The conjugal family seems to be under assault from the rights revolution. Rights claims have relentlessly sliced into the family from diverse angles: divorce rights, reproductive rights, gender rights, sexual orientation rights, marriage rights, children’s rights, birth rights, affiliational rights, parental rights, de facto parenting rights, custody rights, families of choice rights, and so on. Some lament that this historic institution is dying under the trauma of these rights assaults. Others see this trauma as the creative turmoil of renewal, rebirth, and re-creation.
In The Rights Revolution, Michael Ignatieff, former director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and current leader of Canada’s federal Liberal party, points out that the last thirty years have been marked by new conflicts over the status of marriage and the family in liberal democracies.1According to Ignatieff, the “rights revolution” aims
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