The Centrality of Family

One particularly noteworthy test of intuition is the importance of family. Intuition that family has a positive ethical role seems to be widespread, but secular theories of morality tend to ignore or even weigh against the family.

The case for the family as a worthy institution is multiple. In part, it derives from historical social structures of evolving humans and pre-humans. A social structure which led to the development of modern humans ought to be given some extra consideration by those humans on the basis that it is likely to be necessary in some way for human success. In part, it is an economic argument that posits that keeping together those people who have a closely shared genetic interest will allow for greater cooperation and greater success. In part, it can be made on evidentiary grounds; there is now ample scientific evidence that the role of a nuclear family or an extended family is a positive one in the development of a child. As measured by later outcomes in life, a robust family environment with multiple adults closely related to the child and invested in the success of that child tends to lead to materially better outcomes. We should expect that family occupies not merely an ethical role of convenience (that it happens to sometimes be for the best) but that it has a central ethical role (it is usually for the best, to be overturned only by extreme or unusual circumstances).

The centrality of family will have a corollary impact on mate selection, a topic to which we will return.

How do other ethical theories fare on the topic of the family? In general, dismally. Religious moral theories tend to assign great weight to the family but without justification or integration into a larger framework of thought. Instead, the religious framework is typically a patchwork or constellation of ideas which are not fully integrated and each is not fully understood in light of the others. The fact that some of those ideas are brilliant and wonderful does little to navigate the student through the patchwork or constellation of disjoint ideas.

Secular theories fare even worse. Most are silent on the value of family, and regard it at best as a means to some utopian end. More frequently, strong attacks on the family can be launched under the guise of equality, justice, utility, or some other non-real value. By grounding family in its role as a mechanism for genetic propagation (a real, physical phenomenon) we shield it from many baseless and conjectural attacks.

An example: The Rawlsian theory of justice (widely accepted among the intellectual Left and the sire of modern pseudo-socialist political movements such as Social Justice) requires that all social goods (as if there were such a thing as a social good) be distributed (with no thought to their creation) equally among all members of society, except insofar as inequality helps those worst off. The last special exception, meant to inoculate the theory against extreme egalitarianism and therefore justified criticism of that failed branch if thought, is immediately discarded like a brown banana peel by those who seek to implement Rawls' theory. How might this theory apply to the family? What is parenting, if not a "social good"? What is a loving family environment, if not a "social good"? Accordingly, these things ought (under Rawls) be distributed equally, except insofar as their unequal distribution grants greater parenting to children who have none. Consequently, the Rawlsian imperative is to distribute children equally among parents (and vice versa). Rawls might demand a family who has 4 children give three up to three infertile couples, or that a family which has 6 children but an abundance of parental love should be forced to adopt another several orphans. Obviously both versions are monstrous. The Rawlsian theory fails to explain the importance of the family or to address is in a satisfactory way. The same can be said of the overwhelming majority of secular ethical theories.