 The Association for Family Therapy 2000.

Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley

Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2000) 22: 245–263
0163–4445

The divorce of marriage and parenthood

Steven L. Nocka

Marriage is a template for domestic life and the problems that arise in it.
The patterned assumptions that traditionally defined marriage gave
substance to the family. These assumptions have become less compelling
over the course of a century. In this paper, I suggest how and why this has
happened. I focus on the meaning of parenthood and its relationship to
marriage. In the course of a century, parenthood has been redefined as a
rational choice governed by calculation. As a result, childbearing, preg-
nancy, marriage and parenthood have been redefined. Their relationships
to one another have, to varying degrees, been altered. Marriage is an insti-
tutionalized way to care for the babies that once came, inevitably, as a
result of sexual intercourse. What becomes of marriage when sex no
longer produces babies? The answer is that everything about marriage and
the family changes. Such changes help explain the rise of professional
family therapy and related fields.

Introduction
Two dimensions of domestic life give form and substance to the
family. First, individuals must somehow come together to form a
unit. They must create a functioning unit by merging lives that were
once different and independent, and by continually adjusting to
changes. This is the task of defining complementary positions of
husband and wife, male and female partners. The second task that
defines a family and influences almost every aspect of it is how chil-
dren are incorporated into the unit. This is the task of developing
appropriate and supportive relations across generations, or of being
a mother, father or grandparent. While some families never face
one or the other (e.g. single mothers may never become spouses,
and childless couples may never struggle as parents) all families
confront at least one, and most face both. Traditionally, the tasks of
marriage and parenthood were united socially, morally and legally.
Together they organized domestic life and lent it a sense of order
and predictability.
a Department of Sociology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
22903, USA.

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246 Steven Nock
No matter what other challenges individuals and families may
encounter, anything that complicates either of these core functions
would create problems. More generally, if people no longer agreed
about how these tasks should be handled, every family would be left
to invent its own solutions. In trying, many would fail, and almost all
would be seriously challenged.
In this paper, I will show how and why both central family tasks
have become complicated in Britain and the United States. I argue
that large historical and social forces are now redefining elemental
components of the family in ways that create many of the problems
individuals have in their families.
I come to this subject as an American sociologist. Thus I focus on
institutions rather than individuals. Since this may be an unfamiliar
perspective for marriage and family therapists, I want to briefly
outline the dimensions of an institutional analysis. From such a
perspective, a society is a cluster of social institutions, and institutions
are clusters of social roles. Social roles are clusters of shared ideals (or
norms) about appropriate behaviour in given situations. Thus only
when people agree about how some core dimension of life should be
organized is there a social institution. Marriage is a good example.
Although individual families formed through marriage differ in
detail, collectively they share common features as a result of
common problems and tested solutions. In resolving and coping
with the routine challenges of family life such as childcare, the divi-
sion of household labour or relations with relatives, individuals
draw on conventional (i.e. shared) ideals. As disparate individuals
rely on shared answers to questions about family life, typical
patterns emerge that are understood and recognized as social roles
– mother, father, son, daughter, husband and wife. Marriage, in this
sense, is the cultural library of solutions to domestic problems.
Without it, people would have much less guidance about how to
resolve the recurring problems of domestic life. Without it, there
would be much less similarity among families in any society. The
family differs in form from one culture to another. Yet everywhere it
consists of patterned (i.e. shared and accepted) solutions to the
problems of dependency (of partners, children and the elderly).
Much of that patterning is the result of the universal existence of
marriage.
Marriage is a shared core of beliefs and assumptions embodied in
custom, law and religion. As such, it provides a template for domes-
tic life and the problems that arise in it. Therefore, if marriage were

