The Autonomy Myth

Book excerpt: A brilliant expose of the contradiction between the American myth of self-reliance and the reality of an interdependent society. In a truly paradigm-shifting book, Martha Albertson Fineman, the influential and always-provocative legal theorist, makes the fascinating case that the sexually affiliated couple is not the appropriate building block for contemporary families. Rather, society should be organized around "caretaking relationships," particularly those involving children or elderly dependents. Having previously argued in her widely acclaimed The Neutered Mother for the end of marriage, Fineman here tries to extrapolate out beyond changes in the family itself to other adjacent social institutions, considering what types of adjustments are necessary to achieve a more just and realistic allocation of responsibility for dependency. Sure to cause an uproar in fields ranging from law to economics and social welfare, The Autonomy Myth offers an important new way to think about society and its institutions.