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The decline of the family in welfare states is no accident but the result of an ideological cocktail, argues a British author.
The title of Patricia Morgan’s new book, The War Between the State and the Family, is fighting talk. But the British sociologist has a lot of evidence on her side when she alleges that modern governments are engaged in “systematic discrimination against (married) couples in the tax and benefit system.” (62) In the words of her subtitle, she aims to show "How Government Divides and Impoverishes" the family.
She chalks this ill-conceived policy up to an ideological cocktail of feminism, neo-Marxism and radical individualism. The fiscal result throughout the Anglophone world is an expansion of the welfare state and an increase in the overall tax burden. The human result is an increase in unmarried mothers and the marginalisation of men from the family.
The feminist “contribution” to this lethal ideological mix is to brand the bread-winning father as a social problem. Britain's New Labour politicians claimed that, “the assumption that men are financially responsible for families is at the root of women’s disadvantage in the labour market and thwarts the ability of women alone to provide adequately for themselves and their children. ...[T]he treatment of a married couple as a single financial unit ... is to be discouraged, along with any predisposition in favour of the nuclear family.” (66-7).
Left-wing individualism has been much more extreme and deliberate than anything ever dreamed of by free marketeers. The social policy of the Left has replaced the personal, human relationships of the family with the impersonal bureaucratic relationships of the state and the labour market.
Morgan also implicates Marxism, which “interprets human relationships in terms of the distribution of power, and any care and reciprocity operating within and between generations as servitude.” (50) Together with the demotion of the father-breadwinner, this has created a situation of complete atomisation, with individuals left to fend for themselves. Patricia Morgan once again: “The assumption is that there are no joint resources and no mutual support because people do not and must share within families. Motherhood is now invariably viewed as something women plan and deal with on their own. The references are to jobs, maternity pay and leave, and child care, and never to a relationship with someone else who might share or sustain the costs involved. Marriage is now deemed irrelevant to reproduction.” (58, emphasis in original).
Because of this emphasis on the individual, many free market advocates are tongue-tied against this destructive social atomisation, even though it is directly responsible for massive increases in state expenditures to sustain all these “independent” mothers. Left-wing individualism has been much more extreme and deliberate than anything ever dreamed of by free marketeers. The social policy of the Left has replaced the personal, human relationships of the family with the impersonal bureaucratic relationships of the state and the labour market.
British policies structure income support for the poor to benefit unmarried mothers in comparison with married couple households. Public housing benefits are structured to benefit single parents.As one might imagine, the impact on the treasury has been enormous, as more women become single mothers, and fewer men support their children.The human cost is that couples who might have supported themselves and their children together, instead spend a lifetime on the dole.
Although her evidence is principally drawn from the United States and the United Kingdom, Morgan points to similar patterns elsewhere. In Australia, for instance, out of wedlock "births rose from 9.7% of births in the year before the introduction of the Sole Parent Benefit (SPB, replacing ad hoc state and charity provision) to 14.7% in the following year, and the numbers receiving SPB rose fivefold over the 1980's. By 1997, the proportion of ex-nuptial births was 27%, and the nuptial birth rate had nearly halved.”
Even the divorce rate is linked to social policy. Morgan argues that the feasibility of the no-fault divorce system “rested upon the availability of state support for lone parents.Women with feminist agendas operating in bureaucratic and government circles played a central role in defining their needs and in influencing social policy... so that the state came to provide the income maintenance that they needed to achieve independence. Their right to have a family without a husband had been given public recognition.” (104-5). And, we might add, public policy accelerated the marginalisation of men from the family.
A similar transformation took place in New Zealand: "Thirty years ago, a system of universal acknowledgment for family dependents by the tax system was replaced by a welfare system targeting the needy....With no fiscal recognition at all (emphasis in original) for two-parent families above a low income level, sole parents essentially became the only recognized family type in New Zealand. The proportion of lone parents collecting the DPB had peaked at nearly 90% by 1991. Extraordinarily, the number of male recipients rose by nearly 50%." (105)
Patricia Morgan’s book demonstrates that both ideas and incentives matter. Bad ideas lead to bad policies. And even ordinary, non-ideological people respond to incentives in a systematic and predictable way. The all-too-predictable result of the assault on the family has been the worldwide decline in married couple households and an increase in social welfare spending.