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 247
to lose its institutional character (i.e. if people no longer agreed
about its rules), there would be less guidance for resolving the
recurrent problems in the family.
Of course, two people can enjoy a harmonious and happy life
without legal marriage, but it will be more difficult, and there may
be more problems. In fact, growing numbers of people appear to
believe that unmarried cohabitation offers something that marriage
doesn’t. One thing that cohabitation offers is freedom from the
rules of marriage because there are no widely accepted and
approved assumptions and ideals. Unmarried partners have
tremendous freedom to decide how they will arrange their legal
and other relationships. Each partner must decide how to deal with
the other’s parents, for example. Parents, in turn, must decide how
to interact with their cohabiting child’s partner. Should they view
the relationship the same as, or different from, a marriage? Couples
must decide whether vacations will be taken together or separately.
Money may be pooled or held in separate accounts. If children are
born, cohabiting parents must decide about the appropriate obliga-
tions (in addition to those that arise from law) each incurs as a
result. In such small and large ways, cohabiting couples and their
associates must create a relationship, and research shows that co-
habiting couples are innovative in their solutions. There is much
greater variety in cohabiting partnerships than there is among
marriages (Nock, 1995). Married couples may also face decisions
about some of these issues. However, married spouses have a
pattern to follow. They are heirs to a vast reservoir of customs and
ideals about most matters of domestic life. The institution of
marriage is a template. This is what cohabiting couples lack. They
are exempt from the vast range of marriage norms (and laws in
many cases).
A man can say to his wife: ‘I am your husband. You are my wife.
I am expected to do certain things for you, and you likewise. We
have pledged our faithfulness. We have promised to care for one
another in times of sickness. We have sworn to forgo others. We
have made a commitment to our children. We have a responsibil-
ity and obligation to our close relatives, as they have to us.’ These
statements are not simply personal pledges; they are also enforce-
able. Others will expect these things of the couple. Laws, religion
and customs bolster this contract. When this man says to someone,
‘I would like you to meet my wife’, this simple declaration says a
great deal.

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248 Steven Nock
Compare this to an unmarried couple living happily together.
What, if any, are the conventional assumptions that can be made?
What are the limits to behaviour? To whom is each obligated?
Whom can this couple count on for help in times of need? And
how do you complete this introduction of one’s cohabiting part-
ner: ‘I would like you to meet my. . .’? The lack of a word for such
a partner is a clear indication of how little such relationships are
governed by convention. Alternatively, we may say that such a
relationship is not an institution. Marriage is. I believe this helps
explain why cohabiting couples are less happy and less satisfied
with their relationships than married couples (Nock, 1995,
1998).
The problem today is that the patterned assumptions which
once gave substance to the family (including marriage) have
become less compelling. Another way of saying this is that the
institution of the family, founded on marriage, law and religion,
is increasingly at odds with other social institutions. Social insti-
tutions continually change as the course of historical, economic
and cultural trends shift. In seeking to understand these changes,
we may also appreciate the challenges of redefining the family to
fit the realities of our times. The key to understanding such a
formidable task is the meaning of parenthood and its relationship to
marriage. An analysis of this basic relationship, and the changes in
it, is helpful for any profession devoted to dealing with human
behaviour.
Consider the most well-known contemporary family trends.
These include increasing rates of cohabitation and unmarried
childbearing, high stable rates of divorce and female labour force
participation, and lower rates of fertility and marriage. All were, to
varying degrees, features of the twentieth century, though most
especially since the end of the Second World War. Together, these
trends and their presumed significance amount to a table of
contents for almost any text on the sociology of the family at the
turn of the century. Do they suggest that the family is losing its insti-
tutional anchor? In fact, they do.
I propose an interpretation of fertility and family behaviours
that unifies them under a common, historical theme. My argu-
ment focuses on a series of fundamental separations of profound
symbolic significance. Behaviours and beliefs that were once seen
as necessarily united have been uncoupled. Parenthood is a key
theme in this argument. The separations I discuss relate directly,

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 249
or indirectly, to the symbolic meaning of sex and parenthood. In
the course of a century, parenthood has been redefined as subject
to rational choice and governed by calculation. Our contempo-
rary focus in matters of sex is more on the means and process than
the consequences. Sex, childbearing, pregnancy, marriage and
parenthood have been redefined. Their relationships to one
another have, to varying degrees, been altered. And the postwar
trends mentioned above can be understood as part of this social
redefinition.
Marriage historically connected an adult male to a woman and
her children; that is, marriage existed historically because sexual
intercourse produced babies. Since it did, there was an organized
(institutional) way to care for those children. That arrangement
was marriage with its clearly understood roles. What becomes of
marriage when sex no longer produces babies? The answer is that
everything about marriage and the family changes. The process
of change, however, has been gradual throughout the last
century. No single moment defines a point of revolutionary
change; nor did one change necessarily cause the other. Finally,
there were differences among the social classes in both willing-
ness and ability to alter domestic affairs. Still, it is possible to
describe the past by focusing on a series of symbolic separations
chronologically.

