Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.

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Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.

RED FAMILIES V. BLUE FAMILIES: LEGAL POLARIZATION AND THE CREATION OF CULTURE. By Naomi Cahn & June Carbone. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. Pp. 288. $29.95.

INTRODUCTION

It takes only a glance at the headlines every political season--with battles over issues ranging from abortion and abstinence-only education to same-sex marriage and single parenthood--to see that the culture wars have become a fixed feature of the American political landscape. The real puzzle is why these divides continue to resonate so powerfully. In Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture, Naomi Cahn (1) and June Carbone (2) offer an ambitious addition to our understanding of this puzzle, illustrating pointedly why it is so hard to talk across the political divide. In a telling anecdote in the conclusion of their book, Cahn and Carbone recount how, upon hearing that the rate of nonmarital births had risen to 38 percent of all births in the United States, a conservative commentator attributed this shift to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage. (3) Cahn and Carbone relate their astonishment at this, given their certainty that the increase in nonmarital births was due to the prevalence of abstinence-only education, the inaccessibility of contraception and abortion, and the poor economy (pp. 206-07). They readily admit that they had no more evidence to back their conclusion than did the conservative commentator. Instead, both sides resorted to strongly felt, though unproven, intuition. As Cahn and Carbone sum it up, "[s]uch is the nature of the culture wars" (p. 207).

As a starting point for understanding this intractable state of affairs, Cahn and Carbone paint a map of American families that tracks familiar political divisions. Cahn and Carbone contend that families in politically conservative red states embrace family values that center around the "unity of sex, marriage, and procreation" (p. 2). Families in blue states, by contrast, accept premarital sex as a given and educate their children to use contraception (and abortion, if necessary) to ensure that teens and young adults do not start families until they are emotionally and financially mature (pp. 1-2).

The great irony of this divide, Cahn and Carbone note, is that family practices do not follow family values. It is blue families that embody (at least some) red values, tending to get divorced at a lower rate and have fewer teen births (pp. 20-29). In tension with their espoused values, red families have relatively high rates of divorce and teen births (pp. 20-29).

Although their map of red families and blue families has its limits--as I elaborate in Part I, the divide may be better understood to run along class rather than electoral lines--it still provides new insights into American families. More than unearthing the ironies of ideology and practice, however, Cahn and Carbone offer intriguing insights into the deep resonance of the culture wars. Drawing upon the Cultural Co...

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