Almost the only voices raised against this human destruction are those of religious traditionalists. It is time for fiscal conservatives to moderate their individualism and abandon their agnosticism toward the family. The collaboration between mothers and fathers is a great social good that states should encourage and support, rather than systematically search out and destroy. Patricia Morgan’s book will be an invaluable resource for anyone who aims to make government policy more truly family-friendly.
The War Between the State and the Family: How Government Divides and Impoverishes, by Patricia Morgan, (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 2007)
Jennifer Roback Morse , Ph D, is the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute and the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work.
Many thanks to Jennifer Morse for publishing this book and for your review.
Never break up with tradition. It is in place for a reason.
Clicky
Bravo to Jennifer Morse for publishing this important book and for your review.
Whenever the government announces more money allocated to support full day child care outside of family, away from the natural mother, I inwardly cringe. The west has learned nothing from the experience of the communist regime run societies, where women were “en masse” kicked out of family duties into the workforce. There the destruction of family bonds was a programmed objective. The poorly attached (to parents)children with starved emotional needs were an easy material to scare into obedience and manage as a society.
Who and why is interested in undermining the family?
The traditional family of husband and wife is the foundation of
all stable government. Gay and Lesbian marriages shoot a democracy in its head!
So now the democracies are playing Russian Roulette!
Alexander Tyler wrote:A democracy is always temporary in
nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most
benefits from the public treasury,
The concept of subsidiarity states that larger organizational structures should not be usurping the rights and responsibilities of smaller ones. In other words, if it is a father’s duty in the family to care for the children he fathers, the state should be supporting him in that role and assisting it, maybe even coercing him to take responsibility, not trying to replace him. That support would include media support and promotion and modelling of responsible fatherhood, support of non-governmental organizations that promote responsibility, economic policies that support job creation and just living wages, promotion of peace and security. Further, if there are societal pressures against the family, that’s bad for us all, and reasonable laws should be enforced to protect the family from indecency, prostitution, and pornography. Society must resist cohabitation as a false substitute for the stability and commitment of responsible couples in marriage. Society must end no-fault divorce, and protect marriage as normally a permanent legal and moral bond unless there is a grave reason to dissolve it. All of this is for the common good, and Jenny points out it makes good economic sense at the same time.
Many thanks for publishing such an interesting article.
I’m researching on the incidence of state policies on “cultural modernization” in Chile (this is the name some sociologists have given to the process of cultural change we are experiencing).
I would be glad if you could publish me some information about “cultural change” in Western Society.
It’s not true that only religious traditionalists are campaigning against this attack on the family - there ARE other organisations such as WatCH? in England and the Time for Parenting campaign run by Full Time Mothers (http://www.timeforparenting.org). There are not affiliated to any religious or political group.
Trouble is there is little support and no funding to mount an effective campaign against government policies. And parents at home caring for children are not in a very powerful position. By the very fact that they are ‘at home’ playing happy families they are invisible in the system! They are not represented in public debate and have no voice. The issues are very complex and few people have realised how bad things have become. Women believe they have achieved equal rights and equality of opportunity in the workplace, but they ended up with fewer choices than ever before havent’ they?
Now the economy has sucked up the second income in the family and mothers have very little choice other than to leave their babies in care while they go out to work, often on a minimum wage. Average family housing is so expensive that managing on one income alone is impossible. How can this be progress? Isn’t it the mark of a civilised society for women to be able to care of their own babies if they so choose, instead of being forced to hand them over to a stranger?
This is almost beyond parody. How is it applicable to Australia? The past 11 years has seen a government that has been happy to fuel a phoney culture war, blaming Australia’s ills on an “ideological cocktail of feminism, neo-Marxism and radicals”. Yet it is the same government that has pumped parents to the hilt with a whole range of family payments and rebates which Jennifer Morse claims are the root of society falling apart. And it’s the left’s fault? What a joke.
And, recognising the Pandora’s Box it unleashed, the federal government has mooted restrictions on the age at which mothers can access such payments.
Federal government policy in this regard has fairly blatantly been to increase the birth rate in this country with a series of economic incentives. Seeing a nefarious agenda that couldn’t even feasibly be instituted is just reading too much into it.
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronald Regan
Yes to traditional marriage!!
Yes to traditional family!!
Govt and society must protect traditional marriage and traditional family!!
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