Utopia Against the Family: The Problems and Politics of the American Family

By Bryce J. Christensen

Book Overview

Is the traditional family an anachronism? That's the question Christensen answers in this thought-provoking book. His analysis examines why government expansion often comes at the expense of family... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898702828
• ISBN13: 9780898702828
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Length: 146 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Utopia Against Family

Bryce J. Christensen, in Utopia Against the Family: The Problems and Politics of the American Family (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, c. 1990), provides interesting insights as to why families have so struggled to survive in the past three decades. Christensen edits The Family in America and directs The Rockford Institute Center on the Family in America, so he writes from an informed and engaged perspective. The book's title sums it up: utopians undermine families in vain endeavors to establish perfect societies. Many moderns, T.S. Eliot noted, insist on "dreaming of systems so perfect that no one to be good" ("The Rock," VI). We've followed social blueprints, such as the "Great Society," and forced people to invest trillions of dollars in pipe dreams which devour the truly necessary things--moral standards, personal responsibility, family ties. What's lost in utopias, Aldus Huxley's Savage, in Brave New World describes: "'I don't want comfort,' he explains. 'I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin'" (p 10). Yet utopians, always promising comfort and material well-being, cheerfully abolish religion, risks, personal accountability. That they want to abolish the family is everywhere evident. In most extermination endeavors, utopians start with words. There is, as C.S. Lewis so accurately noted in Studies in Words, such a crime as "verbicide," the murder of a word. Before killing a person you re-name him a non-person. Before stamping out the family, which resists utopian moves, you need to re-define "family." As Lewis knew: "Men often commit verbicide because they want to snatch a word as a party banner, to appropriate its 'selling quality'" (p. 7). Thus we have organizations such as the American Home Economics Association declaring families have nothing to do with "'blood, legal ties, adoption, or marriage'" but may be defined as "'two or more persons who share resources, share responsibility for decisions, share values and goals, and have commitment to one another over time'" (p. 36). Such elastic definitions have been picked up and stretched by the media and politicians. For instance, Mario Cuomo once espoused the conviction that the government must "be the family of America'" (p. 40). When the word "family" may apply to anything from baseball teams to lesbian lovers to an entire country, there's been verbicide! Persons most radically committed to redefining the family have often disavowed the traditional family. Without obligations to spouse and children, they covet some of the legal and social welfare advantages "family" affords. So, while married women typically give their time to such things as the PTA and church, unmarried women agitate the political system to attain their ends in legislative chambers and courts of law. On the political spectrum, married couples with children tend to be conservative; childless married folks are more liberal; single

Utopia Against the Family

Disputes over the family now rage with strange intensity. Some Americans recognize the family as divinely ordained, a blessed refuge of love and security in a world darkened by the effects of the Fall. But others regard the traditional family as an anachronism, an obstacle to the fufillment of political ambitions. Utopia Against the Family clarifies the cultural and spiritual significance of current debates over family questions. Bryce Christensen identifies the underlying causes of our national retreat from family life, while exposing the mendacity of much "pro-family" rhetoric. Those who care about family life will find this a sobering and provacative analysis. Drawing upon utopian literature from Plato to B. F. Skinner, the analysis examines why the modern state expands at the expense of the family. Utopian politics has weakened the family by fostering an individualistic optimism, even a false sense of immortality. Yet because of the favorable connotations of family vocabulary, contemporary utopians have tried to redefine its key terms for political purposes. The hidden cause of "the birth dearth" and the unacknowledged meaning of the misnamed "gender gap" are also brought to light, as well as the current controversy concerning the "daycare" industry and the suppression of the latest studies highly critical of this modern day institution. --- from book's back cover