The following comments were originally delivered at UCLA on January 30, 2008 as a part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's lecture series, The Culture of Enterprise.

It takes a family to raise a village. Without the family, the village itself can not function. If the family breaks down, or fails to form in the first place, the “village” can not possibly provide adequate help to repair the damage. In any good society, the government must do what only the government can do: keep order internally and externally, enforce agreements and defend property rights. The market must do what only the market can do: create wealth and provide employment by combining goods and services that satisfy consumers. But only the family can create the next generation of human beings who will become citizens and consumers.

Many of the changes in family structure over the last generation have been driven by changes in the behavior of women. Because women can now support themselves economically, they marry later, have fewer children, and are more prone to divorce. But this is only part of the story: we have choices about how to respond to this important social change of women’s higher education and careers. In the 1960’s, a group of Marxist women who called themselves feminists defined the meaning of these social trends, and pushed them into a very distinct direction. We are all living with their interpretation to this very day. I believe modern women are looking for a new interpretation of their economic independence and a different model for managing their lives. I want to offer an alternative which I believe will be more humane for women and more supportive of the family.

I will do three things in this lecture. First, I will show how the breakdown of marriage leads necessarily to the expansion of the state. Without the family doing its job, the state will necessarily grow larger, more expensive and more intrusive. Second, I will show how Marxist categories of analysis have influenced discussions of women and family. Marxism has failed as an economic system. But Marxism lingers on in its analysis of marriage. Finally, I will offer an alternative to this Marxist-driven model.

I. The Free Society Needs the Family.

The family does something the “village” can not do for itself, namely bring the next generation into being. Without the family doing its job, the state will necessarily grow larger, more expensive and more intrusive. Let me illustrate this by looking at the by-products of no-fault divorce and unmarried childbearing.