Capitalism and the Family
STEVEN HORWITZ
IHS: MORALITY, CAPITALISM, AND FREEDOM
SUMMER 2010
Opening Thoughts
 A history of the evolution of the family in which
capitalism is the source of desirable changes in the
direction of more freedom
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Left: family freedom good, but capitalism not
Right: capitalism good, but family freedom not
Why not celebrate both?
 Two opening claims:
 No such thing as the “traditional family”
 The multiple meanings of “normal family”
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Function and form
The Modern and Pre-Modern Family
 The modern family
 Marital choice by consent and emotional/romantic attraction
 The family as a private, insulated space
 Children treated sentimentally and uniquely valued
 Legal equality and more economic equality between genders
 The pre-industrial family
 Family as the unit of production not consumption
 The household is the firm
 Family is also a political unit
Why was this “pre-modern?”
 Arranged marriages – and even where it was
consent, it was not about love
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“Yoke mates rather than soul mates”
Production complementarities not consumption ones
 Women were effectively chattel
 Children were economic assets
 Large family size, high infant mortality rates
 Family was porous to the public and not private
 Church, state, and community involved in marriage, adoption,
and sexuality
 No divorce
Capitalism creates the modern family
 So what changed the pre-modern family?
 Capitalism:
 Industrialization and the advent of wage labor
 Higher incomes due to economic growth
 Separation of market and household production
 Higher wages mean child labor eventually disappears
 Children go from directly producing assets to investments
 This means they become expensive
 Childhood becomes the “sheltered childhood” we now know
 Family size begins to shrink even as infant mortality drops
Changes in marriage
 With families having more wealth:
 The state, the community, the church and even parents are
pushed back
 Marriage is a matter of choice and affection not economics
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Consumption complementarities matter more than production
We get the “nuclear family” we now know
 The “separate spheres” of the Victorian Era
 By early 20th century, women begin to enter labor
force in clerical/service jobs
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Higher incomes mean more education for boys AND girls
 We more or less now have the modern family
The 20th century
 Key event: the steady increase in women’s labor
force participation rates
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Myth: the 60s “caused” married women to start working
If anything, women working caused the women’s movement!
The Pill is more important
Since the 60s: rise of working moms with very young kids
 What led to more women working?
 Higher wages that drew them out from the home
a consequence of more education that raised their human capital
 and higher demand for labor resulting from economic growth that
raised the value of that human capital
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Women, Market Work, and the Family
 Changes in household production:
 Technological advances reduces time necessary
 Economic growth provides market substitutes for time
 Impact on the family
 Women are freer to create and leave marriages thanks to
greater wealth and reduction in specialization by gender
 Fewer kids and more wealth means child care is less time
consuming and more easily purchased on the market
 Family moves from an economic to psychological/emotional
one
 Children become increasingly “precious”
Some thoughts on divorce
 One effect of capitalism on the family is higher
divorce rates
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Preferences have changed: the bar for being happy, especially
for women, is much higher. More easily disappointed.
Constraints have changed: unhappy people, particularly
women, can now leave in ways they couldn’t before
 Costs and benefits of divorce
 This is clearly a win for women, although no-fault has issues
 Divorce is not good for kids, but…
 Evidence is clear that a cooperative divorce is better than a
tension-filled marriage
 Finally: even if divorce hurts kids, adults matter too
Capitalism and Same-Sex Marriage
 Capitalism created gay and lesbian identity
 Wage labor eliminated the economic need for a family
 Capitalism produced anonymous urban centers
 Why same-sex marriage now?
 Classical liberalism’s tolerance for “anything that’s peaceful”
 Wealth and technology separated sex, marriage, and
reproduction for heterosexuals
 Capitalism transformed marriage from being economic and
reproductive to being based on emotion and affection
 Add it all up, and this seems like the logical next step
 Function, form, and family freedom
 It’s evolution not revolution
Marriage, Family, and the State
 Some questions to ponder:
 Should the state have a role in marriage at all?
 If the state does have a role, is there a libertarian case for
legalizing same-sex marriages?
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If so, where would you find the constitutional argument?
How might libertarians deal with the tricky question of
children’s rights? Is the issue better thought of in terms of
“parental rights?”
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Anyone know the constitutional law here?
 Final thought on capitalism, family, and
instrumental rationality.