Privatize Marriage?

Should the government “get out of the marriage business”? Jennifer Roback Morse explains the public function of marriage in “Privatizing Marriage Is Impossible”:

Marriage is society’s primary institutional arrangement that defines parenthood. Marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. A woman’s husband is presumed to be the father of any children she bears during the life of their union. These two people are the legally recognized parents of this child…. This is an intrinsically social, public function of marriage that cannot be privatized….


Why wouldn’t private contracts between couples be enough?





(Dr. Morse continues her argument in “Privatizing Marriage Will Expand the Role of the State” and “Privatizing Marriage Is Unjust to Children.”)

The book What Is Marriage (Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George) agrees that “where marriages never form or easily break down, the state expands to fill the domestic vacuum by lawsuits to determine paternity, visitation rights, child support, and alimony,” and it adds this:

But the less immediate effects are even more extensive. As absentee fathers and out-of-wedlock births become common, a train of social pathologies follows, and with it greater demand for policing and state-provided social services. Sociologists David Popenoe and Alan Wolfe’s research on Scandinavian countries shows that as marriage culture declines, the size and scope of state power and spending grow.

The state has a clear interest in marriage, and its involvement can’t be avoided.


Read more posts

blog post |
Amy K. Hall