FAMILIES, THE STATE, AND CARETAKER- DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIPS
By
Maxine Eichner
Liberal theorists who have conceptualized the role of the state have, from Rawls
to the present, largely ignored families. With only a few exceptions, liberal theory’s
focus on individual justice, construed in terms of some mix of autonomy and equality,
has caused it to overlook the goods and functions that families serve.
citizens as autonomous, able adults has elided the dependency that is inevitably a part of
the human condition. Furthermore, its belief that families have some “natural” way of
functioning has resulted in their being conceptualized apart from their political, legal, and
cultural context.
By moving away from the assumptions of the Rawlsian model of liberalism, we
can develop a more accurate picture of the functions that families serve in contemporary
society. On this basis, we can construct a better normative picture of what the state's role
should be with respect to families. Most importantly, our assumptions should reflect the
fact that a liberal polity must pursue a broader range of goods than simply the individual
justice, autonomy, and equality, to which liberal theory has largely attended; that humans
do not spring up like mushrooms, but instead are needy and dependent to varying degrees
over the course of their lives; and that the way that families function is intimately related
to the wider context in which they function. If we incorporate these assumptions into
liberal theory, how does this change the picture of what the state’s role should be with
respect to families?
In this paper, I begin the discussion of this issue by considering the role that the
state should play with respect to the type of dependency that Martha Fineman calls
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Convention