ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the law has made use of social science findings- here, mainly anthropological- as it constructs images of what families 'must' be like. The debate over the respective importance of nature or social context has, in the course of American history, moved primarily from the domains of theology, racial discrimination, and educational policy to that of the legal status of sexuality and the family. The suitability of alternative forms of marriage and the family, the place of reproductive technology in the very idea of kinship, and the rationale for governmental involvement in the sexual lives of its citizens have become the new terrain for applying biological and anthropological information. To move from the domain of human culture to the specifics of marriage and family is not, then, so great a leap. If one abolishes marriage, it will be the reverberations across diverse realms of cultural life that will be called into play.