The separation of home and workplace

The emergence of the ‘modern family’ is dated approximately to
the latter decades of the eighteenth century, though possibly some-
what later in America. Modern marriage, in contrast to earlier
versions, was based on affection, love and mutual respect between
the partners. Children were emotional assets. Marriage, that is, was
to be companionate (Degler, 1983; Stone, 1979). In the emerging
modern family, the attention, energy and resources of parents were
increasingly centred on the rearing of offspring. Parenthood
became a major personal responsibility for women, perhaps even a
burden (Stone, 1979: 248). One way to deal with the demands of
parenthood was to limit fertility. Primitive forms of contraception
(mainly coitus interruptus) were practised as the responsibility of rais-
ing a child, and launching him into the world became increasingly
burdensome ‘in its demands for love, time, effort, and money’
(Stone, 1979: 263).

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250 Steven Nock
The separation of home and work, the subsequent evolution of
separate spheres for the two sexes and the triumph of affectionate
marriage redefined parenthood in ways wholly consistent with the
changing economic mission of families in the UK and USA. Signifi-
cantly, the ‘modern family’ emerged as men left the home to pursue
their economic fates in impersonal (i.e. non-familial) economic
settings.

The separation of sex and pregnancy

The arrangement of separate spheres – males focused on their lives
in the workplace, females focused on their lives in the home –
continued throughout the nineteenth century. At the same time,
limitations on fertility became increasingly common and desired.
Parenthood was an essential aspect of marriage – especially for vali-
dating a wife’s position – but unlimited fertility came to be identi-
fied as incompatible with companionate marriage (D’Emilio and
Freedman, 1988).
A number of factors combined to produce increasingly lower
fertility. Some of the most commonly mentioned factors focus on
rising levels of affluence and changing beliefs about the proper way
to raise children. Lower fertility was important for maintaining
middle-class, or achieving higher economic status. With rising levels
of education, there was a greater willingness on the part of individ-
uals to take their futures into their own hands, rather than accept-
ing that the will of God must prevail. Ideas about population growth
first advanced by Thomas Malthus in the late eighteenth century
made reproductive decision-making a respectable topic of conver-
sation (McLaren, 1990: 182). Regardless of the reason, once sex
and reproduction are separated, parenthood is redefined as a choice.
There were major advances in contraception over the course of
the nineteenth century. Both contraception and abortion were well
known and understood by significant portions of the populations in
England and America. The variety of contraceptive techniques
available in the Victorian era was impressive, even by today’s stan-
dards, and, though less is known about its actual incidence, abor-
tion was increasingly common in the nineteenth century as well
(McLaren, 1990).
Contraception slowly moved from the realm of folk knowledge to
science. While the practices and methods of fertility limitation (and
abortion) were topics of debate and controversy, there was little

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 251
debate about who owned these issues. Physicians made the decisions,
even if reluctantly. Doctors decided whether or not an abortion
could be performed, and whether or not medical (i.e. scientific)
contraception was available. Turning control of fertility over to
doctors (science) is evidence of the redefinition occurring with
regard to sex and parenthood. Once mysterious, or sacred, the
sex–reproduction relationship increasingly came to be viewed as
controllable – governed by individual choice or preference and
facilitated by the new science of medicine. That people came to
trust doctors with matters of fertility tells us how they were viewed.
Doctors delivered only15% of British babies in 1927, but more than
half (54%) in 1954 (McLaren, 1990: 232).
In the early twentieth century, contraception came to be known
as birth control, thanks to the efforts of women like Margaret Sanger
in America and Dr Marie Stopes in Britain. Efforts by such women
and their organizations made the topic more acceptable. The basic
theme of fertility control was also consistent with an emerging view
about sex advanced by writers such as Sigmund Freud and Hevelock
Ellis. Sex was becoming defined as an aspect of marital intimacy – a
vital aspect of human relationships, and not primarily a means to
reproduce. In 1929, birth control information was made available,
although only to married women, at child welfare centres in Great
Britain (McLaren, 1990: 234). The changing view of sex (as inti-
macy) occurred despite the fact that no significant advances were
made in contraceptive technology between the late nineteenth and
mid-twentieth centuries. By 1960, however, technology allowed a
historic event: the total separation of coitus and contraception.

