The Civilizing Power of Marriage and Family

By Elizabeth Wright

[Review of George Gilder's VISIBLE MAN, new edition published by ICS and Discovery Institute; first published in 1978. Reprinted from Issues & Views, Fall/Winter 1996]

For reasons that have been endlessly chronicled and analyzed, tens of thousands of black men have removed themselves from playing productive roles as fathers and husbands. These men are in prisons across the country, roam the streets of cities and towns, and are attached to activities that undermine the cohesion of every community they pass through. It is this missing masculine drive and energy that is at the heart of why the poor black community continues in its downward spiral, seemingly to oblivion. The loss of productive masculine input is an incalculable one. The condition of the black masses will never be altered until men are restored to their right and proper place within the bonds of family life.

For those who hold firmly to the soundness of the previous statements, George Gilder's "Visible Man" has long been a special book. In it, Gilder first introduced a basic theme that he developed in later works, that is, when bureaucratic institutions undermine or replace the economic function of men, men are unlikely to play positive roles in the ongoing sustenance of community life. Society suffers, and may not long survive, when men are no longer under the influence of what Gilder calls, "the civilizing power of marriage and family."

An End to Family

In the mid-1970s, while writing a series of articles in Albany, New York, Gilder followed the life of Mitchell Sam Brewer, a young black man in his early 20s. The two men developed a rapport, as they spent almost two years in an unusual friendship. Brewer's background was ghetto typical: a record of arrests for violence, that included assault, disorderly conduct and rape. Charges were usually dropped, forgotten, or reduced.

His childhood also had been ghetto typical, that is, spent in the company of women, with no close ties to men or male authority. Brewer was one of the thousands of fatherless and unsocialized youth who learned early that he need never take responsibility for most of the choices he eventually would make throughout his life. Gilder shows that the reason why men like Brewer can assume such an apathetic posture is due to a welfare state gone berserk.

Citing anthropology and common sense, Gilder shows the dangers that come when men are released from normal societal pressures to play their special role as chief providers for the families they make. To release men from this primary economic role that they have filled throughout the ages, and to make it possible for women to financially support out-of-wedlock children, puts an end to the need for family.

The release of large numbers of young men from the bonds and disciplines of marriage and family, says Gilder, always leads to a threat to social stability. Men find structure and purpose and become responsible men through marriage and work. Without a stable family order, in which adult men civilize the young men, terror necessarily rules. No array of daycare centers, police powers, social welfare agencies, psychiatric or drug clinics, special schools and prisons, can have any significant effect. When men are deprived of any family role and robbed of male discipline, they will turn to the perennial male equalizers, that is, greater physical strength and aggression.

Welfare as a Trap

Through the life of Sam Brewer, Gilder describes how welfare becomes a snare to men, not because they themselves are on the dole, but because the women are. With no reason to hold jobs, and the uncertain remuneration from their criminal activities, these men are assured of a roof over their heads (when desired) by a succession of compliant welfare mothers. As one relationship breaks down, and he loses his bed and board, the rolling stone simply maneuvers himself into the apartment of another welfare recipient. In effect, these men are just as dependent on the provisions of welfare as are the women. For both men and women, all society's incentives are against work and marriage.

In another of his books, "Men and Marriage," Gilder tells of the seductive call of welfare to young girls: "On your 16th birthday, the government will offer you a chance for independence, in an apartment of your own; free housing, medicine, and a combination of welfare payments and food stamps worth several hundred dollars a month." Gilder says that this may not seem like much to the sociologists, who like to deny the impact of welfare on illegitimacy, but these benefits are hugely beyond the pittance offered a girl by her mother, and far beyond the earnings of any of the men she is likely to meet. "It is all offered on one crucial condition. You must bear an illegitimate child."

It is not surprising, says Gilder, that, faced with such an overwhelming inducement from the state, "millions of young women have indeed launched such children into the welfare culture." It is now so common, so routine, that it has become a way of life.

The chief cause of poverty, says Gilder, is the utter failure of socialization of young men through marriage. Yet nearly all the attention, subsidies, training opportunities and so-called therapies of the welfare state focus on helping women function without marriage. The welfare state attacks the problem of the absent husband by rendering him entirely superfluous. In the black community, we see the consequences of these malevolent social policies on a monumental scale.

In the life of Sam Brewer, we see the consequences up close. After a brief stint in the Marines, Brewer returned to civilian life and Albany. In the fashion typical of men from his undisciplined and rootless background, with no real goals to work toward, he blew a good job after engaging in a fight. Throughout his time in military service, he had hoped to have greater access to or custody of an illegitimate daughter, who had been born before his departure. These attempts were thwarted at every turn.

Gilder writes that Brewer, "had not yet fully comprehended the Catch-22 of American manhood. Although a man might need women and children most when he is moneyless and dejected, it is precisely such a man, at those times, who is barred from all durable access to family life. Sam was seeking from women and children the very sense of manhood and affirmation that he would have to have already if he was to get them." From this point, Brewer's life now follows in earnest the familiar pattern of the street thug, the marginal man, who deals drugs, makes the requisite trips in and out of prison, and subsists off women.

Welfare Provides the Cop-Out

It is this distorted relationship between men and women that is the heart of Gilder's story. A distortion that will prevail, says Gilder, for as long as feminist ideology maintains the power it now has to shape the social policies of the welfare state. Gilder calls the loss of young black men an "unspeakable social tragedy." A tragedy that will continue, "as long as welfare feminism is the regnant ideology of government, ravaging the lives and families of the poor by emasculating and demoralizing their men."

Gilder writes, "The differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society." The drive to deny this basic fact, "in the name of women's liberation, marital openness, sexual equality, erotic consumption, or homosexual romanticism, must be one of the most quixotic crusades in the history of the species." Yet advocates of all these "freedoms" would take our society into uncharted waters, where no other social group has ever ventured before.

Spurred on by what Gilder calls an "imperious feminism," all public institutions in society, from government to academia to Hollywood, work to enhance women's sexual independence and aggressiveness. In defiance of anthropological evidence and centuries of tradition, feminist ideologues behave as if the immutable differences between the sexes can be wished away or, more accurately, legislated away.

The black community should be viewed as a virtual feminist paradise, since its women possess, through their ties to government, financial authority, while its men are economically and socially subordinate. Gilder describes Sam Brewer's fits and starts, as he takes jobs and loses them. Men like Brewer just can't break the cycle. They know what men are supposed to do, and are expected to do under normal conditions-but welfare provides them with the option to cop-out altogether.

Gilder says, "All the sociological prattle about the tradition and strength of black matriarchy cannot obscure the tragedy of a culture where the vast majority of children grow up without fathers." It is male authority, he insists, that is the solution to the problem of the underclass, not re-hashed social programs.

Not a Favorite of the Feminists

Does it come as a surprise to learn that, in 1974, Gilder was denounced as "Pig of the Year" by the leading feminist group, the National Organization for Women? He appears to wear this credential proudly. There is probably not a feminist who, at one time or other, has not wanted to wrap her fingers around George Gilder's throat. He is everything that feminists despise-white, male, brilliant, and unapologetic.

He is a foremost specialist on high technology and economics, and this is the hat he usually wears when not writing his social works that enrage liberals. His technical books bear titles like, "The Quantum Revolution in Microcosm," and his magazine articles tell of "The Coming of the Fibersphere."

Yet, when he writes about men gone astray, he writes from his head and his soul, as a man aware of his own human nature. He is not observing from some lofty perch, but seems to see the potential for personal demise in any man who is denied the guidance of community and male authority-and is then further confronted with the powerful seductions of the welfare state.

When it comes to the effects of the welfare trap, Gilder says the situation is not essentially different among whites. Poor white men can no more compete with the benefits of welfare than can blacks. "For steadiness of income and variety of benefits, no normal man, white or black, can compete with welfare as a provider. Who of us anywhere works hard without a system of constraints and necessities, whether social or financial pressure, normally combined in the demands of women?"

What happened to Sam Brewer and the men in his Albany neighborhood is what can happen to any men, once the fundamental underpinnings of culture are destabilized or destroyed. "It is necessity," says Gilder, "that is the father, not only of invention but also of character. The welfare state takes away far more than it ever gives. The problem is not wasted money. The problem is that welfare wastes people."

Workfare and Taxes

Regarding welfare reform, Gilder sees no value in so-called workfare. Besides the potential that a workfare program has to further expand the welfare state, he sees in it the same direct attacks on the male role of provider.

And Gilder has much to say about the perversity of taxation. As the government destroys families at the bottom end of the economic scale through welfare, it also works to destroy them at the upper levels through taxation. In "Men and Marriage," he describes the impact of changes in tax structure and other government policies: "Since 1950, all increases in personal taxation have fallen on married couples with children. While mothers of illegitimate children receive massive benefits, and single or 'child-free' couples have faced no increase in average taxation, taxes on couples with children have risen between 100 and 400 percent. A key reason is the evaporation of the child deduction, which would be worth some $6,000 today if it had risen apace with incomes and inflation since World War II." There could not be a better demonstration of the truth of the maxim that, "the power to tax is the power to destroy."

In his other books on social issues, "Men and Marriage," "Wealth and Poverty," "Naked Nomads: Unmarried Men in America," Gilder continues to drive home his major theme about the impact of marriage and family on social order, as he does in "Visible Man." In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Gilder referred to economist Thomas Sowell as a "brave Olympian sage." Along with Sowell, Gilder deserves to wear this mantle as well.

All books by George Gilder are in bookstores or can be purchased from Discovery Institute, 1201 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101; (206) 287-3144.

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