It's difficult not to notice that the vast majority of heroes in Atlas Shrugged are unmarried and have no kids. - Dagny Taggart - unmarried, no kids - John Galt - unmarried, no kids - Francisco - unmarried, no kids - Hugh Akston - unmarried, no kids - Ellis Wyatt - unmarried, no kids - Quentin Daniels - unmarried, no kids - (many others)There are a few notable exceptions: - Rearden is married but his wife is a malicious looter and his brother is a mooch and a weasel. - Ragnar Danneskjöld is married to Kay Ludlow, and there are a few children in the valley.But there is certainly a trend and commonality that the heroes don't have families. Why is this? Is Rand anti-family? We know she was happily married, but I believe had no kids. Perhaps family connections in Atlas would have presented plot difficulties? Is she making a statement that families get in the way of industrial achievement?
Of course she was not anti-family. Her major works including The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged had a very specific political and intellectual purpose, which was to reveal the hypocrisy and danger of socialist totalitarian government; not to devolve into trite and irrelevant content that would distract from the purpose of her stories.
