The Marriage “Solution”: Misplaced Simplicity in the Politics of Fatherhood

Abstract

Marriage and fatherhood policies, inspired by the Christian Right and backed by conservative think tanks, have gained widespread support based on moral framing of family issues and simplistic interpretation of sociological “evidence.” Hybrid political-religious organizations including the National Fatherhood Initiative, the Marriage Movement, and Promise Keepers make rhetorical claims with similar religious underpinnings, policy objectives, assertions of social scientific consensus, and conservative foundation funding. Contrary to predictions about the diminishing influence of the Christian Right on social policy, religious and free-market conservatives have successfully joined forces to promote public policies favoring married heterosexual parents over other household types by relying on specious comparisons between “traditional” and “nontraditional” families. Sociologists of all faiths have a moral obligation to ensure that their research findings are not misinterpreted in the service of a narrow religious agenda or inappropriately used to justify nostalgic exclusionary family policies.