Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:17:30.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Martha Minow  and
Mary Lyndon Shanley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses three main orientations in recent works of legal and political theory about the family—contract-based, community-based, and rights-based—and argues that none of these takes adequate account of two paradoxical features of family life and of the family's relationship to the state. A coherent political and legal theory of the family in the contemporary United States requires recognition of the relational rights and responsibilities intrinsic to family life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Family and Feminist Theory , Winter 1996 , pp. 4 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baier, Annette. 1985. Caring about caring. In Postures of the mind: Essays on mind and morals. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bartlett, Katharine. 1984. Rethinking parenthood as an exclusive status: The need for legal alternatives when the premise of the nuclear family has failed. Virginia Law Review 70(5): 879–963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1981. A treatise on the family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla, and Cornell, Drucilla. 1987. Introduction: Beyond the politics of gender. In Feminism as critique, ed. Benhabib, Seyla and Cornell, Drucilla. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Burnham, Margaret. 1987. An impossible marriage: Slave law and family law. Journal of Law and Inequality 5(2): 187–225.Google Scholar
Burtt, Shelley. 1994. Reproductive responsibilities: Rethinking the fetal rights debate. Policy Science 27(2–3): 179–96.10.1007/BF00999887CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caplan, Lincoln. 1990. An open adoption. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.Google Scholar
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Joshua. 1992. Okin on justice, gender, and the family. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22(2): 263–86.10.1080/00455091.1992.10717280CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1991. Accepting limits. Commonweal 18(20) (22 November): 685–86.Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. [1982] 1995. Feminism, family, and community. In Feminism and Community, ed. Weiss, Penny and Friedman, Marilyn. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethkeet al. 1993. A communitarian position on the family. National Civic Review (Winter): 25–35.10.1002/ncr.4100820106CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eskridge, William. 1993. A history of same‐sex marriage. Virginia Law Review 79(7): 1419–1513.10.2307/1073379CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Etzioni, Amitai. 1993. The spirit of community: Rights, responsibilities, and the communitarian agenda. New York: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha Albertson. 1991. The illusion of equality: The rhetoric and reality of divorce reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha Albertson. Review of Justice, gender, and the family. Ethics 102(3): 647–49.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha Albertson. 1995. The neutered mother, the sexual family, and other twentieth‐century tragedies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Friedman, Marilyn. 1993. Feminism and modern friendship: Dislocating the community. In Friendship: A philosophical reader, ed. Badhwar, Neera Kapur. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Galston, William. 1991. Liberal purposes: Goods, virtues, and diversity in the liberal state, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1987. Abortion and divorce in Western law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights talk: The impoverishment of politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grossberg, Michael. 1985. Governing the hearth: Law and family in nineteenth‐century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hartog, Hendrick. 1991. Marital exists and marital expectations in 19th century America. Georgetown Law Journal 80(October): 95–129.Google Scholar
Hearst, Alice. 1995. Domesticating reason: Families and good citizens. Paper presented at Law and Society Association Conference, Toronto Ontario, 3 June.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1987. The non‐contractual family: A feminist view. Canadian Journal of Phibsophy. Supplementary13.Google Scholar
Holmes, Stephen. 1993. The anatomy of anti‐liberalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Horsburgh, Beverly. 1992. Redefining the family: Recognizing the altruistic caregiver and the importance of relational needs. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25(2): 423–564.Google Scholar
Hunter, Nan. 1991. Marriage, law, and gender: A feminist inquiry. Law and Inequality (1):9‐ff.Google Scholar
Karst, Kenneth L. 1980. The freedom of intimate association. Yale Law Journal 89(4): 624–92.10.2307/795978CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiss, Elizabeth, forthcoming. Alchemy or fool's gold? Assessing feminist doubts about rights. Contentious concepts: feminist perspectives on political theory, ed. Shanley, Mary Lyndon and Narayan, Uma. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1993. Taking dependency seriously: Equality, social cooperation, and The Family and Medical Leave Act considered in light of the social organization of dependency work. Paper delivered at Conference on Feminism and Social Action, University of Pittsburgh, November.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1995. Taking dependency seriously: The Family and Medical Leave Act considered in the light of the social organization of work and gender equality. Hypatia 10(1): 8–30.10.1111/j.1527-2001.1995.tb01351.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1991. Rethinking the family. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20(1): 77–98.Google Scholar
Law, Sylvia. 1988. Homosexuality and the social meaning of gender. Wisconsin Law Review 2: 187–235.Google Scholar
Littleton, Christine. 1987. Equality across difference: A place for rights discourse? Wisconsin Women's Law Journal 3: 189–212.Google Scholar
Locke, John. [1690] 1980. Second treatise of government. ed. Macpherson, C. B.Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Maltz, Earl M. 1992. Constitutional protection for the right to marry: A dissenting view. George Washington Law Review 60(4): 949–68.Google Scholar
