Designing families and solid citizens: the dialectic of modernity and the Matrimonial Causes Bill, 1959.
Policy-makers in the 1940s and 50s were intent on designing families which would produce solid citizens to engage in nation building. Historians offamilism treat it as an expression of modernism: a unifying, oppressive discourse now to be countered by the destabilising project of postmodernism. But this is not the whole story, for it omits the dialectical essence of 'the modern', which promises both 'progress' through technical rationality and individual achievement/self fulfilment. The other side of the dialectic has been avoided by dismissing individualism as a process of interpellation closely tied to the interests of technocratic elites. Out of the discontinuities within modernism there emerged opportunities for agency, the chance for people to make their own lives. The public controversy over the Matrimonial Causes Bill, 1959-at the height of what we are encouraged to think of as the familist decade-is explored as one instance.
Walter
J
J
Griffith University.
D001315:Australia / Q000208:ethnology; D049673:History, 20th Century; D007878:Legislation as Topic / Q000266:history; D008393:Marriage / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D011640:Public Policy; D012922:Social Change / Q000266:history; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology