Libertarian family values: progressives and conservatives both get families wrong.

• Author: Skoble, Aeon J.
• Position: Steven Horwitz's "Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions" - Book review

Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions, by Steven Horwitz, Palgrave Macmillan, 313 pages, $120

FOR THE ECONOMIST Friedrich Hayek, there are two sorts of institutions: designed ones, which have a blueprint in place from the moment of creation, and organic ones, which do not. Change in the first sort of institution (sometimes described as "top-down") is typically managed by a designer and happens in big chunks; change in organic ("bottom-up") institutions tends to be unplanned and gradual. The National Football League is top-down: If the rules committee decides it would be a good idea to allow a 2-point conversion after a touchdown, the game changes accordingly. The English language is bottom-up: No planner decreed that "verily" would disappear and "I can't even" would emerge.

The family is the second sort of institution. It arose organically and has evolved over time, but not according to any central plan.

In Hayek's Modern Family, Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University tries to understand the family's evolving structures in terms of the functions the institution serves. While Horwitz's primary training is as an economist, his work draws also from history, social philosophy, and constitutional law. His conclusions may confound both progressives and conservatives.

Conservatives, he writes, typically "believe that the family is an institution under attack by the culture and by public policy." As a result, they position themselves as defenders of the "traditional family" and lionize "family values." Yet the institution these conservatives see themselves as defending--"a married, heterosexual family with children where dad is the primary earner and mom the primary caretaker of the household"--isn't as traditional as they suggest. That model, Horwitz shows, was historically contingent, predominant for only about 20 years after World War II, and culturally non universal. Marriage itself, far from having been "always" the union of one man and one woman, has changed in a variety of ways. As the joke goes, my daughter said she wanted to be treated like a princess, so I made her marry someone she doesn't love in order to strengthen our alliance with Prussia.

The joke works because we're so used to thinking of marriage in terms of romantic love between moral equals that we lose sight of the fact that many other "traditional" arrangements have been dominant at different times and places. So too with...