Abolish the Family, Build our Communities: Why the Nuclear Family is Unsustainable and How to Destroy It
Introduction
The nuclear family exists as the primary capitalistic family structure. It represents the “core” family, the mother and father, and their children. It does not place emphasis on family outside of this, especially non-blood related families, but rather pushes all aspects of the family into a single household. This originated in 13th century England when “rather than remaining in or marrying into the family home, as was the case in Southern Europe and many parts of Asia and the Middle East, young couples in England were expected to establish their own household” (Institute). This unit has not done well for us. As David Brooks puts it “For those who are not privileged, the era of the isolated nuclear family has been a catastrophe. It’s led to broken families or no families; to merry-go-round families that leave children traumatized and isolated; to senior citizens dying alone in a room. All forms of inequality are cruel, but family inequality may be the cruelest”. This paper seeks to point out that cruelty, along with the ways that it is perpetuated in media, and the ways that creators can work to create a more community-based society.
Marxism
Marxism, as a theory, exists on the basis that society should be run by those who create it, physically, through labor. It defines this, an obvious majority of the human race, as the working class, who create the goods and services that the bosses- the bourgeois class, sell for profits that the laborers who created them do not see. This theory is based on historical materialism, meaning that it studies the way the physical conditions of societies are historically interrelated. Through this study, theorists can follow dialectical patterns and recurrences in human history and the history of the world through multiple methods of society — from ancient societies to modern capitalism. The philosophy of marxism is that at the heart of the world: all things are material, real, tangible, so we must use dialectic ways of thinking and understanding this material world and the ways in which human society exists and is shaped by it.
Marxism, as it relates to the scientist Karl Marx, has existed since people began talking about his ideas during his lifetime during the 1800s. Marx worked with other revolutionaries such as Engels, and after their deaths came along people such as Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxembourg. The concepts of Marxism, of the revolution of the masses of the people for autonomy and self-determination, has existed since before capitalism. Revolution happens every day, from France to Algeria, the people have always fought against the state in some form or another.
Marxism today is alive and strong. Many Marxist organizations exist and serve the masses as an educative force, arming the people with powerful ideas of revolution. The ideas of Marxism were well squashed by the Red Scare and other anti-communist forces of the state and bourgeois classes, but a niche has always remained. Marxism and its theories are especially relevant today as the pandemics of COVID and racism terrorize our communities, and Marxists are aware of this and have been able to show extensively the power of the working class to both those in the streets and those scared of those in the streets.
The Family
Marxism recognizes and analyzes the many ways in which capitalism controls society. One huge way is in the way it forces us to organize our families. The Nuclear Family- that exists of a pair of parents, usually a mother and a father, who have one or more children. This family system is relatively new, coming from capitalism. In an introduction for Engels “Origin of the Family” Mary Hansen and Rob Sewell state that “Not until the scientific discoveries of the American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan in the 19th century was the family recognized, not as an eternal institution, but as a historical entity. Up until then, the view of the family was dominated by the outlook of the Five Books of Moses” (In Defence of Marxism). The family is made up of multiple people with different roles in the family and in capitalist society. The mother is meant to take care of the house, the children, the sexual and emotional needs of the husband, all for no pay, and often much grief from an overworked husband and underserved children. This relationship changes in different classes, where some women have to also work to support their families on top of their husband’s income, so their homes and children lack care and attention. Psychologically, conflicts that take place in nuclear family styles homes between spouses end up staying in the home and never are resolved. Single-parent homes often have all of these issues as well, so half of the income and double the work. Although they are seen as failures often in our nuclear society, single families are an obvious success of capitalism to destroy human relationships and force working-class people to work harder to provide for their families, and therefore make more money for the bosses. Nuclear families also impact wealthy families poorly, as rearing children and taking care of a home are seen as chores and are hired out jobs, destroying the relationship the parents have with either in order to make more money or spend more time spending the accumulated money. Capitalism has created a family system that rewards arduous labor done by few rather than holistic community-based home and family systems that prioritize all of the needs of the people within them.
