The procreation and care of children play a central role in the current debates over the meaning of marriage. For supporters of the conjugal view of marriage, children are the dominant reality driving the state’s recognition of marriage. Because sex leads to babies, the state wants to channel sex into a stable relationship that bonds both a mother and a father to their children. Those two parents, the mom and the dad, are then present from birth through their child’s emergence into adulthood as a constant source of love, education, and provision. As the social science presented at Public Discourse and elsewhere has documented, a married mom and dad provide the best possible home for raising their children. And so the state recognizes, supports, and promotes marriages—for the sake of the children.
Making children the integral attribute of marriage has shaped the legal and political debate over marriage, and it has led to several obvious objections from those seeking to overthrow the conjugal vision. “Why does the state permit people who cannot conceive to get married?” “Why allow anyone over age 50 to marry?” “Why not require a fertility test before marriage?”
We’ve all heard some version of this argument before—it is a go-to set of questions from the other side. These questions demonstrate that focusing on marriage as a self-existing and solitary unit misses a vital and persuasive feature of marriage. The concept of kinship fills this gap by enlarging the meaning and purpose of marriage and family to stretch across families, years, and generations. (more...)
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