equality) by regarding different structures of relational union (opposite-sex and same-sex) as inherently and functionally the same thing.  This, they claim on the basis of equality, is only fair.  

• Those in favor of maintaining the traditional definition of marriage as a conjugal union wish for fairness in morality (i.e., moral equity) by regarding different structures of relational union (opposite-sex and same-sex) as inherently and functionally different things.  This, they claim on the basis of equity, is only fair.

Much more could be said about this subject.  For instance, we could explore competing perspectives of this notion:  revisionists claim only to be expanding the conjugal view of "marriage," which defines it as being constituted by heterosexual unions and not by homosexual unions, but others believe that the conjugal view cannot be expanded to define "marriage" as constituted by heterosexual unions and homosexual ones without thereby undermining the nature and function of marriage per se.  Why do some believe and other deny that such an attempted expansion is not making consistent the one definition of marriage but actually terminating the one definition and replacing it with a new one?  Or we might inquire why government is in the business of sanctioning marriage at all.  Or we could ask whether framing the issue in terms of civil rights in the way that it typically is already assumes something about the nature and function of marriage that needs to be demonstrated rather than asserted.

We could explore these questions and others.  I have written what I have descriptively because we will be better able to understand and to navigate debates as contentious and as important as those involving the family's basic structure if we understand their moral contours.  This is what I take from Prof. Wilson.

The place to start in these matters, in fact, is recognizing that the debate in question is really a moral one through and through.  To avoid discussing the morality of what is involved in the coupling activity that forms the basis of marriage, which sometimes happens out of an attempt to be sensitive and nonjudgmental, is not only to avoid the subject but to misunderstand it.  The nature and structure of family life is so heatedly contested because morality is being contested, and that is because the family is the ongoing institution for our moral instruction.  This institution shapes both our moral identity and our moral vision, and these have spillover effects into society at large.