Separation of coitus from contraception

Before 1960, all methods of birth control were coitus-related, used
immediately before, during or after intercourse. All were only
moderately effective unless used with great care. The birth control
pill was introduced in 1960, and by 1975, over six in ten British
women who were using contraceptives relied on effective, non-
coitus-related medical techniques. Four in ten (39%) relied on the
pill, and 25% relied on the IUD or sterilization (US Bureau of the
Census, 1999b). In the USA, the acceptance of medical contracep-
tion was equally enthusiastic: by 1970 over one-third of all married
women in America were using the birth control pill. Combined with
intra-uterine devices and sterilization, six in ten American women

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252 Steven Nock
were using medical, effective, non-coitus-related methods of birth
control by 1970. Ten years earlier, virtually no women in either
country were using such methods (Westoff and Ryder, 1977: 31).
Women who were once able to redefine sexual intercourse as
‘protected’ (from conception) were now able to define themselves in
that way. Calculation was removed from sexual intercourse directly.
Sex could now realistically be viewed as a form of marital intimacy,
a means for developing a deeper relationship, or a form of recre-
ation. Sex and procreation were now uncoupled.
Part of the story about contraception in the USA and Great
Britain is the idea that it is a private matter, not something to be
controlled by the state. Though British and American sentiments
are similar in this regard (see McLaren, 1990), US history neatly
illustrates the evolution of this idea because of the constitutional
concepts involved. In the 1960s, a series of US Supreme Court deci-
sions were made that had significant implications for the meaning
of sex and childbearing. In 1965, The Supreme Court invalidated a
Connecticut law that forbade the use of contraceptive devices, even
by married couples (Griswald vs. Connecticut). Writing for the
Court majority, Justice Douglas explained that various guarantees of
the Bill of Rights ‘create zones of privacy’ and ‘the very idea of
prohibiting the practice of birth control is repulsive to the notions
of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship’ (381 US 479).
The idea that sex is private was, in fact, quite revolutionary;
indeed, it is difficult to imagine such a view in earlier times. Sex had
never been completely private because of its consequences.
Communities could not allow individuals complete control over
their sex lives because adultery and illegitimacy disrupted family
lines, and sometimes created collective obligations for the care of
offspring. Indeed, sexual misalliances have always been the subject
of the most conspicuous of civil and religious sanctions. Once the
consequences of sexual intercourse became subject to rational calcu-
lation, however, community surveillance was no longer so necessary.
Procreation became a private decision in the latter half of the twen-
tieth century, no longer the subject of community or state control.
In an era of effective contraception and abortion one may reason-
ably ask: Of what collective consequence is sexual intercourse to the
larger community? The answer, it seems, is little or none.
Once childbearing came to be viewed as a choice, parenthood
became less an unremarkable fact of married life, and more a lifestyle
decision. As such, parenthood assumed much less significance as a

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 253
‘natural’ consequence of sex and marriage, and much greater signi-
ficance as a symbolic statement of who one was and what one desired.

Separation of sex from marriage

Marriage and sex have been separated. Studies in England show
very clear evidence of increasing sexual activity at younger and
younger ages. In 1964, 14% of British boys and 5% of girls had
engaged in sexual intercourse by age 16. By 1988, 28% of British
boys and 19% of British girls were sexually active before they turned
16 (Wellings et al., 1994: 37, 40, 84). Studies in the US show that
only 25% of 19-year-old women had had intercourse in 1970. By
1991, the figure was 72% (Laumann et al., 1994). The best estimates
for Britain are that 35% of males and 38% of females are still virgins
at age 18 (Hubert et al., 1998: 44). Among Americans born in the
1963 to 1972 cohort, only 10% of men and 9% of women were
virgins at age 20 (Laumann et al., 1994: 198).
Most adults in the USA and Great Britain accept the idea that
unmarried people may engage in sexual intercourse. In 1972, about
half (47%) of adult Americans responded ‘always wrong’ or ‘almost
always wrong’ to the question ‘If a man and a woman have sex rela-
tions before marriage, do you think it is always wrong, almost always
wrong, only wrong sometimes, or not wrong at all?’ By 1996, only
34% answered that way (NORC, 1996). Adults in Britain are even
less censorious; only one in four (25%) adults currently believe that
sex before marriage is wrong (Wellings et al., 1994: 244).
Cohabitation is also important for non-marital sexual behaviour.
There were 1.56 million cohabiting couples in England and Wales
in 1996, almost twice as many as a decade earlier. The number is
expected to rise to just over two million in 2001. Two-thirds of
cohabiting men and women in 1996 were single (never married)
(Shaw, 1999). The situation is similar in the USA. In 1970, the US
Bureau of the Census estimated that there were 520,000 heterosex-
ual unmarried couples living together. By 1998, there were 4.2
million such couples. A little more than half (55%) of such individ-
uals have never been married. Only one in four (24%) comprises
two persons under age 25 (US Bureau of the Census, 1999a). In
both countries, cohabitation is common among young, never-
married people, but not solely. Large and growing numbers of
older and previously married people are cohabiting in both soci-
eties. Undoubtedly, cohabitation is a prelude to marriage for many

