Mark Silk claims "it is anything but clear that strengthening our commitment to our families is a good thing":
In a famous study half a century ago, the political scientist Edward Banfield coined the term "amoral familism" to describe how family solidarities in a southern Italian village decreased engagement in and trust of the political community as a whole. Rather than see their futures wrapped up in the success of their country and civic community, the villagers sought to maximize their family's situation by any means necessary, no matter what the cost to the larger community.
Over the past few years, economists studying social capital around the world have been studying the question anew, and have generally found that Banfield was on to something. In an important paper, Alberto Alesina and Paola Giuliano looked at 80 countries and found that those where the family ties were weakest tended to have the strongest levels of civic and political engagement and generalized social trust. And vice versa. The top performers in terms of civic engagement were northern European countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Germany. At the bottom were the Philippines, Venezuela, Egypt, and Zimbabwe. The U.S. (the greatest democracy in the history of the universe) came in 50th.
And not all great presidents were family men, as Michael Kazin points out:
Think of the three icons whose miniature, exchangeable portraits you carry around in your wallet. George Washington had no children of his own, and he placed devotion to his work over devotion to his wife; exasperated by all the official dinners she was forced to attend, Martha complained, "I am more like a state prisoner." Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel died two weeks after he was elected in 1828; the couple had no offspring. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were content enough until they moved into the White House. But in 1862, the death, from typhoid, of their young son Willie hurtled both husband and wife into a serious depression. Mary took to visiting spiritualists in order to "talk" to Willie, berated Abe in public when she thought he was flirting with other women, and went on costly shopping sprees in the middle of the Civil War. And that’s not to mention Thomas Jefferson, a widower whose most enduring sexual relationship was probably with one of his slaves.
The Dish 