215 Soulmates, Paradoxes, and the Significance of the Family for American Political Economy Catherine Ruth Pakaluk I N J UNE OF 2009 ONE OF THE MOST PROMINENT conservative governors in the United States disappeared without notice. Where he went—and what he later said about it—illustrate a profound cultural shit in pub- lic and private attitudes regarding marriage. his shit, documented and explored by leading American sociologists, confronts a popular misconception about marriage, namely, that romantic, individualized conceptions of marriage have strengthened marriage. Analogously, sig- niicant work by social scientists on how children are faring in the “post- marriage” culture, and trends in the self-reported happiness of men and women, also present paradoxically in light of accepted myths about mar- riage and family in America. In this paper I will do three things. First, I will present three key sets of indings that challenge common misconceptions about the family in America. Second, in light of these indings and appealing to recent demographic work, I will argue that the real “fault-lines” in American society are “familial” and not political, raising questions about the dynamic relationship between patterns of marriage and family formation on the one hand, and political ideology on the other. Finally, I will argue that new evidence on economic mobility uncovered by the Equality of Opportunity Project in 2014 supports the provocative thesis, advanced earlier by Nobel-laureate Robert Fogel, that the family contributes “spiri- tual” capital necessary for economic success, without which egalitarian