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254 Steven Nock
(or most) young people, but it is an alternative to marriage for a
growing segment of our populations.
The increase in cohabitation is associated with a correspond-
ing change of laws in England and America. Even while both
countries maintain a legal distinction between formal (legal)
marriage and cohabitation, that distinction is increasingly
blurred by the application of laws that focus on the de facto rela-
tionship regardless of legal marital status. With regard to prop-
erty disputes upon dissolution of the relationship, children’s
welfare, domestic violence and tenancy, English family law now
extends to ‘cohabitants’ ’ and ‘former cohabitants’ ’ privileges
once reserved only for married individuals. Minimal rights to
inheritance are also afforded to cohabitants (LaFollette and
Purdie, 1996). Even though English law has not yet transformed
informal marriage into a status, it has dealt with the recurring
problems that arise in cohabiting relationships by giving them a
‘marital cast’ (Glendon, 1989: 275). American law is also moving
gradually towards a de facto approach to heterosexual relation-
ships, but cohabiting couples are not yet recognized as a separate
legal entity. State courts have dealt with partner-to-partner issues
in such relationships, but there has been virtually no considera-
tion of the public legal consequences that might attend unmar-
ried cohabitation (e.g. federal income tax status, mutual support
liability).
Since the mid-1960s, the idea that sex and reproduction must
occur only in marriage has lost much social and legal legitimacy.
Sexual intercourse served as the symbolic core of legal marriage in
common law. A range of legal restrictions surrounding marriage
were based on sexual exclusivity; sexual intercourse was a preroga-
tive only of married spouses, adultery was punishable by the
aggrieved spouse, and unmarried individuals were proscribed from
engaging in intercourse (fornication). Intercourse defined the de
facto creation of a legal marriage (consummation). The concept of
consortium (the legally protected emotional stakes a spouse has in
his or her marriage by virtue of the several types of sacrifices made)
is rarely invoked in American states, and a ‘loss of consortium’ was
abolished as a cause of legal action in Britain in 1982 (Glendon,
1989: 96). In both countries, family laws once allowed actions
against others who had damaged a marriage by adultery, for
alienation of affections, or enticement. That such actions are no longer
allowed attests to the declining legal significance of sexual

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 255
exclusivity in marriage. Similarly, the rapid spread of no-fault
divorce laws in America and Europe since 1970 has effectively elim-
inated adultery as a condition for divorce (i.e. a loss of consortium
caused by the married spouse).
Once sex and procreation were effectively separated, the separa-
tion of sex and marriage was to be expected. Equally understand-
able, therefore, is the contemporary willingness to separate
procreation from marriage.

Separation of procreation from marriage

Children born outside of marriage have historically suffered legal
handicaps. The ‘bastard’ was limited in his rights of inheritance,
claims on paternal assets, and suffered varying degrees of stigma as
a consequence of the conditions of birth. But once sex and procre-
ation were separated, and once sex and marriage were separated, it
was not surprising that marriage and procreation came to be seen
as separable. Legitimacy, that is, lost legitimacy.
Households consisting of an unmarried woman and her chil-
dren are the fastest growing type in both countries. In the UK,
mother–child households now (1999) comprise 10% of all house-
holds, up from 2% of all households in 1961 and 7% in 1994
(Haskey, 1996; Office of National Statistics, 1999). In the US, the
percentage of mother–child households is now 13%. While
divorce and mortality were the traditional routes to single parent-
hood, births outside of marriage became the primary route to
British single parenthood in 1986 (Haskey, 1996) and American
single parenthood in 1993 (US Bureau of the Census, 1999c). A
little over one-third (37%) of births in 1997 were to unmarried
women in Great Britain, compared to only 13% in 1981. The
figure had climbed to 21% by 1986, and 30% in 1991 (Haskey,
1996; Office of National Statistics, 1997). The same trends are
seen in the USA. One-third (36%) of all births in the US are to
unmarried women (18% of first births are to never-married
women) (US Bureau of the Census, 1995), compared to only 18%
in 1970.
The social and legal stigma of having an illegitimate child has
been significantly reduced in recent years, as the statistics on
unmarried fertility indicate. One in fifteen (7%) families with
dependent children in Great Britain is now headed by an unmar-
ried, cohabiting couple (Haskey, 1996). Numerous legal disabilities

