ladyshinga:

pathlesspagan:

dollsahoy:

queeranarchism:

itsfridaybutimstillaro:

tracyalexander:

asciiheart:

amal-wa-ahlam:

yourownpetard:

proudblackconservative:

asciiheart:

The nuclear family is probably the greatest enabler of child abuse, ever.

Putting two people in complete control of another person (who is particularly vulnerable and has few legal rights) and then having no oversight for the whole arrangement is the absolute worst idea.

Families are garbage.

Hahaha wtf

I wouldn’t even know where to start with this. omg.

OP, what would you propose as an alternative to families?

communal child raising

less isolated familial structures in general

children being made aware of how they should and shouldn’t be treated

Some form of child protection services that don’t just believe the parents and assume a child is lying when they report abuse

more legal and counselling services made available to children

I don’t get people that are like “lol, what? that’s so weird, lets laugh at the very notion that traditional families are abusive”.

communal child raising is the traditional family. 70-100 years ago 4 generations lived together in the same house, having 4 grandparents, 6 aunts and 15 cousins around every day was normal.

Things that should be mentioned:

– These communities are not necessarily connected by an biological ties. In a lot of these multigenerational ‘families’, including people in the family who are not relatives or married into the family is totally normal. This has always created a lot more space to support people without families, support people who do now want to partner up and to create communities in which couples who can not have children (like some queer couples but not all & other couples too) can be a part of child raising. 

– Having a lot more young people around often means young people learn from each other. In many cultures young people form a non-hierarchial group that learns together and can do a great deal without adult supervision. 

The nuclear family doesn’t just facilitate abuse, it facilitates hierarchy. It’s a training school for obedience to authority. 

Now, which system would push such a training school strongly so it could get docile obedient citizens? Which system whould push the nuclear family. 

I’m not saying it’s capitalism but it’s capitalism. 

And then there’s the fact that the 2 parent, nuclear family can be most easily pushed into the pattern where one adult works an extremely exhausting job many hours a day that leaves that adult hardly capable of doing anything else, while the other adult takes on all the other things that adult would otherwise have done: care for children, clean the living space, prepare food, prepare clean clothing, etc. for free. What we know as traditional gender roles. 

This way capitalism gets one intensely loyal worker who feels ‘responsible’ for ‘supporting a family’ while all the work to keep that worker going is done for free by an unpaid worker in the home. 

And, you know, communities need a lot less stuff. A community of 50 can do just fine with one or two hammers. 25 nuclear families need 25 hammers. The nuclear family demands a huge amount of commodity purchasing. 

(hooboy that last point)

Damn. What a breakdown…

Communal living is fantastic for the disabled and elderly folks, as well.

The other reason capitalism pushes the nuclear family is that it allows people to be more mobile, so the labor supply is more responsive to the needs of employers. (Not that I’m a huge champion of “ties to the land,” being a rootless cosmopolitan and all that.)