Liberalism is often associated with empathy, sloppiness, caring, flexibility, and whining. This seems to be an apt description of what mothers are challenged with daily. And whether or not father knows best in the traditional American family, he is rarely home enough to put his wisdom into practice. In a world of declining wages, increasing work weeks, and rising travel time, the bread winning dad is more often than not left feeling like a loser, short on dough. It is mothers who usually hold families together, whether they be single parents or married. A respect for motherhood, and the feminine qualities it involves, seems critical to any effort to strengthen the family. But an attack on liberalism promotes just the opposite, demanding strict distancing from the struggles of others in the name of their support.

Like so many seemingly destructive ways of being, this has its place to be sure. And conservatives seem right about placing restrictions on family life in at least one way. Parenting is a privilege and should be treated as such. Not all potential parents are prepared for the job. Why are we so squeamish about saying this? Yet, the logic is soon turned on its head. In a world of diminishing resources, where the birth of one child may mean the starvation of another, how can anyone really claim to support families without also supporting efforts to decrease their size? Strictness has its place in family matters for liberals as well.

There is a mistaken notion in our society that loves doesn’t involve discipline, that compassion doesn’t demand responsibility. Perhaps this has been the downfall of liberalism. Whereas liberals have emphasized personal choice, conservatives have emphasized responsibility. So perhaps it has been true that conservatives hold together our families. For far too long, liberals have ducked out of responsibilities to those closest to them and looked to distant places to fulfill their missions in life. But the restrictions of family life can make for a remarkable training in service just as the flexibility and tolerance of liberalism can make our families, once more, not only bearable but a joy.

By reframing the family itself as an institution of inclusion rather than exclusion, we provide the tensile strength needed for the family to withstand the assaults of post-modern culture. And by reframing the scope of factors influencing family life from immediate government interference to meta-level behavioral conditioning, we find that strengthening the family may call for a liberal agenda.

All of these considerations leave me wondering whether the conservative agenda may actually be destroying our families. Could it be that the family must be more of an open system - tolerant of difference, in a matrix of support - in order to survive? And if so, why have liberals been so weak in making this claim?