Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-13-2011
Abstract
Family decline appears to be inevitable when viewed with a long perspective. The family has been progressively differentiated from institutions that now accomplish what was formerly within the provenance of the family. The city's gods, and eventually the Church, replaced ancestral gods. The marketplace, and eventually the modern economy, replaced the family as the unit of economic production. The city replaced primitive patriarchy. Slowly, and more controversially, the state has come to fulfill increasing portions of the family’s educational mission. Even the family’s "provision of social services" has come, more and more, to be a state concern. This "loss of functions" is a rational application of the division of labor, as functions extraneous to family life devolve in the presence of institutions better suited to accomplish these goals. As the family loses more and more functions, its purposes become thinner but, it is hoped, truer to the reality of what a family is.
Copyright Statement
This document originally appeared in Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ. Reprinted with permission. Copyright restrictions may apply. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com
Publication Information
Yenor, Scott. (2011). "The Family's End". Public Discourse, .