George Lakoff's basic thesis is brilliant: That both liberals and conservatives use
the Nation-As-Family metaphor, but that they apply different models of the ideal family. Like many people, however, I have felt that his description of the
Strict Father and
Nurturant Parent families (while insightful in many ways) misses the essence of the difference between them. James Ault's
Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, I believe, provides the missing piece of the puzzle.
As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff came up with his models by analyzing the concepts and rhetoric of each side. Ault, a sociologist by training and a liberal by inclination, studied the conservative family by living among them. These two perspectives combine to make an interesting synthesis.
The families Ault found at the pseudonymous Shawmut River Baptist Church aren't supposed to exist any more -- extended families in which multiple generations remain deeply involved in each other's lives. Ault noticed the difference between this type of family and the ones he was used to from liberal circles:
Though a life of mutual dependence within a family circle was commonplace among members of Shawmut River and other new-right activists I met, it was foreign to people I knew in academia and the New Left, as well as to other educated professionals I knew. Most of us were prepared, from the moment we left home for college, to leave family dependencies behind and learn to live as self-governing individuals. This left us free to move from one city to another for graduate education or for those specialized jobs for which our training qualified us. In the process, we learned to piece together a meaningful life with new friends and colleagues alongside old ones. Our material security did not rest on a stream of daily reciprocities within a family-based circle of people known in common but rather on the progression of professional careers, with steadily increasing salaries and ample benefits to cover whatever exigencies life would bring.
Like Lakoff, Ault makes the connection between family structure and moral outlook:
As I looked around, I realized that virtually all the unmarried men and women at Shawmut River ... still lived "at home."
By contrast, by the time my friends and colleagues and I married -- even if just out of college -- we generally had established ourselves as independent individuals removed from daily cooperation with parents and other relatives. Rather than conform to an existing moral code shared by our elders, to whom we were bound in daily cooperation, we were encouraged and needed to fashion our own moralities within an environment where diverse and unreconciled ones jostled uneasily with each other and in which perhaps the only standard we might readily share was mutual tolerance for different values. We did not choose to be moral relativists; the lives we lived, in some sense, required it.
Lakoff makes the point that "Nothing is `just' common sense. Common sense has a conceptual structure that is usually unconscious." Ault's concept of being "at home" is similar:
I came to see ... why some people felt immediately "at home" when they first attended Shawmut River, even if raised in quite different churches or in no church at all. Its villagelike atmosphere was simply an extension of the kind of sociability prevailing in their own family circles, within which ... relationships were seen and acted on as given rather than chosen.
Ault's insights can be used to supplement and complete Lakoff's family models. Here's how I make the synthesis:
The Inherited Obligation Family
Life is defined by roles and relationships that are given, not chosen. One has parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and eventually children and grandchildren of one's own. Each of those relationships defines mutual obligations. Your well-being depends on the faithfulness of others in meeting their obligations to you, and your character is judged by how you meet your obligations to them. Fulfilling your obligations is not always pleasant and may even at times be thankless, but in the long run such faithfulness leads to a sense of deep satisfaction.
In difficult times, you depend on those who are obligated to help you: First, on your extended family, and on the larger community only if necessary. Choice and freedom are fine in the economic sphere, but in family life they undermine obligation and put everyone at risk.
One major obligation of all people is to find a marriage partner and have children. This entails men taking on the roles of husband and father, and women taking on the roles of wife and mother. These roles are timeless and not up for negotiation. Although the obligations of these roles become primary, prior obligations to other family members do not go away, nor do theirs to you. Parents and children remain linked for life in a special relationship. Grandparents, if they are able, have a major role in the child-raising project. And when they become feeble, the grown child is obliged to care for them.
Lakoff does a decent job of discussing the content of the father/mother child-raising roles. But his description implicitly assumes a nuclear family, and misses the overall context of obligation.
The Negotiated Commitment Family
Adult relationships are mutually chosen, and their terms are negotiated to be mutually acceptable. Your responsibilities come from the commitments you have made, and not from congenital obligations.
Although traditional forms of relationship have stood the test of time and contain much folk wisdom, each generation has to have the freedom to define the relationships it needs. Except for extreme cases of abuse, people should be free to form whatever mutually agreeable relationships work for them. Or not to form them.
You depend on a social safety net to catch you if you are unable to support yourself: Social Security when you are old, disability and unemployment insurance if you are unable to work. The lack of secure health insurance is a major worry to you. While you may maintain relationships with your parents and other family members, you are not obligated to do so if they are unpleasant and do not treat you well. If they are unable to support themselves, they rely on the social safety net just like you do.
Because children are incapable of consent, the decision to have children is a special kind of commitment. Only those who feel that they have the psychological and material resources to fulfill that commitment should take it on. As long as children's basic needs are being met, the members of a household are free to distribute child-raising responsibilities in whatever way seems best to them.
Again, Lakoff's Nurturant Parent model does a decent job of capturing how most Negotiated Commitment families view their child-raising commitment. But by focusing on the nuclear family, he misses the singles and childless couples who also participate in the Negotiated Commitment model.
What We Gain
Several liberal/conservative issues become much clearer in this analysis than they are in Lakoff.