In “Origin of the Family” Engels details the many forms of “family” units that have existed throughout history and even exist in some parts of the world today. Engels breaks down human nature in the stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Savagery being defined as: “the period in which man’s appropriation of products in their natural state predominates; the products of human art are chiefly instruments which assist this appropriation” (Engels). Barbarism is defined as “the period during which man learns to breed domestic animals and to practice agriculture, and acquires methods of increasing the supply of natural products by human activity (Engels). Civilization is defined as “the period in which man learns a more advanced application of work to the products of nature, the period of industry proper and of art (Engels). He speaks first of the Iroquois tribe of Native Americans and their consanguine familial structure, in which the focus is much more on the wide or entire family to raise and support the children and each other. They have known mutual obligations with each other. Each wife was regarded as the wife of her husband’s brothers, the children all siblings, and therefore wives and husbands. Other examples of this being Hawaii and Polynesia. The next stage was the punaluan family, which took out the brother and sister breeding as they discovered the negatives of inbreeding. Because of this, family units were split up. This is also the beginning of some form of monogamy. After this stage came the pairing family, in which men were allowed to have multiple wives but their wives were meant to be faithful to their husbands. After this came the strict monogamous family, one man, and one woman, which is the basis for the modern nuclear family. (Engels)
Familial Roles
The nuclear family flourishes on putting specific types of labor into specific familiar roles. These roles in the home are so incredibly shaped by capitalism and the nuclear families’ intentional oppression of working people and their families. To start with the children, it is obvious that the children’s class is determined by the class of their parents. This determines their access to many things that determine their ability to grow such as nutritious food and quality housing and education. Of course, some grow up and are given opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty, however, many are not and cannot do so due to lack of access to higher education, skill training, and jobs with opportunities for promotion. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality is a myth. “The US is one of the richest nations in the world, but wealth is hard to come by here and victim-blaming myths about the poor are deeply embedded into our cultural consciousness” (Rios). Sons often have access to the family business, if there is one, and can pursue a career through that and climb to the status of petty-bourgeois, but only a statistically tiny percent will ever gain wealth from a small business. Many daughters are left to marry into another family, either up or down. Those who are born into families of wealth always have access to that wealth, and will always pass on that wealth unless a familial tie is split. This wealth will not trickle anywhere, only those who marry into the family will experience it outside of the family. The American family system especially is based on the individualism of familial units, individual family units only depending on those within their direct and indirect family. “A nuclear family emotional system has three major mechanisms for dealing with an overload of anxiety between the spouses: marital conflict, dysfunction of a spouse, and projection to one or more of the children. Most families resort to a combination of the three adaptive mechanisms” (Fundamentals of Family Theory). The children’s autonomy is often disrespected, as they have no access to choice. Their parents choose what schools they go to, what activities they are involved in, how they dress, who they interact with, what they consume media or otherwise, and many other things. This is often the same for wives, who act as homemakers and child rearers, only doing what their husbands allow them to do. Even in more liberal family units, parents are forced to choose things for their children based on economic reasons. They may want to have their children in the best schools, but cannot afford to live in an area with enough wealth for quality public education, or private education. (Barrett, M., and M. McIntosh.)
Men have it the best (relatively speaking) because of the patriarchal nature of our society. They have the most access to higher education, jobs, safety. They do not need to rely on their wife in the same way that many women need to rely on their husbands financially. They are also the most labored, taken advantage of by their workplaces, and often physically exhausted. This can come out violently on the rest of the family (who are the easiest and closest places to release stress). Many working-class husbands and wives alike abuse substances such as alcohol and drugs in order to relieve stress put on them by the capitalist system, which often hurts the children and the family unit as a whole. “An estimated 12 percent of children in this country live with a parent who is dependent on or abuses alcohol or other drugs” (Parental Substance Use).
The plight of women within nuclear families and capitalism is also dark. Even today, women are often asked to forgo their creative, passionate, or professional lives to take care of their home, their children, or their husbands. They are not paid for the labor they do inside of the home, even though it is indeed labor worth payment, a median annual salary of $178,201 according to 2019 data from Salary.com. They are often forced to live off of their husband’s dime. (Barrett, M., and M. McIntosh.) This makes it difficult for growing women to see themselves as equal to men. Not only do they see the dynamic that their parents have and directly face the repercussions of the oppressive nature of the nuclear family, but they also know that they are expected to move from their family unit to another to take on the same responsibilities as the mother. The ways in which family is shown to children through the media is often representative of this same nuclear family unit.
