A Nonfeminist's Perspectives of Mothers and Homemakers Under Chapter 2 of the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution

A Nonfeminist's Perspectives of Mothers and Homemakers Under Chapter 2 of the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution* I. INTRODUCTION From the vantage point of a nonfeminist mother and homemaker, chapter 2, as well as chapter 6, of the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution contributes to the deconstruction of traditional nuclear families. This deconstruction will promote the feminist goal to deny sexual differences in order to create an androgynous society in which men and women are as identical as possible. Such a society is antithetical to the maintenance of traditional families in which husband and wife perform complementary, not androgynous, roles: the wife as primarily a homemaker and child-rearer and the husband as primarily the financial provider for the family. The threedecade decline in the number of these traditional families in our society has been accompanied by an increasing tangle of pathologies that now characterize so many American families. In examining the legal profession's attitudes toward traditional marriage, William C. Duncan points out that the Fall 1999 ALI Reporter had noted, "presumably with some pride," that Playboy magazine ranked the ALI 34th in its list of "men and women who changed the face of sex, for good or bad, during the past hundred years." Tribute was due the ALI, said Playboy, as "the unsung heroes of the sexual revolution."1 That the ALI surely is and, with these family dissolution principles, will continue to be. Those who think the sexual revolution was good for our society, who think that there are no important biological differences between the sexes so that men and women should be considered fungible, who think that the traditional family plays no valuable role in creating a civil society, and who think that androgyny is a proper goal for a society would probably support all of the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. Anyone who rejects these attitudes, however, should recognize that some of the Principles subvert the traditional family. The relevant provisions of the ALI Principles, discussed in Part II, recognize the functional equivalence of a variety of family structures, without regard to whether the cohabitants are married or unmarried or of the same or opposite sex. Through this recognition, the ALI accepts and validates the demise of traditional sex roles within our culture and the resulting creation of an androgynized society. Part III discusses how these ALI Principles can be seen as the culmination of a nearly four-decade war that our society has waged against the traditional family and traditional sexual morality. The most powerful weapons in this war were the status degradation of the housewife's role and the passage of no-fault divorce laws, which undermined her social and economic security. With these principles, the ALI accepts the fruits of the sexual revolution and the breakdown of the traditional family, abandoning that family as being no longer normative in our society but only one of several equivalent family structures. Part IV defends a family structure in which husband and wife perform traditional sex roles. Despite feminist claims that women who profess happiness in such roles are suffering from "false consciousness" and "may not be the best judges of their own interests," I contend that these roles are fulfilling for some women and that this family structure contributes to societal health and well-being. The great harm that divorce does to children is discussed in Parts V and VI, where I argue that the rearing of children by both natural parents is generally far preferable to rearing by a single parent or by same-sex partners. In conclusion, Part VII questions the wisdom of continuing further on the path towards androgyny that has already taken us far towards sexual depolarization of our society. II. RELEVANT PROVISIONS OF THE PRINICIPLES OF THE LAW OF FAMILY DISSOLUTION Chapter 6 of the Principles undermines the traditional family by giving certain rights to unmarried couples upon the dissolution of their relationship. …