Martha Albertson Fineman

This book I spent, really, most of the year reading -- a fact about which I refuse to feel guilty, although it certainly robbed the book of a great deal of its urgency. I read it a few pages at a time, here and there -- not because it was difficult reading academically (while there were a few passages I had to read a few times over, they were only a few, and the jargon was rather light for a book of legal theory and feminist analysis) -- but because it was difficult emotionally. I would read a few pages and get all fired up about the injustice of the world, or how unreasonably difficult it would be to advance some of these reforms in America, and I would have to put the book down and leave the room.

Fineman's case is certainly compelling, at least to me. I am afraid of oversimplifying her arguments in an attempt to sum them up, so instead I will only briefly review the facets that were the most compelling to me: that the functional reality of families has changed significantly in past decades, and legal structures defining and affectin them have not yet caught up; that what should be privileged by the law is not relationships between equals, but the caretaker-dependent relationship, which can take many forms and is radically undervalued in today's society; that the definition of autonomy as being able to support one's self or family without government assistance stands in the way of a more robust, progressive definition of equality.

My only notable complaint about this book is very pragmatic. How, exactly, would one go about privileging the caretaking relationship instead of the marital? Marriage is, after all, something licensed and recorded by the state. And while the caretaking relationship is also formalized by the state in the case of children -- through birth records, adoption, and custody arrangements, Fineman argues privileging not just this caretaking relationship, but also caring for aging parents, disabled adults, etc. Perhaps there is already some simple mechanism for this in place that I am just not familiar with, but I often wondered about it, while reading. After all, if the state is going to privilege a relationship, it can be expected to gatekeep it -- just look at the ongoing gay marriage battle.

But don't let this (small) complaint dissuade you. Anyone interested in family policy should have this on their to-read list.… (més)