Presented at the European Regional Dialogue for The Doha International Conference for the Family Geneva, Switzerland, 23-25 August 2004

ARTICLE 16, paragraph 3 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state." This is the only point in the Universal Declaration where the content-rich, philosophicallyloaded word, "natural," appears. How did this word as a modifier to "family" find its way into the Declaration? What does it mean? And finally: Do the social sciences offer support for the use of this term?

The initial drafting of the Universal Declaration, by staff and members of The Commission on Human Rights, occurred during the early months of 1948 in this very city, Geneva. A reference to "nature" first appeared in debate over Article 1. (The final text of which reads: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.") The original, staff-prepared draft of the Declaration, just as this final version, contained no direct reference to religion or to metaphysics as the source of human rights. However, for a time during the drafting process, Article 1 did acquire a reference to "nature." It was at the Second Session in Geneva that delegates from France and the Philippines jointly proposed that the second sentence be amended to read: "[Human beings] are endowed by nature with reason and conscience." There is some evidence to suggest that the two delegates intended these words as a reference to Christian natural law doctrine. The change won approval. (Morsink, 1999, p. 284).

When the draft Declaration reached the United Nations Third Committee in the autumn of 1948, this appeal to natural law still remained in Article 1. Several nations then tried to push the idea further. The Brazilian delegation proposed to amend this sentence by a direct reference to the Creator: "Created in the image and likeness of God, they [human beings] are endowed with reason and conscience." The Dutch delegation proposed adding a reference to "man's divine origin and immortal destiny." Neither amendment was actually voted on, but these efforts had the unintended effect of revealing the uncertain metaphysical content of the words, "by nature." Some Christian delegates now wondered if the reference would be read as deriving not so much from the Catholic "natural law" idea, as from the materialistic "law of nature" advanced by the 18th Century French philosophers (such as, Rousseau). The Chinese delegation now objected to the inclusion of Western metaphysical language while excluding Eastern ideals such as "good manners, decorum, propriety." Delegates from the Soviet Union, seeking a purely secular document, noted that there were many atheists in the world who would be troubled by any metaphysical language. In the end, the Third Committee voted 26 to four (with nine abstentions) to delete the words, "by nature." In effect, the Committee bargained away this reference to "nature" in order to avoid a direct vote on "God." Any "metaphysics" behind the origin of "rights" were relegated to inferences in words found in the Preamble and Article 1, such as "inherent," "born," and "inalienable.".

And yet, by this time the word "natural" could also be found in Article 16, as a modifier to the "group unit" known as "the family." Its existence there was largely due to the influence of two men: René Cassin and Charles Malik.

Cassin of France was a specialist in international law. He served on The Commission on Human Rights and had a large hand in shaping the early drafts of the Universal Declaration. While himself Jewish, Cassin was highly sympathetic to post World War II Christian Democracy, which held (in the words of Etienne Gilson) that: From his birth to his death, each man is involved in a multiplicity of natural social structures outside of which he could neither live nor achieve his full of all, there is the family, the child's natural place of growth. (Einaudi & Goguel, 1952, p. 126)

Cassin also emphasized the derivation of the human rights idea from Holy Scripture. Inspired by the idea of "one God, father of all men," Cassin reported, the Jews held "rather early a vivid repugnance to serfdom." Jesus and Paul, he added, taught that "there is no more distinction between Jew and Gentile, between free men and slaves. All form one large family, one human family." (Cassin, 1971, pp. 15-17) All the same, Cassin maintained that the 18th Century Human Rights Declarations (such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man) had overly exalted individualism, which had led in turn to abuses of liberty. Reflecting Christian Democratic doctrine, Cassin emphasized that individual rights and liberties must be understood "as embedded within social groups and bonds" such as "family, household, vocation, city, and nation." (Cassin, 1972, pp. 105-08)

Charles Habib Malik was born in a Lebanese village to Greek Orthodox Arab parents. He studied at an American Protestant mission school, the American University of Beirut, Harvard University (under the tutelage of Alfred North Whitehead), and Freiburg University (as a student of Martin Heidegger). He returned to Lebanon in 1937 to teach philosophy at the American University. While a devout, "intensely prayerful" Christian, he also worked to build bridges between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and between Middle Eastern and Western cultures. The newly independent nation of Lebanon tapped him in 1946 to serve as its Ambassador to the United States . . . and to the United Nations.

Gaining a reputation for independence and fairness, Malik held in 1948 three positions critical to the composition and fate of the Universal Declaration. Already named Rapporteur–or secretary–of the Commission on Human Rights, he also won election in February as President of the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and in the autumn as Chairman of the UN's "Third Committee" (dealing with Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Affairs). In short, Malik found himself (in his own words):

. . . as Rapporteur submitting to myself, as President of the Economic and Social Council at its summer session in Geneva, the draft of the declaration prepared by the Commission, and then submitting, as President of ECOSOC, again to myself as Chairman of the Third Committee, the draft text as passed on by ECOSOC. (Glendon, 2001, pp. 124-30)

Malik's opportunities for influence on the document were clearly many. His most notable contribution may, in fact, be the "natural" family clause found in Article 16.

Early drafts of the Declaration had noted the need for special protection of marriage, family, and children, but in obtuse ways. Language from the Soviet delegation proposed that "marriage and the family shall be protected by the state and regulated by law . . . on the basis of equal rights for men and women." Consistent with Communist doctrine, this approach would actually subordinate the family to both state and feminist ambitions. As USSR delegate Alexandre Bogomolov explained: "in marriage in the twentieth century the free will of the two parties was no longer the essential question. The question of marriage should be examined from the protection which the state must give the home, and the main emphasis should be placed on the protection of children." (Morsink, 1999, p. 254). In this formulation, parental rights and family autonomy were clearly of little concern. Cassin did craft the stipulation that a workers wage "shall give a decent standard of living to the worker and his family"– namely, the goal of a "family wage"–and another that "Mothers and children have the right to special regard, care and resources." All the same, the family's overall position in the early draft Declaration was subordinate to what might be called "post family" ideas and interests.

All that changed with key interventions by Cassin and Malik, through Article 16. At the Commission's first drafting session, Cassin took the "family protection" clause favored by the Communists and proposed the addition of the phrase "and society"; it became: "Marriage and the family shall be protected by the State and society." This seemingly modest change actually reversed the thrust of the sentence. As Cassin explained, "all kinds of societies were meant, including churches," so introducing the institutions of civil society on a level equal to that of the state. Just as importantly, this little change-of-phrase transformed the state's role from one of implied superiority over parents and children to one of being joint protector of the now implicitly pre-existing family.

At the next drafting session of the Human Rights Commission, Malik further advanced the verbal revolution. He proposed replacing the existing marriage clause with what one commentator calls "two very metaphysical sentences":

The family deriving from marriage is the natural and fundamental group unit of society. It is endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights antecedent to all positive law and as such shall be protected by the State and Society.

Minutes kept from this session offer Malik's explanation for the proposed change, expressed here in the third person:

He [Malik] maintained that society was not composed of individuals, but of groups, of which the family was the first and most important unit; in the family circle the fundamental human freedoms and rights were originally nurtured....Regarding the second sentence..., he said that he had used the word "Creator" because he believed that the family did not create itself....He also contended that the family was endowed with inalienable rights, rights which had not been conferred upon it by the caprice of men, and he cited the use of the phrase "endowed by nature" [at that time still] in Article I as a precedent for the wording. (Morsink, 1999, p. 255)

The first proposed sentence won Commission approval. However, following complaints by Soviet delegate Bogomolov over the use of religious terminology, the second sentence was rejected. All the same, the surviving word natural carried here, through its initial linkage to "the Creator," an implicit reference to a divinely created and universal human nature.

At the next session, both the American and British delegates argued – curiously - that the whole of Article 16 - dealing with marriage and family - should be dropped, suggesting that its contents were already covered by clauses regarding free association and social security. Cassin objected, saying that he "did not think it was possible to disregard human groups and to consider each person only as an individual." Malik added that "The family was the cradle of all human rights and liberties. It was in the family that everyone learned to know his rights and duties and it would be inexplicable if everything were mentioned except the family's right to existence." (Morsink, 1999). The Anglo-Americans retreated; the French Jew and the Arab Christian prevailed.

Still, Malik's reference to the "natural" family stirred up debate at each step of the process. Importantly, at the Commission's third drafting session, the delegate from Uruguay specifically urged deletion of the word "natural" from the new sentence, arguing that "the essential point was to state that the family was the fundamental group unit of society and that it was the cell around which the state was formed; the way in which the family was constituted was of secondary importance." This last passage is a key part of Article 16's "legislative history." For in rejecting this idea, in choosing to retain the word "natural," the architects of the Universal Declaration did recognize "the family" as having a normative, traditional form. Indeed, contemporary homosexual rights advocates have rightly noted that such a deletion of "natural" from Article 16(3) would have protected the right of nonheterosexuals to form a family. (Morsink, 1999, p. 256)

In the end, though, Article 16, paragraph 3, emerged as we now know it, with the word natural still there, with family understood as meaning married and heterosexual, and with society now taking a significant linguistic precedence over state: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state."

Other questions arise, though: Was this more than an arbitrary victory of one philosophy or one metaphysics -that shared by Cassin and Malik - over others? Or was it also an indirect victory for the truths of social science?

Some scholars and observers would surely say no. A strong, and perhaps dominant, opinion among social scientists during the 20th Century held that their work laid bare the backwardness of the traditional family model and its fated disappearance under conditions of modernity. For example, the first important Social History of the American Family, published in 1917, caught this spirit. "American history consummates the disappearance of the wider familism and the substitution of the parentalism of society," wrote social historian Arthur Calhoun. He added:

The new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme. (Calhoun, 1945, pp. 165-175.)

Sociologist William Ogburn, of the University of Chicago, also saw the family doomed by "material culture." Productive family functions passed over to factories, while "the educational and productive functions of the family" went to government because state institutions had "greater technical efficiency." In 1932, he reported that American homes "are [already] merely �parking places' for parents and children who spend their active hours elsewhere." (Recent Social Trends in the United States, 1933)

Also writing in the 1930's, the Swedish economist and Social Democrat Gunnar Myrdal underscored the radical nature of social science, relative to the family and other traditional institutions. There were, he insisted, no lasting economic or social laws, no "natural" institutions, for the whole of human institutional life was a variable. Moreover, Myrdal held that the scientific analysis of social problems pointed toward the use of preventive policies, where the goal was to prevent social problems, not cure them after they appeared. He said that such preventive social policy led to "the natural marriage" of the correct technical with the politically radical solution. As such, the social sciences–properly used–were in fact subversive of traditional institutions. (Myrdal, 1932, No. 3 & No. 4) When Gunnar Myrdal and his wife Alva turned their attention to family policy in their famed 1934 book, Kris I befolkningsfragan (Crisis in the Population Question), they argued that social science pointed toward a radical reconstruction of the family unit, based on absolute gender equality and the socialization of most of the costs and tasks of raising children. (Alva & Gunnar Myrdal, 1934)

And yet, this close identification of sociology with radical politics during much of the 20th Century may, in fact, be based on error, or on the subordination of true science to ideology. As Robert Nisbet's extraordinary work, The Sociological Imagination, reminds us, all of the great European founders of sociology were actually inspired by socially conservative impulses or questions. Auguste Comte, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ferdinand Tönnies, Frederic LePlay, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Herbert Spencer: all found inspiration, direct or indirect, from the anti-Enlightenment, so-called "reactionary" writers of 19th Century France, social critics such as Bonald, de Maistre, Chateaubriand. They were drawn to a new analysis of social order by the great disruptions of the industrial revolution, and the excesses of individualism. According to Nisbet, the very unitideas of sociology–analysis of family, community, tradition, authority, status, the sacred, alienation - all show "an unusually close relation" with "the principal tenets of philosophical conservatism." As Nisbet concludes:

