Republican Families?

Abstract

Abstract What would the institution of the family look like if it were reformed according to republican desiderata? Would it even survive such re-shaping? This chapter examines the charges that the family dominates women and children in what is taken to be their most convincing interpretations, and considers the theoretical and practical implications. The deepest source of women’s domination within the family is the gendered division of labour. Surprisingly perhaps, an analysis of how the gendered division of labour generates domination yields the conclusion that not only women, but also men who engage in very pronounced forms of gendered specialization, can be dominated; this raises the interesting questions of whether mutual (and potentially equal) dependencies can count as domination, and if yes, whether they are less or more objectionable than one-sided domination. Achieving non-domination in upbringing doesn’t seem, all things considered, in children’s interests. If so, justified child rearing should merely seek to minimize domination. Indeed, it is undesirable, and maybe impossible, to eliminate it not only from the family but from any imaginable form of upbringing—such as an orphanage or a kibbutz. The reason is that children need intimate relationships that can only exist in the absence of proper mechanisms that check the exercise of parental power; further, the kind of vulnerability that concerns republicans may be constitutive of the emotional intimacy that is essential to children’s well-being. Finally, the chapter argues that full eradication of domination from close relationships in general is undesirable.