Many are hurt by the laissez-faire family

Star Tribune
July 25, 2001
Katherine Kersten

Not long ago, a friend called to tell me that her husband of 13 years had left her. The two have four children, 12 and under, with all the responsibilities that entails. Adding to their burdens, their 6-year-old has contracted a debilitating illness.

Under the circumstances, my friend's husband decided he wasn't "happy." He began an affair with a married acquaintance and moved out. His wife and children are devastated. He, however, reports that he is doing fine. Welcome to the laissez-faire family: the family dedicated to the proposition that each member should pursue his own self-interest, rather than sacrificing for the common good.

The laissez-faire family is something new in American history. It springs from an idea about freedom that has grown up over the last 30 years. That idea holds that our freedom gives us a right to do anything we want, so long it is noncoercive. Life is about meeting our own needs. There is no higher standard of behavior.

The idea that freedom entails doing "what's right for me" has had a powerful and destructive impact on the family. It has spurred an epidemic of divorce and out-of-wedlock child-bearing. It has also given rise to the widely held notion that no family form is inherently better than others. All are merely "life-style choices," which vary with the preferences of the adults involved.

Now there's a new book that eloquently challenges this view. The book, by economist Jennifer Roback Morse, is entitled "Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work."

Once a proponent of the laissez-faire family, Moore changed her views when she became a mother. Her critique is compelling, because she uses the language of economic analysis and self-interest to show why the idea of "freedom as autonomy" is profoundly against our interest in the long run, both as individuals and citizens of a democracy.

In Morse's view, the family's central role is to provide young children with a stable, loving environment. Children raised in such an environment learn to trust adults. By forming indelible attachments with their parents, children develop the capacity to form lasting attachments with other people. Childhood trust is also the foundation of many important qualities of character, including self- control, the ability to keep promises, and the ability to cooperate with others.

The laissez-faire family is problematic because it creates conditions under which the cycle of trust is likely to be broken. Families are likely to endure and flourish, however, when parents' commitment to each other, and to their children, is founded on self- sacrificing love.

What does it mean to love? Glamour magazine would have us believe that love is synonymous with romance: It is a heady feeling, based on erotic attraction, which is essentially outside our control.

Morse disagrees. In her view, love is a decision; as such, it is largely within our control. To love, Morse writes, is "to will and do the good of another."

This sounds easy. It is anything but.

Love is scarce because it involves costs. Clearly, one who loves must devote a good deal of time to his beloved. More important, however, he must surrender significant control over his life to the one he loves. Love requires constant compromise. But for most of us, ceding the reins of control is often very difficult.

There are also costs to receiving love. For example, when we allow someone to love us, he comes to know us well, perhaps "too well." As a result, he sees our faults, and brings pressure on us to change those faults. Frequently, we find this both unpleasant and humiliating.

Love is costly, but its costs are well worth bearing. For love allows us to make the most of our flawed and limited condition as human beings. Love enlarges us in an unexpected way: It changes what we consider a cost and a benefit. When we love, we redefine our concept of the good to include the other person. We come to see that what benefits a loved one benefits us, even if it requires sacrifice on our part.

Love is not a matter of fate or chance, but a decision. Today, we often forget this, as we reject one lover after another in a constant, elusive search for nonexistent perfection. But it is within our power to embrace a new definition of love. This love, whose essence is self-giving, does not make our happiness its immediate goal. In the long run, however, it is the form of love most likely to produce enduring happiness, both for our families and ourselves.

-Katherine Kersten is a senior fellow of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.