MND Roundtable Discussion on
Fathers' Rights and the Marriage Movement

At first glance, there seems little basis for contradiction between the marriage movement and the fathers’ rights movement. Marriage supporters generally believe that: marriage is the ideal setting for raising children; fathers are crucial to their children’s social, emotional, educational, and moral development; and fathers are more effective if they are married to their children’s mother. Therefore, policies which support marriage support fatherhood. However, the idea that fathers’ rights advocates and marriage movement participants might have some disagreements is not so strange when you consider some of the driving motivations for each group. On one hand, the marriage movement comprises a diverse group of politicians at the local, state & national level, academics & political commentators, and marriage educators—both religious and secular. These marriage supporters all agree that the institution of marriage provides benefits for men, women, and children, as well as for communities and society, and they all want to increase the number of strong, healthy marriages. Within these definitional constraints, there exists a diverse range of strategies, tactics, and overall guiding principles. Many (but not all) see marriage and the family as entities that exist beyond the individuals, and as valid subjects for social and government intervention and protection. The uniting theme is that marriage generally is good for people, and that encouraging healthy marriages is a good thing.

The uniting theme of the father’s rights movement seems to be a call for more fairness—mainly from the government. Advocates present some quite logical arguments, calling into question whether the current divorce law, child support enforcement & family court regime upholds individual rights to privacy, respects boundaries between private agreements and public concerns, and applies laws in a consistent and constitutional manner. Individual cases of rampant injustice strongly illustrate the point, and, indeed, personal experience or testimony seem to drive the movement’s support base. As a fan of logical arguments with more than a little bit of a libertarian streak, I’m often sympathetic to calls for fathers’ rights. However, the fathers’ rights movement to me remains a project of advocacy—fed in the main by individual cases of injustice—not a project of nurturing the good.

Contrasting the concerns of the fathers’ rights and the marriage movements highlights what  might be a serious disjunction between the philosophy of individualism and the anthropological reality of the family unit, a disjunction which demands a reconsideration of the family as a political entity. One possible question for this roundtable might be how well James Q. Wilson’s argument—that marriage was once a sacrament, became a contract and now is an arrangement—informs both the marriage movement and the fathers’ rights movement. Is this a useful model for discussion? Is it accurate? Is the marriage movement stuck in the sacrament mode? Is the fathers’ rights movement stuck in the contract mode? I look forward to discussing these and other issues.

Rebecca O'Neill