INTRODUCTION

This essay has one simple theme: the family does a very important job that no other institution can do. What is that job? Inside a family, helpless babies are transformed from being self-centered bundles of impulses, desires, and emotions to being adult people capable of social behavior of all kinds. Why is this job important? The family teaches the ability to trust, cooperate, and self-restrain. Neither the free market nor self-governing political institutions can survive unless the vast majority of the population possesses these skills. Why is the family uniquely situated to teach these skills and the values that go with them? People develop these qualities in their children as a side effect of loving them. What does this have to do with a free society? Contracts and free political institutions, the foundational structures of a free society, require these attributes that only families can inculcate. Without loving families, no society can long govern itself, for the family teaches the skills of individual self-governance.

There are, of course, many competing visions of what might loosely be called a free society. At the libertarian end of the spectrum are advocates of a “night-watchman state,” a government that performs only the minimal functions of providing national defense, police protection, and a legal system to enforce contracts. A more conservative vision of a free society would allow the government a greater role for inculcating and enforcing moral norms.