May, Elaine Tyler. 1980. Great expectations: Marriage and divorce in post‐Victorian America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. [1869] 1988. The subjection of women. ed. Okin, Susan Moller. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha. 1985. “Forming under everything that grows”: Toward a history of family law. Wisconsin Law Review 4: 819–98.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha. 1988. We, the family: Constitutional rights and American families. In The Constitution and American life, ed. Thelen, David. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha. 1990. Making all the difference: Inclusion, exclusion, and American law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, gender, and the family. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1996. Sexual orientation, gender, and families Dichotomizing differences. 11(1): 30–48.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1983. The shame of the marriage contract. In Women and men's wars, ed. Stiehm, Judith. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The sexual contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole, and Brennan, Teresa. 1979. “Mere auxiliaries to the commonwealth”: Women and the origins of liberalism. Political Studies 27(2): 183–200.Google Scholar
Polikoff, Nancy. 1990. This child does have two mothers: Redefining parenthood to meet the needs of children in lesbian‐mother and other non‐traditional families. Georgetown Law Review 78(3): 459–575.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard. 1992. Sex and reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Radin, Margaret J. 1987. Market inalienability. Harvard Law Review 100(8): 1849–1937.10.2307/1341192CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radin, Margaret J. 1995. What, if anything, is wrong with baby‐selling? Pacific Law Journal 135–45.Google ScholarPubMed
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Regan, Milton C. 1993. Family law and the pursuit of intimacy. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rhode, Deborah. 1989. Justice and gender: Sex discrimination and the law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of woman bom: Motherhood as experience and as institution. New York: Norton, Bantam.Google Scholar
Robertson, John. 1983. Procreative liberty and the control of contraception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Virginia Law Review 69(3): 405–62.10.2307/1072766CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robertson, John. 1989. Embryos, families, and procreative liberty. Southern California Law Review 59(5): 939–1041.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal thinking. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1982. Liberalism and the limits of justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1989. Moral argument and liberal toleration: Abortion and homosexuality. California! Law Review 77(3): 521–38.Google Scholar
Schneider, Elizabeth M. 1986. The dialectic of rights and politics: Perspectives from the women's movement. New York University Law Review 61: 589‐ff.Google Scholar
Schneider, Elizabeth M. 1992. Particularity and generality: Challenges of feminist theory and practice in work on woman‐abuse. Brooklyn Law Review 67(3): 520–68.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip. 1994. Foundations of communitarian liberalism. The responsive community 4(4) (Fall): 16–28.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard. 1977. The fall of public man. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Shalev, Carmel. 1989. Birth power. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1995. Fathers’ rights, mothers’ wrongs? Reflections on unwed fathers’ rights and sex equality. Hyparia 10(1): 74–103.Google Scholar
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1993. “Surrogate mothering” and women's freedom: A critique of contracts for human reproduction. Signs 18(3): 618–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1989. Feminism, marriage, and the law in Victorian England, 1850–1895. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shultz, Marjorie Maguire. 1982. Contractual ordering of marriage: A new model for state policy. California Law Review 70(2): 204–334.10.2307/3480177CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shultz, Marjorie Maguire. 1990. Reproductive technology and intention‐based parenthood: An opportunity for gender neutrality. Wisconsin Law Review 2:297–398.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1954. Democracy in America. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of justice: A defense of pluaralism and equality. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Weisbrod, Carol. 1980. The boundaries of utopia. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Weisbrod, Carol. 1994. The way we live now: A discussion of contracts and domestic relations. Utah Law Review 2: 777–815.Google Scholar
Weiss, Penny A. 1995. Feminism and contractarianism: Comparing critiques of liberalism. In Feminism and community, ed. Weiss, Penny A. and Friedman, Marilyn. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Weitzman, Lenore. 1974. Marriage contracts. California Law Review 62(4): 1169–1258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitzman, Lenore. 1981. The marriage contract: Spouses, lovers, and the law. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weitzman, Lenore. 1985. The divorce revolution: Unexpected social and economic consequences for women and children in America. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weston, Kath. 1991. Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia. 1991. The alchemy of race and rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Yellin, Jean F. 1989. Women and sisters: The antislavery feminists in American culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris. 1995. Mothers, citizenship, and independence: A critique of pure family values. Ethics 105(3): 535–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris. 1990. Pregnant embodiment: Subjectivity and alienation. In “Throwing like a girl” and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Zainaldin, Jamil S. 1979. The emergence of a modern American family law: Child custody, adoption, and the courts, 1796–1851. Northwestern University Law Review 73(6): 1038–89.Google Scholar