In recent times, the traditional family (i.e. the nuclear family) has been under attack by self-proclaimed liberals. It’s in this context we must see the Republican push to promote ‘family’ as one of the 2024 election themes.
Last year, Vivek Ramaswamy (then in the race for Republican Presidential nominee) was quoted claiming he enjoyed, “the ultimate privilege of two parents in the house with a focus on educational achievement.”
He recognizes the current policy incentives that “pays single women more not to have a man in the house than to have a man in the house, contributing to an epidemic of fatherlessness.“
He goes on to hail the nuclear family as “the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”
Hillbilly Elegy
‘Vivek’ also happens to be the name of JD Vance’s (the current US Republican vice-presidential nominee) son.
In this thought-provoking TED Talk, Vance talks about how his childhood was plagued by heroin use, failing schools, families torn apart by divorce and violence. He talks about the decline of the working class and the loss of the American dream.
I followed up this TED Talk with ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, a 2020 film based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by Vance. The film portrays the unresolved childhood trauma that comes from an early life with a mother struggling with drug addiction.
Despite the mom’s unstable behavior, she is humanized (and not villainized). “It didn’t begin with her”, says Vance’s sister defending their mom. Vance’s grandmother once set his grandfather on fire. Why? Because he didn’t heed to her repeated warnings to not come home drunk. In a moving finale, Vance decides to break the generational curse despite strenuous circumstances trying to pull him back.
Back to the TED Talk, Vance says, “There’s a kid whose mom sticks a needle in her arm and passes out, and he doesn’t know why she doesn’t cook him dinner, and he goes to bed hungry that night. There’s a kid who has no hope for the future but desperately wants to live a better life. They just want somebody to show it to them.”
Luxury Beliefs
The elites’ position on both drugs and marriages seems to veer towards choice absolutism: that no friction must ever stand between people and their choice. The elites opine that the freedom to choose must be unrestrained by social, religious and legal mores.
Yet, it’s fairly common to see them being as conservative as it goes in their private life.
In his memoir, “Troubled”, Rob Henderson speaks of this very phenomenon.
Here’s how Rob Henderson defines Luxury Beliefs:
“Luxury beliefs are defined as ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. There is this kind of element of duplicity, whether conscious or not…”
As a case in point, Henderson shares an anecdote about a former Yale classmate.
This person felt marriage was a patriarchal, outmoded institution. Interestingly, she was raised by a two-parent, stable family. Not just that, she plans to get married too and have a conventional family life.
Yet, her stated public position on marriage is: people shouldn’t have to do this.
This isn’t about judging people struggling with the cards life has dealt them. Rather, it’s the hypocrisy of advocating something you avoid in your personal life.
It’s this hypocrisy that Henderson rebukes: “Worse is when highly educated and affluent people publicly promote these behaviors when they themselves do not do them. It’s one thing to make decisions you don’t feel great about and then try to get others to make them too. It’s worse when you don’t make such decisions but promote them anyway.”
Closing Notes
Marriage as an institution has stood the test of time. It has adapted over the ages. It will continue to adapt in the future. But attacking the edifice of this very institution, without provisioning for an alternative, can lead to unintended consequences.
To belabor Ramaswamy’s point, it has led to the fatherless epidemic.
Therefore, instead of going for radical policy changes, we need policy nudges that bring in the changes slowly, steadily and permanently.
In the words of Edmund Burke:
“It is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.”
As the mamaw reprimands the teen Vance (in ‘Hillbilly Elegy’): “Cause family is the only thing that means a goddamn. You’ll learn that.”
Musings by Madhav 
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