The Audacity of Hope

gender differences have been erased, sex is purely recreational, marriage is disposable,
motherhood is an inconvenience, and civilization itself rests on shifting sands.
I understand the impulse to restore a sense of order to a culture that’s constantly in flux.
And I certainly appreciate the desire of parents to shield their children from values they
consider unwholesome; it’s a feeling I often share when I listen to the lyrics of songs on
the radio.
But all in all, I have little sympathy for those who would enlist the government in the
task of enforcing sexual morality. Like most Americans, I consider decisions about sex,
marriage, divorce, and childbearing to be highly personal—at the very core of our
system of individual liberty. Where such personal decisions raise the prospect of
significant harm to others—as is true with child abuse, incest, bigamy, domestic
violence, or failure to pay child support—society has a right and duty to step in. (Those
who believe in the personhood of the fetus would put abortion in this category.) Beyond
that, I have no interest in seeing the president, Congress, or a government bureaucracy
regulating what goes on in America’s bedrooms.
Moreover, I don’t believe we strengthen the family by bullying or coercing people into
the relationships we think are best for them—or by punishing those who fail to meet our
standards of sexual propriety. I want to encourage young people to show more
reverence toward sex and intimacy, and I applaud parents, congregations, and
community programs that transmit that message. But I’m not willing to consign a
teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of lack of access to birth control. I want
couples to understand the value of commitment and the sacrifices marriage entails. But
I’m not willing to use the force of law to keep couples together regardless of their
personal circumstances.
Perhaps I just find the ways of the human heart too various, and my own life too
imperfect, to believe myself qualified to serve as anyone’s moral arbiter. I do know that
in our fourteen years of marriage, Michelle and I have never had an argument as a result
of what other people are doing in their personal lives.
What we have argued about—repeatedly—is how to balance work and family in a way
that’s equitable to Michelle and good for our children. We’re not alone in this. In the
sixties and early seventies, the household Michelle grew up in was the norm—more
than 70 percent of families had Mom at home and relied on Dad as the sole
breadwinner.
Today those numbers are reversed. Seventy percent of families with children are headed
by two working parents or a single working parent. The result has been what my policy
director and work-family expert Karen Kornbluh calls “the juggler family,” in which
parents struggle to pay the bills, look after their children, maintain a household, and
maintain their relationship. Keeping all these balls in the air takes its toll on family life.
As Karen explained when she was director of the Work and Family Program at the New
America Foundation and testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Children and
Families: