In due course, an army of specialists will gather round Between Sex and Power, like so many expert sports fans, to pore over its multitudinous argument. What can a layman say, beyond the magnitude of its achievement? Tentatively, perhaps only this. In the architectonic of the book, there is something of a gap between the notion of a family system and the triad of patriarchy, marriage and fertility that follows it. In effect, the way these three interconnect to form the structure of any family system goes unstated in the separate treatment accorded each. But if we consider the trio as an abstract combination, it would seem that logically--as the order in which Therborn proceeds to them itself suggests--patriarchy must command the other two as the "dominant," since it will typically lay down the rules of marriage and set the norms of reproduction. There is, in other words, a hierarchy of determinations built into any family system.

This has a bearing on Therborn's conclusions. His final emphasis falls, unhesitatingly, on the divergence between major family systems today. After stressing continuing worldwide dissimilarities between fertility and marital regimes, he concedes that "the patriarchal outcome is somewhat different." His own evidence suggests that this way of putting it is an understatement. For what his data show is a powerful process of convergence, far from complete in extent but unequivocal in direction. But if the variegated forms of patriarchy are what historically determined the main parameters of marriage and reproduction, wouldn't any ongoing decline of them across family systems toward a common juridical zero point imply that birthrates and marriage customs are eventually likely to converge, in significant measure, at their own pace too? That seems, at any rate, a possible deduction sidestepped by Therborn, but which his story of fertility appears to bear out. For what is clear from his account is that the astonishing fall in birthrates in most of the underdeveloped world has been the product of a historic collapse in patriarchal authority, as its powers of life and death have been transferred to the state, which now determines how many are born and how many survive.

What, then, of marriage? Here, certainly, contrasts remain greatest. In speaking of "the core of romantic freedom and commitment in the modern European (and New World) family system," Therborn implies this remains specific to the West. But while the caste system or Sharia law plainly preclude extempore love, does it show no signs of spreading, as ideal or realization, in the big cities of East Asia or Latin America? The imagination of urban Japan, he shows, is already half-seized with it. Not, of course, that the decline of marriage in Western Europe, with the advent of mass cohabitation, has so far been replicated anywhere else. But here a different sort of question might be asked. Is it really the case that the negative rates of reproduction that have accompanied this pattern are as unwished-for as Therborn suggests? He relies on the discrepancy between surveys in which women explain how many children they expect and those they actually have. But this could just mean that in practice their desire for children proved weaker than for a well-paid job, a satisfying career or more than one lover at a time. Voters in the West regularly say they want better schools and healthcare, and in principle expect to pay for them, and commentators on the left often pin high hopes on such declarations. But once such citizens get to the polling booth they tend to stick to lower taxes. The same kind of self-deception could apply to children. If so, it would be difficult to say European marriage was in such good shape, since there would be no stopping place in sight for its plunge of society into an actuarial abyss.

Therborn resists such thoughts. Although Between Sex and Power pays handsome homage to the role of Communism in the dismantling of patriarchy in the twentieth century, it displays no specially Marxist view of the family. Engels would not have shared the author's satisfaction that marriage is flourishing, however ductile the forms it has adopted. In expressing his attachment to them, Therborn speaks with the humane voice of a level-headed Swedish reformism that he understandably admires, without having ever altogether subscribed to it. In looking on the bright side of the EU marital regime, he is also consistent with the case he has made in the past for its welfare states, which have survived in much better condition than its critics or mourners believe. It is in the same spirit, one might say, that he insists on the persistent divergence of family systems across the world. Uniformity is the one condition every part of the political spectrum deplores. The most unflinching neoliberals invariably explain that universal free markets are the best of all guardians of diversity. Social democrats reassure their followers that the capitalism to which they must adjust is becoming steadily more various. Traditional conservatives expatiate on the irreducible multiplicity of faiths and civilizations. Homogeneity has no friends, at least since the French Hegelian philosopher Alexandre Kojève prepared the end of history for Francis Fukuyama. But when any claim becomes too choral, a flicker of doubt is indicated. It scarcely affects the magnificence of this book. In it, you can find the largest changes in human relations of modern times.

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