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256 Steven Nock
suffered by illegitimate children in the US and UK have been abol-
ished. In 1969, for example, the Family Law Reform Act (United
Kingdom) established the same legal rights for children born
outside of marriage as those born to a married couple for purposes
of inheritance. Most other legal disabilities of illegitimacy were abol-
ished by the Family Law Reform Act of 1987 which expunged the
term ‘illegitimate’ from the law relating to children (Glendon,
1989: 269). In the United States, most disabilities of illegitimacy
(limits on inheritance, eligibility for government transfer payments,
and rights of intestate succession of private property) were declared
unconstitutional in the decade between 1968 and 1978 by the US
Supreme Court.
As marriage and parenthood have become increasingly separated
or separable phenomena, parenthood has come to assume much
greater symbolic meanings. If one defines marriage as a collection of
obligations and privileges, the traditional meaning of the institution
may be understood as a way of distributing the obligations that
came, inevitably, as a result of sexual intercourse. Thus, parenthood
was as central to marriage as sexual intercourse because the two were
inseparable. Separating sex and procreation fostered the separation
of sex and marriage, and once procreation came to be seen as a
rational choice, a decision on the part of the potential mother (or
father), parenthood inevitably came to be seen as a reflection of the
individual who decided to become pregnant. Parenthood, in short,
became a subject of the vocabulary of motives allowing the hitherto
unasked question ‘Why did she have a child?’ The possible answers
are many, but ‘Because she is married’ is no longer taken for
granted. Parenthood, separated from its traditional association with
marriage, now carries important symbolic implications for a
woman’s personal identity. Having a baby is a decision, not a routine
consequence of being married.
Maternity must compete with several other adult roles viewed
potentially as equally important to women today. Childbearing is
seen as a part of an adult life and identity, and children are signifi-
cant components of a woman’s life-chances. Where women have
been traditionally cast in the role of producers of good children, they
are now increasingly placed in the role of consumers of them – care-
fully selecting the time, number and spacing of births. As a result,
the definition of procreation is being redefined because it depends
less and less on biology, and more and more on deliberation and
choice.

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 257

Separation of pregnancy from parenthood

Technology once made it possible to have sexual intercourse with-
out procreation. It has now made it possible to have procreation
without sexual intercourse. For the first time in history, a child born
in the UK or USA may have five persons as parents: a sperm donor,
an egg (ovum) donor, the woman who carries the child to birth,
and the husband and wife who will raise the child. The combination
of artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, embryo transfer and
surrogate motherhood means that sex can be totally separated from
procreation. As a result it is not clear, legally or otherwise, what a
parent actually is. Is parenthood defined by parental behaviours
(enacting the role of a mother or father), by genetics (providing the
genetic material) or by gestation (carrying a child to term)? We
confront this troubling dilemma as a natural consequence of the
historical redefinition of parenthood discussed throughout this
paper – the rationalization of procreation, the separation of sex and
procreation, and the separation of marriage and parenthood. By
asking what defines parenthood, we acknowledge that we no longer
take it to be a natural incident of marriage, or of sexual intercourse.
Indeed, parenthood is not even necessarily tied to biological fertil-
ity. The questions being asked about how we define parenthood
may be restated in consumer language. Now we ask: By what meth-
ods does one establish ownership of a child?
To date, courts and legislative bodies have offered the only
answers. English law favours genetics in decisions about who owns a
child. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill (1990) allows
the court to order those whose sperm and egg were used to produce
a baby to provide support (Touro International Law Review, 1995:
7). In essence, English law defines the mother, legally at least, as the
woman whose genetic material was responsible for the child born.
It is not clear, therefore, what the status of the gestational ‘mother’
is (or her husband). Indeed, since the pregnant gestational mother
is not legally the ‘mother’, she is in the historically unique position
of carrying a foetus that is not hers.
In the United States the situation is considerably more complex,
though the broad outlines of the dilemma are identical. There is no
federal law at present concerning surrogate parents. Rather, as with
almost all family law in America, each state has its own legal code
governing the practice. The wide differences among states are clear
evidence of the lack of consensus about what a mother, or father, is

