Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What's love got to do with it?, November 10, 2003
What does the free-market have to do with the family? What does libertarianism have to do with community? What does the minimal state have to do with social order? Indeed, what does love have to do with economics? Good questions indeed.Those opposed to libertarian principles will of course answer these questions differently from those in favour. But Jennifer Roback Morse offers an interesting third proposal. She notes that attacks on the family have not just come from welfare statism on the left. It has also come from radical individualism on the right. Interestingly, while she is a political and economic libertarian, she is aware of the shortcomings of moral and social libertarianism. Thus she is far from hostile to libertarianism. She is, in fact, a free-market economist. But she is not blind to the short-comings of laissez-faire social policy. Indeed, she believes it to be unworkable. Says Dr Morse, "We cannot afford to take a completely laissez-faire attitude toward the family and the issues that surround it." So how does a libertarian defend marriage and family? Well, that is what this book is all about. She attempts to show that a genuine libertarianism must be one stripped of its "bankrupt materialism" and must be open in fact to the supernatural. That is, a secular, atheistic society does not contain within itself the ability to long sustain a free people. A free society requires three legs to stand on, as Michael Novak long ago pointed out. It needs economic liberty, political liberty, and moral-cultural liberty. The last, which includes the importance of religion, has too often been ignored in this discussion. A minimalist state is one that depends on a substantial component of its citizenry exercising self-control and self-constraint. People making sacrifices for others, foregoing instant gratification, controlling anti-social desires are what make for a free society. And these kinds of virtues are basically learned and developed in the home, and buttressed by religion. The internalised ethic of love, self-control and cooperation can nowhere better come into being than in the home, where mothers and fathers model such virtues to their children. The cooperation and restraint needed for a society to last is first and foremost found in the home. It is in the home that a naturally selfish and me-centered child learns the rules of social harmony and cooperation. All of these virtues can be subsumed under the word love. And love, as the author reminds us, is not an emotion or a feeling, but is in fact willing the highest good of another. "Love is the force that moderates self-interest and makes it possible for self-interested people to live together without causing each other too much trouble." If it is rare for an economists to talk about love, it is even more rare to hear one talk about God. As a Catholic, she knows that in God we have an infinite supply of love accessible to us. "A society of free people requires more human connections, more generosity, and more love than almost any other kind of society we can imagine. Surely the existence of an inexhaustible supply of love, available to anyone for the asking, is of more than passing importance for a society like ours." But I have so far spoken in generalities. Also found in this book are detailed chapters of the importance of marriage, family and the problems of day care, and other related topics, all backed up with thorough documentation. For example, her chapters on the importance of fathers, or the dilemma of daycare, or the shortcomings of cohabitation, offer good assessments of recent research on those questions. Taken together, here we have major social, economic and philosophical themes addressed with an eye to detail on the public policy connections. And we have a rare blend of a mother's concern for family coupled with the tough analysis of an economist. The result is an informative and an incisive look at some of the most pressing social issues of the day. A welcome volume for all concerned about families and society.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thought provoking!!, July 9, 2001
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it without reservation to anyone who has an interest in family issues, whatever their point of view. My enjoyment was no doubt enhanced by the fact that I am basically in sympathy with Roback-Morse's point of view. I share both her concerns and her basic political values as a libertarian. I thus found her articulating many of my concerns, often more eloquently than I have done, and found her analysis, for the most part, satisfying. I am sure that she and I are in the minority, but this should not detract from the book's appeal. (My praise should not be interpreted to mean complete agreement with everything that Roback-Morse says and I will indicate some areas of disagreement below.)It is articulate and avoids being shrill about very controversial matters. It is a voice of old fashioned sanity in a world of rapid, often frightening, change. It is likely to offend many in different places on the political spectrum, but it offers a point of view that is reasoned, often subtle (more than appears at first glance) and worth considering carefully. It is written as a popular text, but it has a lot to offer the scholar as well. The subtitle "Why the Laissez Faire Family Doesn't Work" is a little misleading, perhaps overly provocative. The truth is Roback-Morse is not attacking laissez faire libertarianism, though her presentation often suggests that she is. This is because of her concern with the place that the family occupies in modern socio-political discussions. There is an irony. The feminist-Left has a very radical "libertarian" approach to the family in that they emphasize the role of "freedom of choice" and individual autonomy, especially for women, in way that is quite out of tune with their interventionist approach to social issues in general. Their approach turns out to be not so different from that of radical libertarians proper who appear to have very little truck with "traditional" family values, and view them as encumbrances on individual autonomy. Roback-Morse devotes a lot of energy to convincing her libertarian friends that she has not abandoned them and that libertarians should actually absorb her thesis into their credo. Her argument is quite subtle. She argues that a free society depends, as all good libertarians know, on the acceptance and smooth functioning of private property rights, including the fulfillment of contracts and commitments, and the latter depends on individuals exercising mature mutual respect and self restraint. Free societies depend on prior and continuously affirmed moral frameworks. Secondly, and persuasively to my mind, such frameworks have no hope of being established and reinforced if the institutions of marriage and the family are in disrepair. So, those who support freedom should also support those moral institutions that bolster the family. These arguments in favor of two-parent committed families are very passionately and persuasively presented and draw on a diverse literature including the role of Hayekian tacit knowledge as part of our valuable social capital. Marriage and the family are seen to embody "natural" wisdoms that are in danger of being lost. As much as I sympathize with the general point of view, I think Roback-Morse's method of reconciling libertarianism with a commitment to "traditional" family values is the wrong method. I think the truth is much simpler. Libertarianism is surely not really in opposition to a principled approach to the family; it is completely orthogonal to it. Libertarians believe these are private matters about which libertarian theory per se has nothing to say. But, by the same token, libertarians cannot in any way object to individuals exercising their right of free speech in attempting to persuade others of the importance of certain types of institutions and behaviors for the very achievement of the type of society that they value. This book is, in the final analysis, an essay in persuasion. Roback-Morse offers no suggestion that government should impose or enforce the morality she so passionately affirms. The real enemies of libertarianism are compulsion, coercion and appropriation not moral commitment or even the right and necessity of moral judgment. Finally, I found the chapters on love and religion a little too parochial for my taste - I think the book would be better without them. Also some of Roback-Morse's claims struck me as too sweeping, unnecessarily so. For example, her characterization of the role of the husband as moral authority, necessary to back up the mother (the father being the "strong man" figure), does not ring true in many Jewish families where the role of the proverbial Jewish mother has a key and very powerful moral component that is not at all dependent on the father for credibility. One other example, Roback-Morse does a good job of documenting the costs of institutionalized child-care that is implied by parents choosing to work full time. She might have emphasized that it is indeed working parents and not just working mothers that is the issue here. Undeniably the role of women in the market has changed and the clock is not going to be turned back on this. At the same time, however, fathers can and are playing a greater role in the details of their children's lives - I speak from experience. If anyone can substitute for the mother it is the father, though both are crucial in the development of healthy children. They are both substitutes and complements. But these are quibbles, read the book, its great!
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A genuinely original book, May 8, 2001
By A Customer
Few books actually break new ground, but this book is one of them. By adopting a Romanian orphan and then having a biological child, Morse came to realize that one of the key concepts of economics, upon which the discipline is based, is defective. "Economic man," egotistical and preference-maximizing, seemed remarkably like her Romanian son, neglected in a primitive orphanage and now unable to bond normally with his loving family. This insight from real life led Morse to some remarkable thoughts about the family and its role in producing people capable of living and prospering in a free society. This is a very readable and intriguing book. It made me think a lot about individualism, families, and what makes a free society tick.
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