Christopher Lasch's thought-provoking essay can be divided into three parts, which can be commented on separately: first, a historical section in which he argues that the family as a sentimentally protected haven is a product of an early phase of capitalism; then, a descriptive section in which he argues that the market forces that provoked the family-as-haven into existence are inevitably destroying it; and finally, a prescriptive section in which he suggests ways to accommodate the marketplace to the needs of the family.
As to Lasch's historical overview, I think he overstates his case that the family-as-haven arose only with the Industrial Revolution. I agree with Lasch that the preindustrial family was "the basic unit of production" and a locus of "manufactures and agriculture," but I do not see how this necessarily prevented the family from being "an island of emotional security." On the contrary, a group consisting of parents and children, all in their various ways putting their shoulders to the wheel (literally, sometimes), seems to me a fertile seedbed of interpersonal solidarity. Lasch seems to imply that the family has to be useless in market terms in order to fulfill its role as a haven and an emotional refuge. It seems to me, on the contrary, that the more the family fits into the economic structure of the surrounding society, the more secure it is and, thus, the more emotional support it can provide to its members.
Lasch also errs in placing labels such as "island of emotional security" on monasteries. Monasteries were places for the living out of a vocation that was just as difficult as life in the marketplace, albeit very different. Perhaps many monasteries failed to keep up admissions standards; but in theory at least, they were not meant to be dude ranches for stressed-out worldlings, nor were they shortcuts to holiness for everyone, regardless of vocation. The monastic life was one vocation; family life was another (though, admittedly, it would not have occurred to a medieval theologian to use the word vocation in connection with family life). Families, unlike monasteries, were never meant to be places of permanent withdrawal from legitimate activity in the world.
As Lasch moves from the preindustrial to the modern era he is on firmer ground. It is quite true that the coming of industrial capitalism drew men out of the home and its immediate environs (fields, workshops, etc.) and drew them into factories. It thus caused a cleavage between the world of work and the world of family life. Nineteenth-century society, being animated by a Christian influence that was still strong, responded by becoming very protective of the home.
Had matters rested there, all might have been well. But, as Lasch points out, the ideology of individual autonomy, which is linked to market economics, began to eat away at the unity of the family. By the 1920s, family members were seen as individual consuming units with only transient, superficial links to one another. This theoretical trend ushered in practical trends that Lasch describes very well: the professionalization of childrearing ("experts") asserting their superiority over parents), the entrance of women into the paid workforce, and direct access to children by the huge and hedonistic entertainment industry.
At this point in his essay, I believe that Lasch (who, for all his cultural conservatism, has substantial ties to the political Left) shows excessive
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