Historically, if the institution of the family is operating in anything like a healthy way (a significant “if�), when the child comes into the world there are two adults - usually not saints, just normal people - who accept the child as their own, are committed to taking care of it and in the process involving themselves in major burdens and difficulties. Doing it will not always be a joy, but most parents will resist desperately any attempt to relieve them of the burden; and these ordinary people will not only undertake this daunting task but will generally exhibit unusual energy, patience, devotion, and indeed practical wisdom, along with other qualities needed for child rearing.
Where the
surrounding culture gives them half a chance, they will not only undertake the task; they will usually succeed at it. Historically, in other words, it is not that child-raising has been reserved to those elite people who possess the required qualities to a high degree, but that the institution of marriage has given ordinary people a high degree of the required qualities. When the family is operating as it should, the child benefits from a complex, quasiorganic institutional structure. Deep sources of energy and devotion - emotional, erotic, spiritual, physical - are tapped and directed to create a firm, profound and personally enriching union of husband and wife; and from this foundation those conditions arise that favour the welfare of children, and deep sources of energy are directed outward again towards the good of the next generation. VII.
SYSTEMATIC EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
As was noted earlier, some authors think we would be better off without marriage and family. I have argued that you need the institution of marriage and family to raise children properly, and that therefore the authors who want to abolish marriage and family are wrong. What is the nature of the evidence? I have appealed to observation of what seems to be true of human beings in general, with reflections and interpretations of the observations that seem to be valid. There is another approach to evaluating the proposal to abolish marriage and family, and that is by appeal to studies in the empirical
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