In Brief. - Review - book review

National Review, May 14, 2001 by S. T. Karnick

Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work, by Jennifer Roback Morse (Spence, 300 pp., $27.95)

Although libertarianism has great merit as a political and economic philosophy, its effects on the family have been disastrous, argues libertarian economist Jennifer Roback Morse. During the past half- century, both Right and Left have unwittingly collaborated in creating the laissez-faire family. The Right endorsed contractual relationships, emphasizing personal choice. The Left sought to weaken or break community and family ties to remove a competitor to the state. People today are paying a high price-in alarmingly high rates of divorce, illegitimacy, domestic violence, juvenile crime, and other social pathologies. Presenting ample evidence that "the laissez-faire family, in which each member pursues his own self-interest, does not make people very happy," Morse, currently at the Hoover Institution, documents the crucial role the "loving family" plays in developing moral and social capabilities such as trust and cooperation. Because it creates the self-restraining individuals who make free institutions possible, there is no realistic alternative to the loving family as the foundation of a free society.

Morse's own religious sensibility leads her to favor a vision of the family as a unity based on love rather than self-interest. She exposes the materialist, Marxist assumptions behind the laissez-faire family, showing that it is based on an unachievable, utopian vision of personal happiness. The inadequacy of materialism is why government support, private day care, and single parenting are all poor substitutes for loving families taking care of their own children. It is also why "persuasion, not legislation" is the appropriate tool for repairing the modern family. The solution will not come about through vast institutional changes, but by a genuine moral renewal and greater respect for the mediating institutions that operate in the social space between the family and the state. This important and persuasive book may itself be part of the solution, helping inspire a more fruitful national conversation about the family.