The [creative] paradox of sociology...lies in the fact that although it falls, in its objectives and in the political and scientific values of its principal figures, in the mainstream of modernism, its essential concepts and its implicit perspectives place it much closer...to philosophical conservatism. (Nisbet, 1966, p. 11, 17) Accordingly, social science done well and true might actually be expected to reveal the necessary, irreplaceable position of the "natural family." And this is, I would argue, the primary finding of the social sciences over the last twenty-five years. In terms of adult well-being, child well-being, and social wellbeing, the social sciences point to children living with their two natural, biological parents in a married couple home as the ideal setting for healthy, happy, and enriching human lives. Any deviation from this model -cohabitation, adoption, divorce, out-ofwedlock birth, remarriage, same-sex marriage - raises the probability of negative outcomes.

Indeed, the social gifts of an intact first marriage are vast. Children growing up with their married natural parents are–when compared to all other possible arrangements–much less likely to be sexually, physically, or mentally abused, (Mcloskey, et.al, 2002, pp. 53-74; Daly & Wilson, 1985, pp. 197- 209; Smith, Hanson & Noble, 1980, pp. 205-225) to attempt suicide, (Stack, May 1985, pp. 431-447; Moens, et.al, 1988, pp. 279-285; Stack, 1990, pp. 361- 368) to abuse alcohol or take mind-altering drugs, ("The NHSDA Report," July 13, 2001; Chein, Gerard, Lee & Rosenfeld, 1964; Kandel, 1980, pp. 235-285; Brook, Whiteman & Gordon, 1983, 269- 288) and to commit delinquent or criminal acts. (Singer & Flannery, 2000, pp. 785-790; Johnson, et.al., 2001, pp. 22-40; Pirog-Good, 1988, pp. 527-547; Figueira-McDonough, 1993, pp. 109-132; Knight & Prentby, 1987, pp. 403-426; Marquis, 1992, pp. 468- 470; Beck & Kline, 1988) Married parents are healthier, in mind and body, than their nevermarried, cohabitating, or divorced counterparts. (Kessler, Borges & Walters, 1999, pp. 617-626; Prior & Hayes, 2001, pp. 401-406; McDonough, Walters & Strohschein, 2002, pp. 767-782; Yu & Goldman, 1990, pp. 233-250; Kisker & Goldman, 1990, pp. 135-152; Anson, 1988, pp. 201-208; Rosengren, Wedal & Wilhelmsen, 1989, pp. 54-63) The children of the married are also more likely to be healthy and happy and to do well in school than children reared in any other setting. These gifts result in stronger communities, a more engaged citizenry, higher government revenues, and lower government expenses. (Poppel, 2000, pp. 269-290; Cookston, 1999, pp. 107-127; Kleinman & Kessel, 1987, pp. 749-753; Davison, 1990; Saucier & Ambert, 1983, pp. 403-411; Zojonc, 1976, pp. 227- 236; Santrock, 1972, pp. 457-469; Biller, 1974; Marjoribanks, 1972, pp. 103-109)

As a corollary, divorce has a strong negative effect on children. All measures of child wellbeing show, on average, negative turns following the divorce decree. (Amato & DeBaer, 2001, pp. 1038- 1051; Mauldon, 1990, pp. 431-436; Simons, et.al., 1999, pp. 1020-1033) Among the former spouses, moreover, gauges of physical and mental health also deteriorate after divorce, underscoring the broad social costs of breaking apart the home. (Matthews & Gump, 2002, pp. 309-315; McManus & DiPrete, 2001, pp. 246-268; Smith, Mercy & Conn, 1988, pp. 78-80) Charles Malik's original formulation of Article 16, paragraph 3 of the Universal Declaration - "The family deriving from marriage is the natural and fundamental group unit of society" - turns out to be an especially good summary of the social science evidence.

