FAMILY MATTERS: TOWARD A LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FAMILY AND THE STATE.

Despite the critical role that families play in the lives of citizens and the health of the polity, little attention has been paid to the role that the state should adopt with respect them. Instead, dominant versions of liberal political theory generally focus on individuals conceived apart from their relationships with others. Insofar as they consider families at all, these theories treat them as part of citizens' private lives, an area from which the state should properly remain aloof. This conception of the family-state relationship has contributed to a family policy in the United States that fails to support families and the goods associated with them. Recent revisionist versions of liberal theory, however, have begun to set the stage for rethinking the relationship between the state and the family. In focusing attention on the strong relationship between what William Galston calls the "moral culture of liberal society" and the health of a liberal polity (1991: 6), these discussions suggest (although they don't often explicitly recognize) the importance of the family's role. And in moving the discussion from seeking an impossible-to-attain neutral position for the state toward a position that makes no pretense toward neutrality yet ensures individuals considerable autonomy, these debates open the field for new conceptions of the family-state relationship. They also move the ground of debate away from simple consideration of the value of liberty toward recognition of a wider range of goods and a richer conception of human flourishing. In this paper, I begin the project of developing a sustained theory of the family-state relationship on this new terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]