Feminism set out to destroy the family and has largely succeeded
by Belinda Brown:
Last month, Tucker Carlson, the American conservative political commentator called attention to the importance of the family. How if we want to have happy, functioning societies the wellbeing of the family should be a central concern of political life. That was part of his message to which most of us could sign up.
More controversially for some, he argued that the unfettered operation of the free market could hurt the family. In particular he suggested that where men didn’t earn decent wages women didn’t want to marry them. The absence of marriage eventually leads to the breakdown of the family – to fatherlessness and single parenthood. Even a cursory glance at the data confirms that a great deal of our social ills follow from that.
The link which Carlson highlighted between male employment and marriage is amply supported by the data (see here, here and here). But by making link between employment markets and marriage he highlighted an unresolved tension in conservative arguments – that the free market can weaken the very families it relies upon to thrive.
Right wing commentators David French and Ben Shapiro were quick to defend the market from any ideas which might curtail its freedom . If people had disorganised families this was down to individual agency. They tried to make sure that the separation between our personal lives and the economy remained in tact.
Others were more interested in exploring the questions which Carlson provoked. JD Vance author of Hillbilly Elegy acknowledged the conflict which Carlson’s argument pointed to, by demonstrating that what was good for the market was not necessarily good for the nation but needed careful working out. Others showed that his arguments about the family were essentially right. Eli Finkel made the point that the poor want to be married just as much as everyone else. Writing in the Federalist Willis L. Krumholz, explained that government measures had however made marriage impossible for the least well off. Suzanne Venker weighed in confirming how marriage is put beyond the reach of the poor because, as she demonstrated with a barrage of evidence women prefer to marry decently earning men . The result is, as academics Bradford Wilcox and Samuel Hammond have shown marriage has become a privileged institution almost jealously guarded by the middle class.
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