Family in Media
Sit-Coms, or situational comedies, are particularly family-oriented in a variety of ways. The first way is that they are created to be viewed by the family together. Shows that air regularly and include a set of repeating average characters that represent some form of family or community overcoming obstacles are appealing because people can relate to them and see themselves in their fictional characters. There are dozens of shows that provide representation to many many different kinds of people. The second way these shows are family-oriented is that the groups of people on them often represent a family or community unit themselves, and therefore those viewing can connect the family roles on the TV to the familial roles in their household.
Other forms of media uphold the nuclear family as well, from commercials that show a perfect family enjoying a ride in a new car to a news segment that shows a military dad returning to his family. We are constantly surrounded by family units that are thought of as normal when in reality many people do not see themselves reflected in any roles that the media portrays connected to the family. Sitcoms leave no room for the individual, but rather rely on the tensions created by and that exist within the nuclear family unit. The clever, comical, and often very emotional resolutions to this tension are what makes them so popular; families can escape their own familial problems by laughing at fictional people that represent them unrealistically fix theirs.
The Simpsons, Hereditary & “Ordinary families”
One example of a sitcom that represents the nuclear family and upholds many parts of it is “The Simpsons” (1989- Current). The Simpsons themselves are composed of a brilliant example of the nuclear family. White. Mother, father, two daughters, one son, one cat, and one dog. The title sequence shows them watching TV on the couch together, directly representing those families at home doing the same. The storyline and predicaments of the Simpsons get into changes, but the general characterization of each family member is mostly stereotypical to that person’s role in the nuclear family. Homer, the father, literally makes this family a nuclear family as he works in a nuclear energy plant. Although he has a very important and dangerous job, Homer is a complete and total buffoon who is only worried about working, eating, and drinking. To analyze it using Marxism, this classist representation of the working father as a cold, emotionless, and often angry man directly points back to the ways in which the nuclear family unit forces conflict to remain within the house and be taken out on the family members rather than being healed in a healthy way. The connection to labor and alcoholism is also very prevalent in a great deal of other media, notably “trash” media such as Daytime TV and Reality TV. The roles that Homer takes are always the most “male” and his attitude is always that of anger and disdain unless his needs are met, and his wife Marge is expected to (and shown to) love him even though he is a useless, mean, and messy man. In the episode in which Marge and Homer tell their children about how they met it is shown that Marge once was a radical feminist and campaigns at her high school for housewives to be paid. It is later made obvious that she settled and became a housewife herself, demonizing feminism and showing the “motherly” or “womanly” or “mature” thing to do is to settle for a lifetime of seeing to other people’s needs. This isn’t easy for her either, with a son who often is a great big troublemaker and destructively chaotic. The way Bart is characterized is as a miniature, more scheming version of his father. He often does not have to take consequences for his actions, and when he does it is seen as a joke such as when he has to write things on the chalkboard over and over. This “boys will be boys” attitude excuses Bart’s misbehavior as a part of being a man, whereas Lisa, his sister, is held to a very high standard due in part to her being a young girl and in part to her characterization as a highly intelligent and intellectual child. She is also shown as a mini version of her mother, a young bright activist who is liable and in reality being bred to end up with the same fate as her mother as a housewife, just like her baby sister Maggie who isn’t characterized much past being a baby. Kari Abspoel and Sami Huohvanainen write about The Simpsons in their thesis titled “The American Nuclear Family in the TV Series ‘The Simpsons’
“This “ordinary” family unit is a tremendous example of both the dangers and failings of the nuclear family as well as the ways that community-based structures can eradicate many of the issues that this seemingly “normal” family face. “In the end, the Simpsons represent a believable American nuclear family from a sociological point of view because of their faults and the problems they experience, while still managing to function and also fulfill its societal purpose” (Abspoel, The American).
