The End of the Traditional Family?
By Nicole Dzuba
The “traditional family” has been put to rest. And we should not mourn its passing.
The pro-family pundits that lament its demise are almost certainly referring to the stultifying male-breadwinner family of yore or some more recent variation thereof. This male provider/female caregiver form of family came to life about 200 years ago with the birth of capitalism.
To be sure, it was not completely new. It carried forward patriarchal characteristics of earlier societies. Men remained in charge. But rather than being the bosses of household production, they became the family provider. Men went out to work for wages and women were confined to the domestic duties of the home. The work of women was unseen, unpaid and outside of socialized production. The result was women and their labour were devalued and their oppression was reinforced.
This patriarchal family unit served capitalism well. It was tasked with the responsibility of raising children. The next generation of workers was delivered free of charge to the capitalists. It provided a place where men could have some degree of control over their lives. This helped to compensate for the lack of control they had in the workplace. The family maintained women’s oppression in the home, and this oppression was reproduced in the workforce. Women could be used as a cheap and temporary source of labour when shortages arose, and could be employed to do the low paying jobs that were deemed ‘women’s work’.
By the early 20th century when Alexandra Kollontai was writing about the family, the “breadwinner’s” wage had proven to be insufficient to meet the needs of the family. The “woman found herself obliged to look for a wage and to knock at the factory door.” Many of these women were married and had no relief from the domestic duties at home. They carried the crushing double burden of full days in the factory followed by evenings of housework and mothering.
The New Family
Following the Second World War and emergence of women’s liberation struggles, the male-breadwinner institution went into decline. In its place, a variety of family forms have emerged. Many couples often avoid marriage altogether, living common-law or as single parents. Gay men and lesbians have challenged oppressive heterosexual norms and are more out as families and parents. Many women are choosing not to reproduce at all. There are also significant attempts by men and women to break with old gender patterns. For example, it is not uncommon for men to be the primary care givers or to take on household tasks of cooking or cleaning.
These are certainly improvements on the “traditional family” of past, but sexism and women’s oppression has not ended. As women enter the workforce, they become less dependent on men. Even though this has made it more possible to leave or avoid oppressive situations, violence against women remains widespread in our homes and on our streets. This is especially true for indigenous women in Canada. The effects of colonization, racism and poverty make Aboriginal women five times more likely than other Canadian women to die of violence.
Women continue to carry the double burden of work and home. This is especially true as cuts to health care, childcare and education force women to take on more unpaid work in the home caring for children, the ill and the elderly. Women continue to earn less than men, making only 80 percent of men’s wages for work of equal value. This economic factor plays big in decisions about who will stay home to care for children when childcare is not an option.
Even in its more liberated forms, the institution of the family is not thriving. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the family to provide members with emotional and material support.
A recent Statistics Canada study indicated that working parents are spending less time with family now than they were 20 years ago and that this decline can clearly be attributed to more time spent in the workplace. The entertainment industry and a spiritually empty array of commodities often becomes the substitute for family interaction.
As the challenges for families intensify, so does the pro-family discourse. The religious right for example would have us believe that the social problems of our time are the result of the decline of the romanticized female caregiver family. Their solution is to have it reinstated. Such regressive tactics will not in any way relieve the disparities that wreak havoc on society today. It is clear that pro-family politics such as these should be fought on all fronts.
Critique of the Family
But at this juncture, with overburdened families looking for support and pro-family crusaders rallying the troops for a return to “‘tradition”, it seems critical for the left to dust off its critique of the family. Frederick Engels blew the whistle on it 120 years ago in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. He showed that there was nothing natural about the family and that instead it should be seen as an evolving product of changing historical circumstances. It was not God-given; it was just one of the many ways in which relationships could be organized.
The radical liberation movement within second wave feminism built on this conclusion. They determined that the oppression they experienced in the family and in society at large was inextricably linked to the rise of capitalism. In this sense, both capitalism and the privatized family were seen as obstacles to women’s liberation.
By claiming the monopoly on ‘caring, sharing and loving’, the family made it less possible to enjoy meaningful relationships beyond its walls. Its isolating effects inhibited collective organising and limited people’s capacity to fight for change. The solution, as feminists of the women’s liberation movement saw it, was to transform all areas of society and create more liberating ways of organizing relationships and raising children.
Second wave feminism also inspired utopian visions like Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, which allows us to imagine what human relationships could be like in a radically democratic, egalitarian world. The world she describes is one where gender differences are eliminated along with unneeded gendered language. “He” and “she” was replaced by “per” for person. Homosexual and heterosexual desires were viewed no differently from one another. Parenting was done in groups of three co-mothers, made up of both men and women. Children were not raised in a protected sphere of childhood. Instead, they spent their days engaged in a variety of meaningful activities, where they made important contributions to the common good and cultivated their capacity for self-regulation and decision-making.
Such critical analysis of the family has faded to the point where the legitimacy of the institution is seldom questioned. This is not because it has overcome its failings; much of the critique still applies. The problem is that alternative ways of organizing our relationships remain underdeveloped. This leaves the family as the only place where people can expect to give and receive affection and support. This is especially true in times of drastic cuts to social services. The family picks up the pieces, reinforcing its status as the sole provider of love and affection and in turn blinds us to its important role in maintaining exploitation. It’s not surprising then that the working class supported the institution.
Building Alternatives
As we respond to the struggles of families today we should be mindful of these contradictions. Movements for change would not do well to attack the family, but should instead be part of a long-term commitment to social transformation that will provide alternatives outside the family. By actively building up other ways in which people can meet their needs, the family becomes less necessary. This means continuing to fight for more and better health services, housing options and childcare facilities that celebrate collective life.
Important to this process will be to expose the resistance of the ruling class to providing any sort of meaningful relief for families, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. Stephen Harper and his conservative government’s recently announced “family-friendly” budget provides a good example of this. Their “Working Families Tax Plan” is a promise of financial support for families. Yet the plan provides relief only in cases where taxable income is high enough to make use of it. While high-income Canadian families will enjoy some benefit from these measures, those with low-income will end up with only impressive words that do nothing but affirm their right to continue to take care of themselves.
The future of the family is yet to be determined. But the struggle of women against oppression has left us with a clear sense that true liberation cannot be delivered by the family. This can only come through radical changes in the way we organize our relationships and meet our needs. As Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh put it in their account of the The Anti-Social Family, the way forward should seek to “transform not the family, but the society that needs it.”
Nicole Dzuba is a member of the New Socialist group in Winnipeg.
