The Pro-Family Movement: Are They For or against Families?

Margaret Conrad is a history professor at Acadia University and editor
of They Planted Well: New England Planters in Maritime Canada.

Margrit Eichler, sociologist, author of books on the double standard and the family, past president of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, here takes on the people who call themselves variously pro-life, pro-family, and R.E.A.L. women. With devastating logic, she demonstrates that the pro-family movement’s charges against feminism arc based on false, and perhaps malicious, information. Drawing on the record of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, which is the main target of pro-family groups, she cites a series of recommendations supported by NAC since its founding in 1972 — matrimonial property laws, maternity benefits, maintenance laws, pension benefits — which are designed to help dependent members of families. If any group has been lobbying for families in recent years, Eichler argues, it has been NAC and those who have been proud to call themselves feminists. But Eichler does not stop there. She goes on to show that if the pro-family group’s goals of returning to the patriarchal family were achieved, then both women and families would be the losers. From Eichler’s perspective, the pro-family positions on abortion, contraception, sex education, homosexuality, divorce, day care, affirmative action, women’s labour force participation, and sex equality are precisely the reasons that families are experiencing difficulties in contemporary society. Eichler claims to have no quarrel with those who wish to follow “traditional” family values in their own homes, but she calls into question their right to insist that all Canadians follow their narrow prescriptions.

Overall, this paper, originally delivered while Eichler was serving as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, will cheer the hearts of many feminists and stiffen the resolve of most pro-family stalwarts. Although Eichler’s publication may not change minds that are already firmly fixed in their positions, it is a good statement of the liberal feminist perspective and a worthy contribution to the “family” debate.