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258 Steven Nock
in the increasingly common situation of a surrogate arrangement.
In some states, a ‘mother’ is the woman whose genetic material is
responsible for a child, similar to the situation in the UK. In others,
a ‘mother’ is the woman who has carried the baby to term.
California law views surrogate agreements as enforceable and the
genetic parents are given all legal parental rights to the child. The
law states that the woman ‘who intended to procreate the child –
that is, she who intended to bring about the birth of a child that she
intended to raise as her own, is the natural mother under Califor-
nia law’ (CA Civil Code § 7000). In Virginia surrogacy contracts are
invalid, and all legal parental rights to the child are given to the
surrogate mother. The law states that a ‘child born to a surrogate
mother with the consent of her husband, whether the woman was
implanted with a sperm or ova, the child is deemed the legitimate
natural child of the surrogate mother and her husband. The donors
of sperm or ova shall not have any parental rights or duties for any
child’ (VA Code § 64.1–7.1)
Historically, under common law, a child born to a married man
and woman was viewed as the legitimate offspring of both. When a
woman consents to be a surrogate for another, however, this legal
presumption makes no sense. If my wife agrees to bear another
couple’s baby, what role, if any, do I play ? Is my wife’s baby mine?
Indeed, is it hers?
Surrogate parenthood elevates the interests of an infertile couple
above other concerns. The potential offspring is not represented.
What are we to tell the offspring of surrogate mothers? When, and
how, is a young girl told that she is not adopted, but is related to
neither of her ‘parents?’ Are fertilized frozen ova entitled to legal
protection? If so, what is the basis for such protection of the ova? Is
procreation now so entirely governed by logic and contract that civil
agreements will override any emotional claims by women who expe-
rience nine months of pregnancy?

Discussion
Having asked these questions, I should note that courts and physi-
cians have not agreed about the answers. We are not yet clear about
how parenthood will be defined in an age when pregnancy and
genetic parenthood are separable, but several things seem clear.
The terms of this debate pertain mostly to the adults’ obligations
and interests, and not to those of the children. Further, the place of

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 259
legal marriage in the surrogate parenthood question has been
given inadequate attention. Single women are inseminated artifi-
cially, and may serve as surrogate parents, and most significantly, it
has been courts of law in which the debate has been carried on.
Parenthood, increasingly at the turn of the century, is a legal, scien-
tific and rational determination. A century of symbolic separations
has moved parenthood further and further away from the biologi-
cal and social-structural incidents (sexual intercourse and
marriage) that once defined it.
Those separations depended heavily on scientists and doctors
who came to own the issues of contraception and fertility. Medical
science played another role, however, that is somewhat less obvious.
At the same historical moment that fertility came to be perfectly
controlled (the birth control pill era), professionals (scientists) in
allied fields emerged to deal with the consequences I have discussed
in this paper. Why did family therapy emerge as a profession in the
1960s and 1970s? Along with allied therapeutic disciplines, family
therapy arose when the traditional core of the family (i.e. the
sex–parenthood relationship) was uncoupled. Marriage, sex and
procreation were inextricably linked as a template once known as
the family. Traditional solutions to conventional problems were
found in traditional and conventional sources – parents, clergy,
siblings and family elders. The effective separation of sex and
procreation broke the template. Alternatively, it rendered parts of
the traditional institution of the marriage-based family archaic. The
new patterns that emerged produced new problems, and called for
new solutions. Family therapy arose as a profession just as the tradi-
tional template of the marriage-based family became contentious
(i.e. when agreement about marriage roles broke down).
But is there more to it? Is family therapy a response to the same
cultural changes that redefined the family? Is it part of the redefi-
nition? One view of the various separations I have discussed in this
paper is as emancipation. We emancipate people when we release
them from the constraints of rigid convention. Collectively, we
value that freedom and encourage it. There is more freedom today
in the possible paths one may follow into adulthood. There is more
freedom in how intimate life is pursued. Released from the
constraints imposed by uncontrollable fertility, contemporary
parenthood, or marriage, is more fluid. Alternatively, it is less insti-
tutionalized, less predictable and much less enforced. In place of
near universal insistence on a social script, and the unfortunate

