Becker blamed the welfare state, not feminism, for postwar family breakdown

Evidence

Writing at the end of the 1970s, the Chicago School neoliberal economist Gary Becker remarked that the “family in the Western world has been radically altered—some claim almost destroyed—by events of the last three decades.” He went on to list a familiar series of ills, from the rapid rise in divorce and female-headed families, to the decline in birth rates and the growing labor force participation of married women, which he claimed had “reduced the contact between children and their mothers and contributed to the conflict between the sexes in employment as well as in marriage.” Becker believed that such dramatic changes in the structure of the family had more to do with the expansion of the welfare state in the postwar era than with feminism per se—which could be considered a consequence rather than an instigator of these dynamics. Like many of his contemporaries, both neoliberals and neoconservatives, Becker singled out AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)—the “poor woman’s alimony”—as one of the primary causes of the breakdown of the family. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Becker’s human capital theory and the Chicago School’s framing of state incentives, cross-cutting with earlier readings on state-caused social pathologies. — connects to: Becker saw welfare as destroying the family’s natural insurance function; Chicago School economists blamed the welfare state, not feminism, for family breakdown — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 210
• QUESTION: Worth checking how Becker’s causal claim about AFDC holds up against empirical welfare literature that finds weak family-formation effects.
• SEED: Seed for an essay on how an economic determinist theory quietly absorbed a conservative moral sociology of the family.

Broader Connections

• Chicago School economists blamed the welfare state, not feminism, for family breakdown #expands (0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 210
• Becker saw welfare as destroying the family’s natural insurance function #corroborates (0.90)