“This was one of the more controversial points which Tucker Carlson, the American conservative political commentator, called attention to when he delivered his monologue on the importance of the family earlier this year. If we want to have happy, functioning societies the wellbeing of the family should be a central concern of political life, Carlson said. Most of us could sign up to that.
What was difficult for some was his suggestion that where men do not earn decent wages women don’t want to marry them; and that the absence of marriage leads to the breakdown of the family — to fatherlessness and single parenthood, and many other social ills besides…
In all this discussion about the free market and government interventions, hardly any mention was made of a third and more malignant factor in the decline of marriage: feminism, the almost universally accepted ideology whose central and explicit aim has been to dismantle the supportive role of the male in the family and the family with it.
State intervention and its destructive effects have been enormously amplified by accommodation to feminist policy, which has actively sought to undermine the male breadwinner role for nigh on 70 years.
Yet it is the male breadwinner role which middle class women, often feminists themselves, benefit from, both through marriage and when they get divorced. Working class women, on the other hand do not get married, as the forces ranged against their men mean they are unable to support a family.
Second-wave feminists have always made it clear that they regard women’s traditional financial dependence on men as the root of all evil. Quotations are easily harvested from feminist literature. Here, for example is Selma James, who set up the International Wages for Housework Campaign, speaking in 1983:
“The wage relation is not only a power relation between waged worker and employer but between those workers who do and those workers who do not have wages. This is the material basis of the social antagonism between the sexes. Whether or not we are in a relationship with men, let alone a dependent relationship, women’s dependence in society generally sets the terms of the relationship between all men and all women. Whether or not money passes hands between any particular individuals, the “cash nexus” binds the sexes to each other and into society. Women, the poorer sex, are the socially weaker sex; men, more powerful financially, can exercise social power against us in every area of life.”
This financial inequality is the very essence of “patriarchy” — seen as the oppression and exploitation of women by men based on the economic “power” of the husband and father in the home.
And feminists have also been clear that they want to get rid of it. Here is Germaine Greer, in The Female Eunuch:
“Women’s Liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state; … so let’s get on with it.”
Or Kate Millet, who was also influential in her day:
“‘Why are we here today?’ ‘To make revolution.’ ‘What kind of revolution?’ she replied. ‘The Cultural Revolution.’ ‘And how do we make Cultural Revolution?’ ‘By destroying the American family!’ ‘How do we destroy the family?’ ‘By destroying the American Patriarch.’ ‘And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?’ ‘By taking away his power!’”
To the “patriarchal family,” as feminists like to call it, was attributed all manner of problems.
Male support for the family was described by a United Nations group in 1986 as the cause of violence against women, making the “economic independence of women … crucial.”
Sociologist Jessie Bernard regarded it as psychologically crippling:
“The wife of a more successful provider became for all intents and purposes a parasite, with little to do except indulge or pamper herself. The psychology of such dependence could become all but crippling.”
A highly influential British report of 1990 — ironically called The Family Way — said that (financial) inequality was the cause of marital breakdown:
“Inequality is not a recipe for wedded bliss. It is, on the contrary, one of the main causes of marital breakdown.”
Today we know that marriages are happier and stronger where the woman earns less than the man…
A central aim of feminist policy has therefore been to dismantle male support for the family. As Professor Carol Smart, CBE, explained in 1984 one way of killing off the patriarchy is to abolish marriage. Though this might sound unpopular or unrealistic, if tackled indirectly it could be done:
“It would be far more effective to undermine the social and legal need and support for the marriage contract. This could be achieved by withdrawing the privileges which are currently extended to the married heterosexual couple. Such a move would not entail any punitive sanctions but would simply extend legal recognition to different types of households and relationships, and would end such privileges as the unjustified married tax allowance. Illegitimacy would be abolished by realizing the right of all women, whether married or single, to give legitimacy to their children. Welfare benefits and tax allowances would also need to be assessed on the basis of individual need or contribution and not on the basis of the family unit.”
Another popular option was to get rid of the father. Prominent journalist Polly Toynbee suggested in 1989 that
“Women and children will suffer needlessly until the state faces up to the reality of its own inability to do anything about the revolution in national morals. What it can do is shape a society that makes a place for women and children as family units, self-sufficient and independent.”
As Anna Coote, a government policy adviser, suggested in 1991, fatherhood was beyond salvaging:
“The father is no longer essential to the economic survival of the unit. Men haven’t kept up with the changes in society; [so] they don’t know how to be parents. Nobody has taught them: where are the cultural institutions tell[ing] them that being a parent is a good thing? They don’t exist. At the same time, women don’t have many expectations of what men might provide.”
Yet another solution has been to increase the economic clout of women while eroding male earnings…
This is why feminists are so unrelenting about the gender pay gap, even when it is acknowledged that women are paid the same for the same work. It is not about equality but about women and children being able to survive independently of men.
Finally, the system of taxes and benefits can be manipulated in such a way as to render female dependency on males extremely costly, make single motherhood a viable lifestyle, and get all mothers out to work….
These changes are not a result of the culture of modernity or of some zeitgeist over which we have no control. They are the result of 70 years of an ideology which has been explicit in its aim to destroy the breadwinning role of the male, along with the family itself. The progressive ideologies which have helped to destroy marriage have been complicit in this process, as have the armies of social workers who feed off it.
Feminists have rent apart the fabric of society and we should, to borrow a feminist expression, “call them out” for it. By identifying and naming feminism, by understanding its workings we can begin to repair the deep wounds to society.”
— Belinda Brown
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The point is that feminism has used public policy to explicitly try to destroy the very kind of family many young men today want to form – a family with a male breadwinner and a wife who stays home to raise the children.
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