President Obama instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman–an unexpected move widely applauded by gay and lesbian couples. Yet to most Americans, a normal family remains the standard nuclear model: one woman and one man in a legally recognized, monogamous marriage, and their mutual children.
Is our widely embraced vision of a “normal family” truly superior to all others? Does anyone, let alone politicians, have the right to define what’s normal when it comes to intimacy and family life? Is it fair to discriminate against families who don’t conform to the sanctioned marriage model or, even worse, to stigmatize their children? Does the revered institution of marriage truly deserve to be defended and preserved?
In her new book, UNHITCHED: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China (NYU Press; May 2011), noted family expert and New York University professor Judith Stacey shatters the one-size-fits-all ideal of family embedded in popular culture and at the heart of ongoing political debates.
“This book,” as Stacey states upfront, “challenges popular convictions about family, gender, and sexuality held on the left, right, and center, by feminists and fundamentalists, and especially by marriage movement advocates and opponents, gay and straight.” Urging readers to leave their cultural baggage behind, she offers an engaging and provocative exploration of some unusual, flourishing species of family life. Based on ten years of original research and field work spanning a terrain from Los Angeles to South Africa to the remote Lugu Lake region of Southwestern China, Stacey introduces families who not only defy the sanctioned image of a proper, happy family, but also dispel any cause to despair over its decline.
An Interview with Judith Stacey,
author of UNHITCHED
1. Is the traditional nuclear family consisting of one man and one woman in a monogamous marriage and their children superior to other types of families?
No single type of family is inherently superior to all others. The quality of family relationships and resources is much more important for the well-being of adults and children than the formal structure. Many different family patterns in the world and in our own society work well for their members and successfully rear children. To be sure, different types of family structure tend to have different types of advantages and disadvantages. For example, when co-parents get along well, it’s generally advantageous for parents and children to share parenting than to do it alone, but parenting can be shared in many different ways than by one man and one woman in a monogamous marriage. [could mention examples here-plural marriage, poly-parenting, Mosuo, etc.]
2. Is marriage a natural and universal institution?
Quite simply, no. Many social scientists have claimed that marriage is institutionalized in all human societies, but they have had to stretch our contemporary definition of marriage unrecognizably to support such a claim. However, the Mosuo culture of southwestern China that I write about in one chapter practices a form of night visiting between couples (casual or longterm) who live in their separate maternal families. Couples do not marry or live together, biological paternity is unimportant, and couples do not raise biological children together. We can’t imitate their family system directly, but we can learn a great deal from the way they manage desire and domesticity.
3. You believe that polygamy should be decriminalized. What benefits can there be for women and children in this type of arrangement?
First of all, it’s important to realize that polygamy is an umbrella term that means more than one spouse. It includes both polygyny and polyandry. Because polygyny (one husband with multiple wives) is much more common than polyandry, most people think that polygamy refers to a man with multiple wives and their children. In the U.S., the image of polygamy is often one of outlaw fundamentalist Mormons as in the YFZ ranch, and that’s certainly not a model of family life that offers many benefits to women and children in modern societies. However, the illegality of plural marriage is a major source of the abuses of the FLDS marriages and communities. Nonetheless, even in our society there are some women (like the women in the family featured on Sister Wives and like some Black Muslim women) who find benefits for themselves and their children in plural marriages. Some women do not want to live exclusively with a man and their children. They like sharing family life, child-rearing, housework and resources with other women. They appreciate the flexibility and support for independent careers and the cushion during hard economic times. Some women consider plural marriage a form of protection against male philandering, and some actually find their husband’s sexual desires more than they wish to satisfy. For some African-American women who confront a paucity of eligible, employed potential mates, sharing a good husband seems far the lesser evil. Finally, I think it’s important to challenge the hypocrisy of laws and social values that allow men to sire “love children” with multiple women, (think of John Edwards) but criminalize men who wish to openly accept marital and paternal recognition and responsibility for their multiple relationships and offspring.
4. How does gay parenting challenge the traditional gender roles in our society?
When we think of traditional gender roles in parenting today, we usually mean a man who is a primary breadwinner and a woman who’s primarily a mother and homemaker. Stereotypically, the mother does most of the childcare and is expected to be more nurturant and empathic, while the dad is expected to be more of a disciplinarian and involved in rough and tumble play. Of course, many married heterosexual couples diverge from these stereotypes, but the norms often affect they way they are judged as parents. When same-sex couples choose to co-parent, however, clearly they cannot fall back on traditional gender norms. They divide the labor and parenting roles according to their individual abilities, preferences, and constraints. They demonstrate to others that men can be as good (or as bad) at “mothering” as women and that women can “father” as well (or as badly) as men.
