Family politics : the idea of marriage in modern political thought / Scott Yenor.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 341-355) and index.

Nature, marital unity, and contract in modern political thought -- Pt. I. The ballast of nature and the ends of the family. Locke and the invention of the modern family -- Rousseau and the romance of family life -- Pt. II. The moving ballast of history. Hegel's modern marital unity : more than a contract, less than a sacrament -- In Hegel's shadow : French sociologists and positivist defenses of the family -- Pt. III. Liberation and the movement toward the family's end. The city and the soul mate : Mill's late liberal vision -- Marx, Engels, and the abolition of the family -- Freud, Russell, and the liberated family -- Feminism and the family -- Pt. IV. The old family and a new nature. Positivism supplemented : anatomy, evolution, and the family -- A second sailing? : recovering marital unity and the purposes of the family -- What is to be thought? : tensions and lessons.