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— W The Witherspoon Institute Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles Princeton, New Jersey June 2006 The Witherspoon Institute is grateful to the John Templeton Foundation and the Social Trends Institute for the financial assistance that has made this research possible. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the signatories and do not nece ecessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation or the Social Trends Institute. Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles www.princetonprinciples.org O The Witherspoon Institute 2006 This book is the sole property of The Witherspoon Institute. It may not be altered or edited in any way. It may be reproduced for circulation only in its entirety, without charge. All reproductions of this book must contain the copyright notice (i.e., "Copyright © The Witherspoon Institute, 2006") and this Copyright/Reproduction Limitations notice. Please notify the Witherspoon Institute of any intentions to circulate or reproduce this book. This book may not be used without the permission of The Witherspoon Institute for resale or the enhancement of any other product sold. The Witherspoon Institute 20 Nassau Street, Suite 242 Princeton, NJ 08542 USA www.winst.org Executive Summary I. II. III. IV. V. Signatories Notes CONTENTS The Challenge to Marriage and Family Today Ten Principles of Marriage and Family in Society Evidence from the Social and Biological Sciences Analysis from Political and Moral Philosophy: The Intrinsic Goods of Marriage American Exceptionalism & the Way Forward 5 7 II 15 29 33 37 43 Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles is the result of scholarly discussions that began in December, 2004 at a meeting in Princeton, New Jersey, sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute. This conference brought together scholars from History, Economics, Psychiatry, Law, Sociology and Philosophy to share with each other the findings of their research on why marriage, understood as the permanent union of husband and wife, is in the public interest. A consensus developed for sharing the fruit of their collaboration more widely. The Witherspoon Institute is an independent research center located in Princeton, New Jersey. It is not connected to Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, The Center for Theological Inquiry, or the Institute for Advanced Study. For more information, contact the drafting committee of the Principles, at [email protected]. Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles Executive Summary In recent years, marriage has weakened, with serious negative consequences for society as a whole. Four developments are especially troubling: divorce, illegitimacy, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage. W The purpose of this document is to make a substantial new contribution to the public debate over marriage. Too often, the rational case for marriage is not made at all or not made very well. As scholars, we are persuaded that the case for marriage can be made and won at the level of reason. Marriage protects children, men and women, and the common good. The health of marriage is particularly important in a free society, which depends upon citizens to govern their private lives and rear their children responsibly, so as to limit the scope, size, and power of the state. The nation's retreat from marriage has been particularly consequential for our society's most vulnerable communities: minorities and the poor pay a disproportionately heavy price when marriage declines in their communities. Marriage also offers men and women as spouses a good they can have in no other way: a mutual and complete giving of the self. Thus, marriage understood as the enduring union of husband and wife is both a good in itself and also advances the public interest. We affirm the following ten principles that summarize the value marriage- a choice that most people want to make, and that society should endorse and support. TEN PRINCIPLES ON MARRIAGE AND THE PUBLIC GOOD 1. Marriage is a personal union, intended for the whole of life, of husband and wife. 2. Marriage is a profound human good, elevating and perfecting our social and sexual nature. 3. Ordinarily, both men and women who marry are better off as a result. 4. Marriage protects and promotes the well-being of children. 5. Marriage sustains civil society and promotes the common good. 6. Marriage is a wealth-creating institution, increasing human and social capital. 7. When marriage weakens, the equality gap widens, as children suffer from the disadvantages of growing up in homes without committed mothers and fathers. 8. A functioning marriage culture serves to protect political liberty and foster limited government. 9. The laws that govern marriage matter significantly. 10. “Civil marriage” and “religious marriage” cannot be rigidly or completely divorced from one another. 5
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— Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to Married Couples for the “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year, 2021-2022 (26 December 2021)
— This fast-paced talk reviews a number of the puzzles, paradoxes and misconceptions about the family in America, including the myth of soulmate marriage, the myth of the good divorce, and the myth that our deepest divisions are political. The speaker will review some of the most important contributions to social science of the family, and place these findings in light of the Catholic faith. About our scholar Professor Catherine Pakaluk joined the faculty at the Busch School in the summer of 2016, and is the founder of the Social Research academic area, where she is an Assistant Professor of Social Research and Economic Thought. Formerly, she was Assistant Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at Ave Maria University. Her primary areas of research include economics of education and religion, family studies and demography, Catholic social thought and political economy. Dr. Pakaluk is the 2015 recipient of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award, a prize given for “significant contributions to the study of the relationship between religion and economic liberty.” Pakaluk did her doctoral work at Harvard University under Caroline Hoxby, David Cutler, and 2016 Nobel-laureate Oliver Hart. Her dissertation, “Essays in Applied Microeconomics”, examined the relationship between religious ‘fit' and educational outcomes, the role of parental effort in observed peer effects and school quality, and theoretical aspects of the contraceptive revolution as regards twentieth century demographic trends. Beyond her formal training in economics, Dr. Pakaluk studied Catholic social thought under the mentorship of F. Russell Hittinger, and various aspects of Thomistic thought with Steven A. Long. She is a widely-admired writer and sought-after speaker on matters of culture, gender, social science, the vocation of women, and the work of Edith Stein. She lives in Maryland with her husband Michael Pakaluk and eight children.
— The Meaning of Marriage Sexual Difference En Español What is marriage? Why does it matter that humanity is male and female? Why does a person’s sex mat...
