Marriage, Markets, and Morals

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores the challenges of pursuing and maintaining good romantic, marital, and familial relationships in the context of a capitalist society. The ethical challenges are both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, for example, the utility-maximizing approach to decision-making typical of the market contrasts with the attitudes and commitments necessary for deep and stable family relationships. Practically, the requirements of professional “success” – understood as securing and maintaining a high-status, high-paying job – often leave little time to pursue serious romantic relationships or to have and raise children. In a different way, the poor and working classes face a lack of stable jobs and an adequate family wage, presenting practical impediments to marriage and childrearing. This course will help students to have a deeper understanding of these sorts of challenges, and to consider how best to respond to them in planning their own lives and in seeking to ameliorate these challenges as future leaders in business, politics, law, or other fields; as members of local communities, churches, and other intermediate associations; and in the public policies they support as citizens.