The debate appears in articles and polemics in the pages of magazines as diverse as the right-wing Commentary and Conservative Chronicle; The Nation, a liberal weekly, and Time, a national newsweekly; as well as several recently published books. It is also reflected in moves in a number of states to change laws governing marriage and divorce.

"What Divorce Does to Kids" was the cover story of the Sept. 25, 2000, issue of Time. The articles featured a debate on several new books, particularly The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein. For three decades Wallerstein, a therapist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, until her retirement, has mounted an anti-divorce campaign by interviewing children of divorced parents and writing what Time calls "seldom happy" and "tragic" stories about their lives. In this book, her third, Wallerstein advocates married couples with children remaining married at all costs, something she says will be beneficial to the children.

The Nation ran a review last December of Wallerstein's new book by Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University. While arguing with Wallerstein's method and some of her conclusions, Cherlin states, "The facts are not in dispute.... Without doubt, going through a divorce is a traumatic experience for parents and children alike."

Another recently published work that weighs in against divorce is The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. The book is co-authored by Maggie Gallagher, a nationally syndicated columnist. In 1996 Gallagher published The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love.

Gallagher's column in the January 10 Conservative Chronicle is a diatribe against new "reality TV" programs, which portray the lives of families with divorced or unmarried parents. The new shows are "divorce propaganda," Gallager writes, "dedicated to the proposition that nothing stands between a human being and her happiness except that dull, depressing thing called a spouse."

The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle, who describes herself as "a feminist and former shrew," was reviewed in Time in January, and is on Amazon.com's nonfiction bestseller list. Doyle says, "My mission is to teach women about the power of surrender. It's my own world peace crusade." Doyle recommends that married women always express agreement with their husbands, hand over the finances to them, and request an allowance.

Commentary magazine has joined in the culture war fray on the subject of divorce. Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve--a book that advanced the reactionary notion that wealthy people are rich because they're intelligent and the poor are poor because they are not--reviewed Francis Fukuyama's book The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. The Great Disruption is "the sudden downward slide on a wide variety of social indicators that began in the mid-1960s and in some ways is still with us," writes Murray. These problems include "the soaring divorce rate" and "illegitimacy ratios." Fukuyama coined the term "The end of history" in 1989 following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, published a 40-page report in its on-line journal Backgrounder entitled, "The Effects of Divorce on America." Authors Patrick Fagan and Robert Rector write, "American society may have erased the stigma that once accompanied divorce, but it can no longer ignore its massive effects." The two charge that "divorce is hurting American society and devastating the lives of children," affecting "family life, educational attainment, job stability, income potential, physical and emotional health, drug use, and crime." They claim there is "mounting evidence" that "children whose parents have divorced are increasingly the victims of abuse and neglect" and "have higher rates of suicide." Fagan and Rector propose several steps to reimpose the stigma of divorce, such as the creation of a "campaign to inform Americans of the health and other risks associated with divorce and the long-term benefits of marriage."  
 
Change in family structure
Behind this debate is the response of the capitalist rulers and the social layers that look to them to the consequences of historic changes in the family structure over the last half century. The number of children born to women who are not married is now at 31 percent in the United States and the percentage of households headed by married couples dropped from 80 percent in 1900 to a little more than 50 percent today. There has been a sharp jump in the rate of divorce since 1960.

Between 1950 and 1998, the percentage of working-age women who hold jobs outside the home nearly doubled, rising from 33.9 percent to 59.8 percent. The number of women incorporated into industrial production increased dramatically in the second half of the 20th century with a notable increase in the number of women who began to fight their way into jobs from which they had traditionally been excluded. And today, 11.5 percent of women are union members.

The proportion of women in the workforce, which began rising in the 1940s, slowed in the 1980s and remained static in the 1990s, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. But in 1994, it appears to have begun to rise again. Women who have children living with them accounted for most of the recent rise, with the proportion of working women who have children under one year of age rising from 49.5 percent in 1990 to over 55 percent in 1996.

The bipartisan attack on the social wage of the past eight years has made it harder for many women to support themselves and their children. The "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," signed into law by former president William Clinton with support of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, eliminated federally guaranteed Aid for Families with Dependent Children and cut off food stamps and Medicaid for many working people. With an economic downturn underway, women covered by this aspect of Social Security have no social safety net available.

Taking note of these trends, a report from the "Kentucky State Plan" says, "The families of our nation and state are changing" and "becoming somewhat amorphous." The authors, Michal Smith-Mello and Peter Schirmer, write that women working leads to a "diminishing economic incentive to marry. A growing number of them are choosing to have children on their own or not at all. As domestic roles shift to accommodate increasing demands on women," there are more conflicts between spouses over "who will shop for the ingredients, bake it, clean the kitchen in the aftermath and care for the children while the work is being done." The report says these changes have brought about "difficult economic circumstances" that are "taking a toll on families, particularly those headed by single parents and young couples. Purchasing power has declined, and costly plans for the future or the unforeseen, including health care and retirement, are often put on a back burner."

The ideological offensive against divorce aims to reinforce the family as a crucial economic institution under capitalism. For example, a rightist group, Dads Against the Divorce Industry, describes itself as "an organization devoted to reinstating the societal role and valuation of Marriage and the nuclear American Family, with particular emphasis on Fatherhood." The lead article on the organization's web site is called, "The Evolved Matriarchal American Family and Fatherhood."

William Buckley Jr.'s recent article in the right-wing National Review magazine, entitled "Unmarried Women Behind the Crisis," puts in sharp relief the ruling class' anxiety about the changes in the family structure. In explaining why 63 percent of "unmarried women" voted for Gore, Buckley concludes that these women, "find themselves, in the absence of a husband, relying on--somebody else to help with the usual social anxieties," such as health care, Social Security, and education.

"The impression given by modern Democrats," Buckley says, "is that it is they who hold out a hand to aid the disadvantaged at every level. Somebody there at the hospital at the time of birth, somebody at the schoolhouse to teach the kids, somebody to give them drugs as required, somebody to look after her in her old age. What's his name? Not Daddy. It's Uncle Sam."

The ruling class attack on divorce in the 1990s included proposals to make divorce more difficult. Most states have had divorce laws since the 1960s, known as "no-fault" laws, that permit divorce on grounds such as "irretrievable breakdown of marriage relationship," "irreconcilable differences," or after a period of separation. These laws removed the requirement that one spouse prove misconduct on the part of the other.

In two states, Arizona and Louisiana, there are now statutes that provide an option for "covenant marriages" for those who choose it. To obtain a divorce under Louisiana covenant marriage law, a spouse must prove actions such as adultery or physical or sexual abuse or live apart for a year and a half if there are children, or one year if there are none.

If the economy continues to slow down, the changing structure of the family and the antiwoman ideological campaign to place growing economic and social responsibilities onto families of working people will be a point of class conflict. The strong presence of women in the workforce and the large number of women who support a family lays the basis on the one hand for a deepening fight by the labor movement to defend the social wage, and on the other for an intensification of the bipartisan attack of the last decade.  
 
 
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