The Decline of the Family

In a relatively untooled society, humans themselves are the principal tools. Work is labour-intensive. In such societies, it is necessary that a supply of labour, as well as that of useful mechanical tools, be maintained. The principal task of the family was to supply this labour, in the form of children. In highly tooled societies, human labour plays a relatively small role, and the requirement for new hands to replace old ones falls. Fewer children are needed, thus families serve a less important role.

Western society's system of pairing in monogamous marriage appears to be a social arrangement that restricts reproduction rates. Marriages historically only took place with social consent, and there was an age restriction on marriage, and a financial restriction if the marriage involved the payment of a dowry. The prohibition of divorce and adultery meant that where, one or other of the marital partners were infertile, no children would come of the union. Children, for parents, meant new hands to help, and security in old age.

In modern Western society, while marriage remains the social norm, it is much eroded. Marriages take place without social consent, and without financial transactions. Divorce and adultery are common. Serial pre-marital sex makes for something approaching a general promiscuity.

This shift in sexual codes would appear to be a recipe for high rates of reproduction, and a rapidly rising population. However, sex education, contraception, and freely available abortion, act to largely negate the reproductive consequences. While modern Western society does not practise infanticide, contraception and abortion are effectively the same. At the same time, homosexuality and other non-reproductive sexual practices are increasingly tolerated.

In the labour-intensive past, children would be set to work performing chores which are now increasingly performed by machines. These days you don't ask children to mix food or wash dishes: you buy a blender or a dishwasher. In modern Western society, children are more of a burden than an asset. They are of little assistance to their parents. To a some extent, they have even ceased to care for their parents in old age, leaving this to old people's homes.

In this analysis, it is precisely labour-saving technology which has undermined the traditional family. Cars, ovens, fast food, gas and electric heating, vacuum cleaners, food blenders, dishwashers, washing machines and spin driers, have all removed chores which would have once been passed to children. And children cannot help parents in any work which requires high levels of skill, which means most work. Instead, children spend increasing amounts of time in state education, being provided with the skills required by modern industry. If parents have children, it is because they want them for their own sake, rather than because children are useful assets.

There are many consequences of this large-scale moral shift, which are not discussed here.