Abortion. In the Inherited Obligation model, having children is an obligation, not a choice. Of course a pregnant woman may find it inconvenient to have a child at this point in her life. But that's no reason to let her opt out -- obligations are always inconvenient. But in the Negotiated Commitment model, a pregnant woman has not yet committed herself to motherhood, particularly if the pregnancy is due to rape or a birth-control failure. The decision not to have an abortion is a necessary moment of commitment if we are going to hold the woman responsible for the well-being of the child.
Same-sex marriage. The husband/wife and father/mother roles in the Inherited Obligation model are timeless, unchangeable, and necessary. Someone has to be the husband/father and someone has to be the wife/mother. Same-sex couples just can't cover both roles, no matter how well-intentioned they might be. In the Negotiated Commitment model, conversely, the problem just doesn't exist. A child has needs, and the parents have to negotiate a plan to meet those needs. Whether the parents are a mixed-sex couple or a same-sex couple -- or even a single parent with a lot of committed friends -- just doesn't figure. If the government recognizes same-sex marriages and same-sex couples as parents, then it is tacitly siding with the Negotiated Commitment model of marriage and parenthood, and undermining the Inherited Obligation model. This is why conservatives believe that marriage needs to be "defended" from same-sex relationships. But from the Negotiated Commitment point of view, "defense of marriage" is nonsense. How a same-sex couple negotiates its relationship has no effect on the negotiated relationships of mixed-sex couples.
Social programs. The social safety net is an absolute necessity for the Negotiated Commitment model. Negotiated relationships, by their nature, are based on some notion of fair exchange. Someone who is too needy is not in a position to form such a relationship. Who would choose, for example, to marry and take care of an indigent person in an irreversible coma? The Inherited Obligation model, on the other hand, is ambivalent about the social safety net. On the one hand, it is good that people don't just die when they have no one to take care of them. But on the other hand, the social safety net weakens the network of obligations. A young adult who moves to the big city to seek his fortune doesn't come home when he fails, he draws unemployment. Grown children can use Social Security and Medicare as an excuse not to take care of their aged parents.
Freedom. The Inherited Obligation model is likewise ambivalent about freedom. Freedom to fulfill your obligations according to your best judgment is a good thing. But the kind of freedom that releases people from their obligations is not.
Taxes. The Negotiated Commitment household is mobile. Particularly if it is educated and professional, it could move to another country fairly easily. Consequently, the Negotiated Commitment individual views his relationship to the government as a voluntary commitment, and sees taxes as part of the deal. (If you don't like American taxes, go somewhere else and pay their taxes.) The Inherited Obligation individual is not aware of any such deal, because the network of obligations binds him to this country. As long as the government is helping an individual fulfill his obligations (to defend the country, for example, or to provide basic infrastructure) taxes are just another obligation. But to the extent that government is doing something else with the money (supporting immoral art, say, or paying for abortions), taxes are predatory.
How to Frame Liberal Positions
As Lakoff correctly observes, people are not predestined to be liberals or conservatives based on their upbringing. Most people have both family models in their heads somewhere. Swing voters do not change their total worldview from one election to the next, but rather change their minds about whether to apply an Inherited Obligation model or a Negotiated Commitment model to the issues of the day. Either can be "common sense" if the situation is framed in a way conducive to it.
Liberals have to be careful not to overuse words like choice and freedom, which are positive for us but ambivalent (or even negative, depending on context) from the Inherited Obligation viewpoint. We must always be aware of the Shadow Frame that conservatives will try to project onto us: That we want to be free of our obligations so that we can choose the easy way out. On the other hand, we should use more words that indicate our moral seriousness, like commitment and principle. On abortion, for example, "freedom to choose" is not the best framing. Rather, we need to offer a pregnant woman a moment of commitment.
If our words are to be credible, we must be committed and principled. The virtue of the Negotiated Commitment model is that it is flexible and efficient. The negative framing of those qualities is slippery and slick. We need to state clear principles and return to them often, rather than "moving to the center" whenever we lose an election. Such tactical discussions emphasize our slipperiness: We feel free to re-choose our positions whenever they become inconvenient to our quest for power.
The main virtue of the Negotiated Commitment model is that it takes people as they are, rather than demanding that they fit themselves into an increasingly outdated set of roles. We face problems directly, rather than making people jump through hoops that may or may not be relevant. And so we ask: "Who is going to feed the child, teach the child, protect the child, and love the child?" rather than "Who is going to be the father and who is going to be the mother?"
The Negotiated Commitment model is also tolerant by its nature. It recognizes the freedom of other people to negotiate their own commitments differently than we negotiate ours. In a country with citizens from so many different backgrounds, each with its own notion of inherited obligations, such tolerance is necessary.
Our attacks on conservatives should include words like rigid and nostalgic. They have blinders on. They don't see reality. We need to acknowledge the charm of the Inherited Obligation model, while sadly recognizing that the world has changed since the era of village life. Mobility is a fact; our economy depends on workers being able to follow the jobs. Tolerance is a necessity. And in the face of social change, our families need to be able to re-negotiate and re-configure themselves no less than our corporations do.
Conclusion
George Lakoff's conclusion -- that liberals have family values too, and that we need to do a better job of publicizing them -- is still dead-on. I hope that by using James Ault's observations on the fundamentalist family I have been able to make the distinction between liberal and conservative family models clearer and more accurate.