— Inclusivity and Love FAQs Podcast
— Institute for Marriage and Public Policy “Strengthening marriage for a new generation” Enter Marriage Debate Blog From President: Maggie Gallagher is President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and a co-author of The Case for Marriage. “If Marriage is Natural, Why Is Defending It So Hard?”Ave Maria Law Review 2006 SSM and the…
— The Global Family 2021 More Work, Fewer Babies: What Does Workism Have to DO with Falling Fertility? IFS Website Table of Contents +Download the Report + Executive Summary MORE WORK, FEWER BABIES: What Does Workism Have to Do with Falling Fertility? Executive Summary Birth rates have reached extremely low levels in many countries around the world, including virtually all high-income countries. The causes of this decline and the solutions to it are of great interest to policymakers. People’s attitudes toward work—specifically the elevation of career advancement to a very high place in individual values—may influence fertility. The rise of “work-focused” value sets and life courses means that achieving work-family balance isn’t just about employment norms adjusting to the growing complexity of individual aspirations; it can also mean that many men and women find their preferred balance to be more work and less family. This report builds on existing theories seeking to explain low fertility. The “Second Demographic Transition”1 theory emphasizes the rise of individualist attitudes as a cause for falling fertility. In contrast, the “Two-Part Gender Revolution”2 theory suggests that change in gender equality occurred first in public contexts (legal, educational, workplace), and only later in private contexts (shared child care and domestic work). This delay yields continued private inequities, curtailing fertility as women shoulder a disproportionate share of work at home. If men bore an equal share, fertility limitation might be less necessary. We argue that the importance people ascribe to work and family matters for fertility. To demonstrate the implications of these values, which we refer to as “workism” and “familism,” we explore the relationship between work, family, gender role attitudes, and fertility across four different datasets. Our primary analysis uses data from the World Values Survey/European Values Survey to assess how the survey-reported importance of family and work interact with gender role attitudes to influence national- and individual-level fertility outcomes across numerous societies and time periods. We find that high-income countries that become more workist experience large associated declines in fertility. More specifically, we show that: Highly work-focused values and social attitudes among both men and women are strongly associated with lower birth rates in wealthy countries. The decline in birth rates over the last decade across many high-income countries—including some Nordic countries—can be partly explained by the rising importance individuals assign to work as a source of value and meaning in life. Government policies that try to increase fertility by providing more benefits aimed at workers, such as universal child care or parental leave programs, may undermine their efforts as they strengthen a “workist” life-script rather than a “familist” one. This strong relationship between work attitudes and fertility outcomes is an important finding for countries with low fertility. For governments, it highlights the difficulty of attempting to boost fertility by making work more compatible with family. To the extent that family policy helps encourage more time at work, policies aimed at achieving “work/life balance” may be doomed to failure. Reforms that substantially reduce the burden of market work on families are more likely to yield benefits in the long run. The Global Family 2021 Home Institute for Family Studies P.O. Box 1502 Charlottesville, VA 22902 [email protected] 434-253-5011 © 2023 Institute for Family Studies Click to Navigate to Section Executive Summary + Download the Report
— For more than a century, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church has attempted to walk along with the modern world, criticizing what is bad and praising what is good. Counsels of Imperfection described the current state of that fairly bumpy journey. The book is divided into 11 chapters. First comes an introduction to ever-changing modernity and the unchanging Christian understanding of human nature and society. Then come two chapters on economics, including a careful delineation of the Catholic response, past and present, to socialism and capitalism. The next topic is government, with one chapter on Church and State, another on War, and a third that runs quickly through democracy, human rights, the welfare state, crimes and punishments (including the death penalty), anti-Semitism, and migration. Counsels of Imperfection then dedicates two chapters on ecology, including an enthusiastic analysis of Francis’s “technocratic paradigm”. The last topic is the family teaching, which presents the social aspects of the Church’s sexual teaching. A brief concluding chapter looks at the teaching’s changing response to the modern world, and at the ambiguous Catholic appreciation of the modern idea of progress. For each topic, Counsels of Imperfection provides biblical, historical and a broad philosophical background. Thomas Aquinas appears often, but so does G. W. F Hegel. The goal is not only to explain what the Church really says, but also how it got to its current position and who it is arguing with. In the spirit of a doctrine that is always in development, Counsels of Imperfection points out both strong-points and imperfections in the teaching. The book should be of interest to specialists in Catholic Social Teaching, but its main audience is curious newcomers, especially people who do not want to be told that there are simple Catholic answers to the complicated problems of the modern world.
Historically marriage was seen as a natural union of man and woman for the purpose of companionship and the having and rearing of children. Saying it is ‘natural’ means that it is not a socially created institution but is something prior occurring spontaneously in nature, which societies then recognize and give social and legal standing to through conventions and laws. This idea survives in the notion of ‘common law marriage’ which is deemed to exist where a man and woman cohabit and engage in sexual relations even though there has been no ceremony or legal registration of their union. Central to the traditional notion of marriage is that it is the origin and proper route to the creation of a family. That in turn is seen by Aristotle and Aquinas as a natural unit, and the household through the gathering of them into communities and of communities into larger units is seen as the origin and continuing basis of the largest political community, the state. On this view the breakdown of the family will in turn lead to communal and ultimately political disintegration. That risk, and the interest of the state in stability and continuity is seen as being the basis of its involvement in aspects of marriage and family and education. Within Catholicism marriage came to be recognised as a sacrament bringing sanctifying grace to the parties thereby assisting them spiritually in their lives together. Feminist and LGBT critics of marriage and of the family see both as privileging certain relationships, roles and forms of behaviour, and maintaining power relations that disadvantage women, gays and children.