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5 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. 269 (2009)
Breaking Vows: Marriage Promotion, the New Patriarchy, and the Retreat from Egalitarianism

handle is hein.journals/stjcrcl5 and id is 273 raw text is: ARTICLE BREAKING VOWS: MARRIAGE PROMOTION, THE NEW PATRIARCHY, AND THE RETREAT FROM EGALITARIANISM Kaaryn Gustafsont During the 1970s, the women's movement sought gender equality in the workplace, gender equality in the home, and equality among iimilies-whether male-headed or not. In recent years, however, marriage and iitherhood have become condensation symbols Ibr a number of collective social and economic anxieties in the United States. These anxieties express concerns about changes in gender roles, distributions oflabor and allocations ofeconomic risk the meaning and place of marriage, and the role ofreligion in society This Article eamines three marriage promotion movements in the United States. the religiously based soi patriarchy movement, the federally funded Healthy Marriage and Fatherhood Initiatives; and the movement for government recognition of same- sex marriage. These movements ha ve different constituencies, different tactics, and different goals bu4 as this Article shows, each is a response to the egalitarian gains of the women 's movement during the late twentieth century. Moreover, all three movements may have simlar effcts: not advancing the well-being of lhmilies, as they all claip, but rather distracting from issues of material and gender inequality, maintaining hierarchies among families, and reinforcing unequal divisions oflabor within -i~milies Despite patriarchal retrenchment and the public preoccupation with marriage, Limily forms continue to be fluid and diverse. This Article suggests that the time is ripe to dismantle policies that presume and promote hierarchy and rename our policy debates with renewed attention to egalitarianism. t Associate Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law. Linda Burnham, Aimee Durfee, and Jean Hardisty have greatly influenced the content of this Article. Thanks to Tovah Ross and Leslie Shanley for their research assistance and to Jill Anderson, Mario Barnes, Jill Davies, and Melissa Murray for their thoughts and suggestions.

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