Segregated bathrooms, household breadwinner norms, fashion conventions, door holding and gendered toys. The list of controversial social norms could fill a book. These cultural customs elicit extreme responses on both sides. I don’t think customs should be declared either right or wrong merely because they are a social norm. I think we have to recognize that social norms have practical value and are potentially fallible.

Unfortunately, much of the public discourse I have witnessed treats social norms differently.

I have seen some friends filled with disgust at a woman’s choice to have children since “clearly” she was being compelled to do so by a social norm. At the other extreme, I have seen friends defend social norms with the same stubbornness that they would use to defend 2+2=4.

Social norms are confusing.

On the one hand, there is something apparently unjust about all social norms. It seems wrong to punish someone for not following a rule, which is at base arbitrary. Social norms do just this.

Every social norm seems to bring with it some social consequence. It wouldn’t be easy for me socially if I started wearing a dress all the time. But there isn’t anything intrinsically wrong about a man wearing a dress. It’s certainly hard for a stay-at-home dad not to feel judged for his decision. But there’s nothing immoral about men not being the breadwinners.

On the other hand, social norms make society – as a whole – a friendlier place. They affirm common and unspoken values with a kind of practical shorthand. The bygone tip of the hat was an arbitrary motion, but it expressed a far from arbitrary fact – namely, the dignity of the stranger passing by. If strangers did not communicate their respect for each other, it would be a harsh society. Yet it would be an overburdened society if strangers didn’t have a shorthand for communicating their respect.

It’s hard to imagine how there could be a society that doesn’t have social norms. Social norms are not only very pragmatic (e.g., for figuring out who’s going through the doorway first), but they seem, to some extent, inescapable. The fact that people naturally tend to do what they see others doing and what they themselves have done in the past entails that social norms will always resurrect – no matter how much society tries to repress them.

So what are we to make of social norms?

I think most of the harm that social norms may cause comes from people clinging too tightly to them – from people treating them as no different than the law, “Thou shalt not kill.” If society makes clear the particular value behind particular social norms, it can decide to what extent particular norms are obligatory and what excuses breaking a norm. This would both preserve the norm and prevent unfair social condemnation of those who break social norms.

I think most of the harm in rejecting social norms comes from neglecting their value. Rejecting social norms often, as the phrase goes, tosses the baby out with the bathwater. It tosses out the puritanical judgments of those who make no distinction between custom and moral necessity, but it tosses out the moral necessity too.

Perhaps we resolve much of the conflict by not talking so much about how social practices are “social norms” or “customary” but by considering how social practices serve a practical value.

Elliot Polsky can be reached at pols4319@stthomas.edu.