The phrase "family values" is tossed out so much these days that it is beyond being a cliche. Everyone invokes the notion: First Lady Hillary Clinton is on the bestseller list with her ideas; talk shows are reverberating with the cacophony; and on the campaign trail, all the presidential candidates are debating the strains on the nuclear family.
But that's talk. For radical change in the laws that help shape families, the serious action is starting to emerge on the stages of state legislatures. It started last week in Michigan, jumped this week to Iowa, and waiting in the wings are Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington. They are all considering some sort of legislation to make it harder for couples to get married and divorced.
To many social critics, nothing less than a counterrevolution is underway. "Family values has been used and misused for all kinds of purposes, but the serious debate is about family structure," said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank. "I think the emergence of divorce law reform reflects that the debate is over and we as a society have now made up our minds to take action."
Republican Jessie Dalman is serving her third term in Michigan's House of Representatives but last week she became an overnight sensation. By introducing, at a St. Valentine's Day news conference, a package of bills that would scrap and revamp Michigan's 1972 no-fault divorce law, Dalman opened the door to a reform movement that seeks nothing less than a wholesale remodeling of the American way of marriage.
Dalman contends that no-fault divorce, once seen as a panacea for couples trapped in loveless marriages, has "weakened the fabric of the family." And the early attention awarded her legislation, which would retain no-fault only when both parties consent to a divorce, dramatizes both a growing dissatisfaction with the way couples dissolve a marriage in this country and sharp differences on ways to repair the damage.
A former American history teacher, Dalman, 62, chairs the House Higher Education Committee and a subcommittee on divorce, which will begin deliberations on the proposal next week. Her legislation was shaped by a year of statewide public hearings, including suggestions from the Michigan Family Forum and the Michigan Catholic Conference.
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