ABSTRACT
In trying to decide what positions to take in today's family-values debate, the reasonable person faces an agonizing quandary. Communitarian advocacy for the intact nuclear family, however, should not imply support for continuing the traditional form of the nuclear family—male-dominated and with women restricted to the mother/housewife role. Most men of late middle age and older look back with nostalgia to the era of the traditional nuclear family. Yet from the perspective of children and the stability of family life, divorce has become too easy, too accepted. Strong positions on four moral issues—the prohibition of homosexuality, pornography, premarital sex, and abortion—have been forcefully put forth by the right in America as part of a "profamily" agenda. At the heart of the breakdown of the modern family is changing gender roles. The gender-role revolution is implicated in today's historically high marital dissolution rates.
