nal's Robert Bartley. Thus Rita Kramer, in her contribution to the heated debate about the family, In Defense of the Family (1983), blamed the plight of the family on the social service professions, on liberal intellectuals proclaiming their permissive morality as scientific truth, on the mass media, and on the bureaucratic welfare state. Capitalism, she argued—"which gets a bum rap on this issue"—had nothing to do with the growing instability of the family.

In The War over the Family (1983), Brigitte Berger and Peter Berger presented a more elaborate version of this analysis. The family debate, the Bergers argued, grew out of the "class struggle" between the business class and the knowledge class, the "new class" of bureaucrats, administrators, and professional experts. The new class attempted to extend its control over marriage, sex, and child rearing in the same way that it had extended its control over private enterprise. In its struggle against the bourgeoisie (a class that now included the workers as well), it spoke a new language of its own, characterized by the "obscurantist use of allegedly scientific terms." By setting up a barrier between professionals and laymen, this impenetrable jargon of expertise reinforced the "claims of the professional to superior wisdom and therefore to status, high income, and possibly even political power." The Bergers advocated a state that would respect "private preferences" instead of attempting to remodel the family according to preconceived theories of child psychology and moral development. The state's responsibility for children ended with adequate nutrition, health care, and education; and even these were more likely to be assured by the market than by an elaborate welfare state. A system of educational vouchers, for example, would provide families with a range of institutional alternatives and thereby introduce market forces into the "monopolistic situation" created by a uniform system of public schools. The best way to assure moral order and economic progress, in short, was to curb the power of the new class.

-517-