Further evidence for the "natural" status of the traditional married couple with children comes from contemporary work in the fields of paleoanthropology and evolutionary psychology. Writing in the journal Science, for example, paleoanthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy argues that "the unique sexual and reproductive behavior of man" - not growth of the cortex or brain - "may be the sine qua non of human origin." The socalled human "nuclear family" was not the product of, say, 19th Century European bourgeois culture. Rather, the paleo-anthropological record shows that the pairing-off of male and female "hominids" into something very much like marriage reaches back over three million years, to the time when our purported ancestors left the trees on the African savannah and started walking on two legs. As Lovejoy concludes:

. . . both advances in material culture and the Pleistocene acceleration in brain development are sequelae to [i.e., follow after] an already established hominid character system, which included intensified parenting and social relationships, monogamous pair bonding, specialized sexual-reproductive behavior, and bipedality. [This model] implies that the nuclear family and human sexual behavior may have their ultimate origin long before the dawn of the Pleistocene. (Lovejoy, 1981, p. 348)

Other evidence supports this conclusion. A 2003 paper featured in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science examines "skeletal size dimorphism" (that is, the difference in average male and female size) in Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid or human ancestor said to have lived 3-4 million years ago. Among the apes and other mammals, sexual dimorphism - difference in size - is greatest when sexual coupling is random or where one male accumulates numerous females. Dimorphism is least when male and female pair off in monogamous, lasting bonds. Overturning earlier assessments, this new study finds that Australopithecus males and females were nearly the same size, no different than men and women today. According to the Kent State research team, this implies that this human ancestor was monogamous, with male and female in a permanent pair bond, "a social complex including male provisioning driven by female choice." (Reno, Meindl, McCollum & Lovejoy, 2003, pp. 9404-9409)

Ronald Immerman of Case Western Reserve University reports in a 2003 issue of the journal, Evolutionary Psychology, that from the very beginning, our distinctly human ancestors showed a unique reproductive strategy where a female exchanged sexual exclusivity for special provisioning by a male. "This sharing of resources from man-to-woman is a universal," Immerman reports. It appears that women chose men not on the basis of physical size, but because of male skills in provisioning and loyalty: that is, women have bonded to men who reliably returned to the cave, hut, or house with fresh meat (or a good pay check). At the same time, the ethnographic "data suggest an independent man (to) child affiliative bond which is part of Homo's sapiens bio-cultural heritage," one found nowhere in the animal kingdom. Immerman explains this trait, as well, by evolutionary selection. Besides looking for reliable providers, women "were simultaneously selecting for traits which would forge a social father: a man who would form attachments bond with his young and who would be psychologically willing to share resources with those young." (Immerman, 2003, pp. 138-54)

In short, new research guided by evolutionary theory holds that humans, from our very origin as unique creatures on earth, have been defined by heterosexual monogamy involving long-term pair bonding (that is, marriage in a mother-father-child household) and resting on the special linkage of the reproductive and the economic. The evolution of marriage occurred–but only once–3 to 4 million years ago when "to be human" came to mean "to be conjugal." All the other cultural variations surrounding marriage are mere details. "Change" is the mark of cultural strengthening or weakening around a constant, natural human model, built on marriage.

These examples underscore the validity of the phrase: "The family is the natural...unit of society." Charles Malik proposed this phrasing in the context of a metaphysical statement about the order of the Creation, and the place of the family within it. Yet the word "natural" is also in harmony with the research findings of modern social science, a testimony to the wisdom of the people and the process which crafted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

*Allan Carlson is President of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, Distinguished Fellow for Family Policy Studies at The Family Research Council, and International Secretary for The World Congress of Families. His books include The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis, The "American Way": Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity, and Society, Family, Person: The American School of Alternative Sociology (in Russian).