As large segments of the Right and Left embrace protectionism, America’s once bipartisan free-trade consensus is castigated as the culprit of various social problems, especially the breakdown of the family.  

Pat Buchanan, a long-time proponent of economic nationalism, wrote in his 1998 book The Great Betrayal: “Broken homes, uprooted families, vanished dreams, delinquency, vandalism, crime — these are the hidden costs of free trade.” 

This narrative has become a cliché populist trope in recent years, with many high-profile voices attributing family dissolution to “neoliberal” globalization and the purported “deindustrialization” of the United States.  

But the role of trade liberalization in the breakdown of the American family was negligible for two primary reasons: 1) the decline in marriage and rise in divorce and illegitimacy rates preceded the era of economic globalization; and 2) technological change, not outsourcing, has been the premier factor in waning manufacturing employment.  

Out-of-wedlock births in the US have been increasing for nearly a century, trending upward long before the triumph of “neoliberalism.” In the years 1940-1965, the US illegitimacy rate more than tripled from 7.1 to 23.5 (births per 1,000 women). It continued to rise dramatically into the 21st century, with around 40 percent of American children presently born to unwed mothers each year.  

Widespread access to abortion and contraceptives did not reverse the spike in out-of-wedlock births. Why? A profound change in social norms occurred in post-war American life.  

A significant transformation was the disappearance of an old custom: the “shotgun marriage.” If an unmarried woman became pregnant, she and her partner once faced strong social pressures to marry prior to the birth of their child. This was not a uniquely American, ultra-conservative norm, but a “universal sociological law” in every culture, according to anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. 

A 1996 analysis co-authored by current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen found that the decline in shotgun marriages “has been a major contributor to the increase in the out-of-wedlock birth ratio for both whites and blacks.”  

Even in the late 1960s — the height of the counterculture movement that celebrated “free love” — unmarried couples who conceived were often still expected to exchange vows. As one San Francisco resident said, “If a girl gets pregnant you married her. There wasn’t no choice. So I married her.”

But the hippies’ social revolution eventually had its repercussions on American family life and social stability. While not every life is improved by such social pressures, Yellen and her co-authors concluded that the illegitimacy rate increase would have been 75 percent lower for whites and 60 percent lower for blacks in the years 1985-1989 had the shotgun marriage custom continued.

Illegitimacy is not just a crisis of less-educated populations in Rust Belt or inner-city communities. In recent years, a greater number of educated women are having children before, or apart from, marriage. Among women in their 30s with a bachelor’s degree or higher, one quarter have given birth out-of-wedlock, up from just 4 percent in 1996.  

In addition, the drift away from traditional marriage long precedes alleged deindustrialization. The marriage rate dropped sharply immediately after World War II, briefly recovered in the 1960s, and has fallen ever since, congruent with women’s educational and economic advancement. An analogous trend can be observed across the developed world, from Japan and South Korea to Australia and the European Union. 

The decline in marriage has coincided with an increase in cohabitation. For young American adults ages 18-24 — the approximate age range for which out-of-wedlock births are consistently the highest — cohabitation is now more common than living with a spouse.  

These developments reflect more progressive beliefs about marriage and sexuality, particularly among millennials and Gen Z. But they certainly cannot be ascribed to free trade.  

The data present a similar picture regarding the evolution of divorce. In the first half of the 20th century, the divorce rate more than doubled. It skyrocketed between 1960-1980 — the era of second-wave feminism and sexual liberation — when no-fault divorce was legalized in most US states, beginning with California in 1969. But even as globalization reshaped the American economy after 1980, the divorce rate has trended downward.  

Economic populists who chide the “market fundamentalism” of “the last 40 years” as the monolithic destroyer of American families and communities sound increasingly like Marxists, attributing social pathologies almost exclusively to material conditions. And their solutions, i.e. protectionism and industrial policy, are equally materialistic and facile — as if tariffs can reinvigorate Americans’ devotion to traditional social norms. 

The American family won’t be restored through impetuous jolts of economic populism.

Apart from legitimate national security concerns, the regression in US trade policy toward protectionism is based on the misconception that the American manufacturing base has been decimated and outsourced.  

In reality, US real manufacturing output continues to grow while manufacturing employment decreases. This is a result of manufacturing firms adopting new technologies that enable them to produce more with fewer workers. 

Even under NAFTA, Americans typically did not hear a “giant sucking sound,” but rather the whirring of cutting-edge machinery, prior to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. The introduction of a single robot reduced employment by 3.3 workers from 1990-2007, according to a study published in the Journal of Political Economy. 

In the years 2000-2010 — the so-called “China shock,” when US manufacturing employment declined precipitously — nearly 88 percent of manufacturing job losses were the result of productivity growth, chiefly through automation and information technology, another study concluded.

It wasn’t China that took so many of our jobs — it was the robots. And protectionism won’t solve the problem of technological unemployment. Higher prices via tariffs may encourage more firms to lay off workers and introduce labor-saving devices, thus exacerbating the problem. 

Even if protectionist measures were sound, efficient, and delivered on their promises, it is unlikely that replenishing Rust Belt communities with high-paying manufacturing jobs would remedy widespread social maladies. The positive economic shocks associated with “fracking booms” in recent decades, which boosted the earnings of blue-collar men, did not improve marriage or illegitimacy rates. 

It’s vital that we examine not just the economic alterations of the 1980s, but the radical social disruptions of the 1960s, to accurately diagnose our current societal ills. Imprudent economic policy changes that don’t address the root of these complex issues — or are palpably ignorant of existing economic realities — may only worsen our current situation.  

As Brookings Institution economist Isabel V. Sawhill pointed out, “a purely economic theory falls short as an explanation of the dramatic transformation of family life in the US in recent decades. Social norms, women’s changing roles, and sexual liberation have to be factored into the equation.” 

The American family won’t be restored through impetuous jolts of economic populism. Rather than abandoning free trade, we should cease financially incentivizing single parenthood and reduce excessive welfare provisions exploited by able-bodied adults. 

But ultimately, rebuilding the family as a cornerstone of American life will require great deliberation, time, and effort that transcends public policy. What’s most needed is a full-fledged revival of American civil society and a rediscovery of the Tocquevillian virtues which made America flourish and prosper for generations.