A film that shows an “ordinary” family and how a lack of communication and familial disagreements can destroy a family is Hereditary. This horror film does not uphold the nuclear family as strong, but rather as a broken system that causes violence and pain because of a build-up of violence and pain. This movie deals with multiple deaths, one being incredibly gruesome. This death is that of the young daughter, who sticks her head out of the car window to get air while having an allergic reaction to peanuts and is decapitated. This happens because her mother forces her to hang out with her brother, who fails to communicate. He is going to a party, leaves his sister alone at said party, and she eats peanut butter cake. The film makes it obvious the lack of communication that leads to this in a scene in which the mother lashes out at the son. Everything is brought to the surface, but it is too late and it causes more pain and violence. The film gets crazier and crazier, most points leading back to the toxicity of the nuclear family unit and the ways it causes pain to be projected and sharpened rather than dealt with healthily in a healthy community. To analyze it using Marxism, if the family unit did not exist to be the best possible unit for the state and allowed for or supported intentional emotional care for the human beings within it, this situation would not have exploded in the way that it did. Alison Willmore wrote about the film for Buzzfeed “But the film’s second source of horror is centered on a purely domestic unease — the feeling that your family is disintegrating, and that you’re failing at your basic obligations to each other.” (Willmore, In This Year’s). This family could have gotten help if it didn’t eat itself from the inside out due to the pressures of the nuclear family.
The Fosters, The Addams Family, and “Different Families”
There are other forms of media that tell stories of families that are more critical of the nuclear family structure. One example of this is the show The Fosters. Off the bat, the show features a lesbian couple rather than a straight couple. They have many more than two children, many of whom are not biological and not white. As the name suggests, they are a foster family, and because of this, their family is very large. Many of the biological parents of the foster children have a part in the raising of their children, and because of this, their family breaks many stereotypes of the nuclear family. This show was obviously intended to do this and to showcase a “different family”, and they did very well at this. Many of the situations that the characters were involved in were very serious, storylines including things such as abuse, rape, police and immigration brutality, homophobia and transphobia, and many other traumatic occurrences. This show highlighted many of the political failings of the nuclear family and the foster care system and shows the beauties of different families and a step away from the nuclear family. It sheds light upon the true nature of children in the foster care system and how being thrown into random family situations that the system deems appropriate because they tick the boxes of what a family is supposed to be but are often actually highly abusive and manipulative. Francesca Rigby writes on the importance of the show
“Fostering complicates traditionalist framings of the heteronormative and therefore ‘moral’ family, placing the LGBTQ+ community at the fore of contemporary family life…American TV series The Fosters (2013) highlights the unconventionality of modern families, promoting understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities to an ever-widening audience. We must continue to reconfigure society’s paradigm of what encompasses a family, setting the standards of the fostering network’s open-minded and accepting views as the watermark by which all families should be judged” (Rigby, Deconstructing The Nuclear Family).
A TV show in which a “different” family is shown is 1964 classic The Addams Family. This family is ridiculed constantly for being different, for having different tastes and different values. The pilot episode involves a The Addams Family Home is different from that of a similar family in that they keep a lot of macabre items and their aesthetics are perceived as scary by the so-called normal people that live around their community. A representative from the school board comes to their house to say that the children legally need to be in school. This interaction is negative for the representative as he is terrified of the Addams and their home. The family presents as a relatively normal family when outside of their home as a scene in the way that other school board members react to the inside of the school. A joke on which they place emphasis is that the representative is actually the crazy one, accusing him of being a drunk for being terrified of the Addams. After much Pomp and Circumstance the children Wednesday and Pugsley are enrolled in school. After the first day, Wednesday comes home crying. This is relatable as many children have a hard time in school but this show is a comedy that makes the conflict between Wednesday and school one that is different from a so-called normal child. Wednesday becomes upset because she read the Grimm fairy tale in school in which a dragon is murdered. The Addams Family are outraged over this, how could an elementary school teach such violence? But in order to get him into their home because of how terrified he is of them, they have to send their Frankenstein-Esque Butler Lurch to go kidnap him. The Addams Family sees this as normal, their Butler is merely suggestive and a hard person to say no to. All of the tension works out for The Addams Family in that they convince the school board through the representatives to disallow the Grimm fairy tale books for their violence. This in itself is comedic, showing that the family that has less power and very little Community respect still end up with an outcome that is positive for them.
The way the interactions represent the family in this show is the way in which families like to compare themselves and other family situations to theirs in order to feel better about the dysfunctions or the negatives of their personal family unit. Viewers watching The Addams Family have access to a family that is weirder than theirs and that goes through weird or situations is the nurse and they can find comfort in the fact that they can escape into this fake family. This is true about most sitcoms; they exist as escapism for families to see fictional families and the way that families react to and solve tensions. This is especially true in Suburban life where people don’t have access to families that may live close to them but are relatively secretive in their home life and do not keep a community-based way of living. The Addams Family is a particularly absurd and comedic example of a family structure that technically fits into the nuclear family but is much more interesting than many of the other family units that came before it on TV or have come after it. Laura Morowitz puts it as
“In the Fall of 1964, America was introduced to two television families of monsters: ABC’s The Munsters and CBS’s The Addams Family. Both shows functioned as a critique of the suburban nuclear family as embodied in the 1950s television sitcom. They parodied the conventions of the suburban sitcom to undermine its image. In doing so, they brought into question the social norms, values, and ideologies of the mid-century American family. These shows were deeply appealing to the TV audience because they satisfied the ubiquitous desire to be “normal” while giving reign to the need to be different. While alluding to the threatening break-down of the family and the invasion of counter-culture, they made such notions non-threatening.” (Morowitz, The Monster).
By questioning the nature of the family unit, the creators were able to influence culture and the ways in which the family saw themselves and their roles, especially families that felt or looked different from others they knew.
Community Centric Media
So how does one go about supporting the creation of more community-centered media? Firstly, creators can create more media about their families! TV and movie studios do not have access to the power of truthful, beautiful, sobering stories. They do not have the power to tell those stories in the ways that those who lived them can. Any family can show that the nuclear family is a myth, as it is just that. There is no such thing as a “perfect family” and TV capitalizes on that for profit, but what if creators capitalized on that not for profit but in the name of storytelling?
We are living in a time where storytelling is available to anyone with a smartphone. With apps like Tik Tok where people can make videos as short as 15 seconds about literally anything, more teenagers are being given access to the once expensive and difficult to enter the field of video arts than ever before. With the creation of digital cameras and now camera phones, human beings are taking trillions of pictures a day and posting just as many on various social media sites across the internet. We can send an image from here to the UK at lightning speed. We have never been more connected! We have also never been so disconnected physically from the outside world and forced into connection with our families. These new dynamics allow for creators to create, a lot.
How can these conditions be used to create community-centered media representatives of those creating it? Well, we as creators can return to the core of family. We can be intentional about reading and understanding Marxist theory on family, as well as on other relevant topics to family such as labor, gender equality, We can personally look inside ourselves and analyze the relationships we have with family. We can seek to watch already existent media that represents families that don’t like our own. We can put all of the feelings that we have right now cooped up in our homes with our families into art that we create that will then be representative of how we feel as a member of our community. We can also seek out safe ways to create with and for those in our communities that need us.
One example of this is the creation of community fridges that have popped up in many communities. The Germantown Community Fridge and Pantry specifically was built, painted, and is maintained by the community that it serves. This beautiful community creation literally nourishes the neighborhood. And it sparks joy and inspiration in those who get to see it. Community fridges are a wonderful way to dismantle the individualism of the nuclear family and capitalism as a whole. When folks do not have to worry about where their food is going to come from, they can in turn be better members of the community and have more capacity to create a stronger community.
Another way these conditions can be used to create community-centered media representative of those creating it is by creating community-centered news. Germantown Info Hub is a great example of this. Their website provides information about community events, services, projects, news, and even solutions to community issues. Creating independent media by the people for the people is an important part of creating and upholding strong communities outside of the family. When a community has access to what is going on and can have meaningful interactions with their neighbors at community events, they can be better empowered to invest in the community and relationships with people within the community.
Conclusion
The nuclear family is an outdated, dangerous, and oppressive familial system that not only does not serve the needs of the people within it, but actively goes against the values and beauty of the community. This can be seen in the media in a plethora of ways. From comedies that are meant to make you laugh about how much worse another family is than yours, to horror films to scare you into thinking about your own familial issues. The family unit is around us constantly telling us how to live and act, but what if we broke free from that? What if we invested in our communities and treated our neighbors as if they were blood family? What if we understood the material conditions of working-class families and understood class, cultural Marxism, and had the resources necessary to give everyone a full political education? What if we treated everyone we ever knew as if they were as important as blood family? I think this would be a really wonderful world and I am endlessly excited to create it.
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