Feminist Campaign to Destroy the Nuclear Family

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Henry Herrera

Telephone: +1-301-801-0608

Feminist Campaign to Destroy the Nuclear Family

August 12, 2026 – The nuclear family remains the bedrock of every society. Numerous studies conclusively show that married persons are happier, live longer, and enjoy higher incomes. Children from intact families have better grades, enjoy better emotional health, and are less likely to fall into poverty (1).

Couples in a stable, married relationship experience lower levels of domestic violence, as well (2). For example, a study in Latin America found that for nearly every one of the 47 types of intimate partner violence examined, marriage is associated with a lower incidence of violence (3).

Marxism, however, views marriage very differently. As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the 1840s, the “wife and children are the slaves of the husband” and “The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife.”

Feminists soon began to expound the same theme. These are just a few of many examples (4):

“We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” – Robin Morgan
“Being a housewife makes women sick.” – Jessie Bernard
“The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women.” – Helen Sullinger and Nancy Lehmann

In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, sparking the rise of second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism went beyond equal voting rights to address family roles, reproductive rights, and more.

Not coincidentally, beginning around 1970, marriage rates around the world began to decline. In the United Kingdom, for example, marriage rates fell from 8.5/1,000 in 1970 to 3.7/1,000 in 2019. Country-specific charts can be viewed for every county in the OECD (5).

The passage of domestic violence laws further accelerated the marriage decline, as men began to view marriage as a tactic of feminist entrapment.

In Spain, for example, the marriage rate in 2000 was 5.4/1,000 — higher than the European average. Then the one-sided “VioGen” law was enacted in 2004 that ignored female-perpetrated violence. Six years later, the marriage rate had plummeted to 3.6/1,000, leaving Spain with one of the lowest marriage rates on the continent (6).

Currently, feminists employ a variety of tactics in their quest to discredit, weaken, and destroy the family:

Continued framing of marriage as “exploitative” of women.
Support for no-fault divorce laws.
Promotion of alternative family structures such as companionate marriage, communal child-rearing, and women-only households
Full legal recognition of non-heterosexual marriages

Lawmakers and family advocates should not underestimate the long-term effects of the dissolution of the institution of marriage. The end of marriage portends the end of society as we know it.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance – DAVIA — unites 235 member organizations from 44 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. DAVIA seeks to ensure that domestic violence and abuse policies are science-based, family-affirming, and gender-inclusive. https://endtodv.org/davia/ DAVIA welcomes contributions: https://endtodv.org/donate/

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