ROUND THREE

MND Roundtable Discussion on
Fathers' Rights and the Marriage Movement

I recognize that some members of the ‘divorce industry’ have a self-interest in perpetuating family breakdown. However, what makes the marriage movement different is  that this is explicitly not their goal. Many marriage educators come from the ranks of the divorce industry (mediators, lawyers, marriage counsellors) and are actively rebelling against it. This has been a grassroots movement. The fact is that it has come to broad public attention because some in government have recognized a good thing and jumped aboard. Unfortunately, government will probably bureaucratise the work and allow some level of competing professional self-interest to creep in. I have three responses to this. First: I’m horrified that government is sticking its nose into private lives yet again; I don’t believe they are the best agents for improving marriage health; and I worry that government influence might weaken or warp the marriage movement. But I’m not too worried because my second reaction is that this happens all the time. Government already has a good deal of influence on private lives—much of which does weaken the family, but at least government sponsored marriage support might help to balance this. Third, the money we’re talking about is negligible. The value of proposing to use $300 million of welfare money to support marriage is not the $300 million. It’s the public focus—in Congress, the press, and society—that the proposal brings. So, I have (some) sympathy for criticizing the government’s role in the marriage movement, but very little for criticizing marriage educators (or political commentators) for trying to improve marriages and prevent divorce. Fathers’ rights advocates do themselves little good by characterising the marriage movement as just another aspect of the ‘divorce industry’. Marriage educators’ success will relate directly to the quality and quantity of fathers’ contact with their children.

Clergy is an interesting issue. As a Catholic, my marriage is a sacrament. Divorce is not only not an option, but it is an impossibility for me. I heartily agree with Prof Baskerville that clergy should reflect carefully on how they deal with marriage and divorce. However, not all religions consider marriage to be a sacrament, and some religions are more accepting of divorce.

For the record, I do not believe that individualism is fundamentally incompatible with marriage or with ‘the good.’ I do believe that at present there is a disjunction between the philosophy of individualism and the various understandings of marriage and the family floating around. The idea that there is a fundamental right to the family is a debatable yet defendable philosophical argument, but it is not one which was explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. Family law was left to the states. Fathers’ rights advocates write as if the political understanding of marriage and the family is a settled subject, as if all agree that marriage is a private contract which government should enforce in order to protect individual rights. But it’s not that simple. Marriage existed before modern liberalism developed, and probably would not have been remotely considered a contract before the eighteenth century. Rather, it was a means of raising children and making a living which also contributed to social stability. For many it was also a sacrament. Liberal individualism developed later and overlaid the existing understandings(s) of marriage and the family. Enlightenment individualism defined in many ways the American constitutional and political regime. However, the rights and duties of men and women—within families rather than as individuals—were assumed to be derived from nature and culture, and thus less subject to Enlightenment rationalism. So contract certainly had an influence on the modern understanding of marriage and the family, but it never defined it.

I agree that no-fault divorce is problematic. But although it might have been the main ‘domino’ setting off the current levels of family breakdown, the effect can’t be undone by reinstating fault. Or if you prefer: the genie is now out of the bottle. As I said before: marriage is now optional, but that hasn’t stopped people from having children. Fathers’ rights advocates have experienced the fallout from this situation. What I’m saying is that they can’t solve the problem by relying upon a contested understanding of marriage as contract. 

Rebecca O'Neill