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Is Fertility the Unspoken Issue in the Debate Between Liberal and Conservative Family Values?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

June Carbone
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Abstract

In two recent books, Linda McClain, The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility (2006), and James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (2002), lay out the respective positions in the opposing family values that divide the United States. Wilson maintains that family well-being rests on the foundation of a strong cultural commitment to marriage, while McClain articulates liberal feminist values that require equality within and among families. This article maintains that delayed childbearing, not marriage or equality, holds the key to the new middle-class morality and discusses the prospects for family law pragmatism in an era of values polarization.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Summer 2007 , pp. 809 - 839
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2007 

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