Sexual Misgivings: Producing Un/Marked Knowledge in Neoliberal Marriage Promotion Policies

This article draws on what Brekhus has called “the sociology of the unmarked” to illuminate the construction of knowledge in the debate over heterosexual marriage's significance in society. It conducts a qualitative content analysis of archival data written by marriage advocates from 1990 to 2010 and finds that marriage advocates use discourses that incorporate unmarked assumptions concerning heterosexuality and marked knowledge about single motherhood and same-sex marriage that is linked to neoliberal ideals of individual responsibility and self-reliant family life. This article uncovers how cultural battles over marriage's significance are connected to a neoliberal discourse of individual responsibility, negotiated through boundary work that marks single motherhood and same-sex marriage as in need of special consideration.