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260 Steven Nock
consequences of deviating from that script, we now permit vast
individual freedom in such matters. But that freedom comes with a
cost. As the range of acceptable life-courses has expanded, the
problems encountered have become more varied. As institutional
patterns of family life have weakened, traditional sources of help
have been replaced by professionals. Family therapy (and other
forms of therapeutic intervention) is the price our societies are
willing to pay for breaking the rigid mould of intimate life, of new
patterns for which there are no conventional solutions.
Social institutions, however, are continually changing. Even if
contraception altered everything about the traditional institution of
the family, a new template is emerging, as it must. In all societies,
the family is an institution focused on the care and provision of
dependent people. This will remain so even if the forms change.
The answers to questions raised by surrogacy (and other matters
of reproduction) will ultimately redefine our understanding of
what a family and a parent is. The technology designed to aid infer-
tile individuals will be as significant an influence on our ideas
about the family as was effective contraception. But while contra-
ception was debated in every public forum, surrogacy has yet to
attract the attention of the public or social scientists who study the
family.
By accommodating the desires of potential parents (present or
future), we inevitably redefine basic human relationships of
mother–father or parent–child. By extension, the institutional
arrangements in which these relationships are found (marriage or
the family) are also redefined.
I began this paper by noting that our contemporary concern with
sex and procreation is over the means and methods rather than the
consequences. By law and custom, the means and methods of
procreation are now private concerns. It is quite clear, however, that
the successive redefinition of parenthood accomplished by symbolic
separations of sex, pregnancy, marriage, gestation and genetics
have had important social structural consequences. We are now
unable to define the family because there is little consensus over the
relationships of sex, procreation and marriage.
The contemporary demographic trends that frequently attract
public and scholarly attention (divorce, births out of wedlock,
declining fertility, unmarried cohabitation) are more understand-
able when seen as reflections of the uncoupling of marriage and
parenthood. The family – as an institution – is now a looser set of

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 Divorce of marriage and parenthood 261
symbolic connections. Purposeful and rational calculations applied
to generational relationships render them subject to the same insta-
bilities found in other institutional arrangements, both legal and
financial. Our successive redefinitions of parenthood and procre-
ation mean that we now lack consensus over where, or if, they fit in
marriage. We no longer define marriage by reference to parent-
hood and procreation as its central functions.
Significant redefinition of a social institution causes great
tension for individuals. One of the most challenging periods in
the history of the modern family was during mass industrializa-
tion, when men left home to go to work in factories, and women
were left to care for hearth and home. Almost everything about
the family changed when the economy of which it was a part
changed. In particular, the new family arrangements called for a
redefinition of what a husband was, and what a wife was. Now,
three or four decades after women left the home for paid employ-
ment, we confront a similar challenge. Now we are beginning to
redefine what parenthood is, and what role it plays in the lives of
men and women. Is it to be a part of marriage only? Or is
marriage an antiquated arrangement no longer needed for the
bearing and rearing of children? Does gestation or genetics
define parenthood? What are the implications of the answers to
these questions for the children born? These are profound ques-
tions that still await answers. In our struggle to arrive at some
common understanding and agreement about them, we will
confront basic questions about social life. Consensus will be diffi-
cult, but it will be found. There will surely be a ‘traditional’ family
of the twenty-first century.
Families are social arrangements for the care of dependent
persons. In principle, this is the primary boundary around family
forms. How will we care for dependants? What are the possible solu-
tions? The traditional solution of marriage will clearly dominate for
the foreseeable future, but marriage will differ in content and struc-
ture. It will incorporate the changed circumstances of women who
are able to control fertility, and everything this has meant. Rather
than alternatives to marriage, we should envision a different institu-
tion of marriage as the dominant form of living arrangement in the
future. After all, marriage has been the solution to dependency for as
long as we know. No other solution has ever been found for an entire
society and none is likely to be found. As we continue to struggle with
the new realities of social life, we will continue to redefine marriage

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262 Steven Nock
in ways that will produce a better fit of the institution and the society
of which it is a part. In fact, that is exactly what is now happening. The
family therapist will continue to play a central role in helping people
cope with the changes. That task may be easier if the private problems
faced by individuals are understood as part of larger historical and
social changes.

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 2000 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice