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Feminist Challenges to the New Familialism: Lifestyle Experimentation and the Freedom of Intimate Association

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Karen Struening
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Abstract

The new familialists argue that the decline of the intact two-parent family is responsible for our most pressing social problems and advocate public policies designed to promote family stability and discourage divorce and nonmarital births. This essay defends the freedom of intimate association and argue that family stability, while an important good, must be balanced with other goods such as equality and justice within the family, happiness, and individual self-development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Family and Feminist Theory , Winter 1996 , pp. 135 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Hypatia, Inc.

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