Certainly not in the sense that “we take away your children and raise them separated from you” but more in the sense of “it takes a village to raise a child”. This can mean anything from extended family to patchwork to an active and engaged neighborhood to queer constellations of open relationship or poly or what ever. There is a quote from Thatcher “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”
Nuclear families, more than other forms of family and relating to each other, are isolating and making the people dependent on each other, most often making women financially dependent on men and men emotionally dependent on women. Abolishing the nuclear family doesn’t mean that you can’t live in a healthy monogamous relationship with a good connection to your kids. It means that you don’t have to but can leave a toxic relationship and that your kids have other caregivers to complain about you and, if need, can leave. Or to live in other ways together that don’t fit the model at all. To get back to Thatcher, it’s not about taking away the little connection the individuals have but about strengthening the society, she denied exists.
I hope that helped. Sometimes I’m too much in my bubble to realize that implications aren’t obvious. I specified “nuclear family” but I see that that’s not enough. Thanks for pointing it out. Family Abolition is an interesting topic you can look deeper into if that interests you.
I am learning from these comments that some people have very strong negative associations with the term “nuclear family,” and equate it with not only the strict definition of “a family consisting of parents and children” but also rolling all the associations of cis heteronormativity and abusive marriages and pressure to confirm etc etc etc all rolled into just “nuclear family.” But yeah while I am aware of all those dimensions, that complex of oppressions and abuse has never been explicitly loaded straight into the term “nuclear family” for me in a way that I can recognize in the middle of a sentence.
I really think that the word “abolish” is causing problems of understanding here. For most people, “abolish” conjures up the word “abolition,” as in the abolition of slavery. That was not a movement that made slavery optional for those who wanted it but kept it in place for those who still wanted to maintain the practice; it was emphatically a movement to make the very concept of slavery illegal (we could have a conversation about how successful it was in the context of the private prison complex, but that’s a whole other can of fish).
When we talk about abolishing something, we generally aren’t saying we’re going to reduce it as an obligation or pay less attention to it; we mean we’re going to do everything in our power to make it not exist anymore. If people assume you mean the latter when you actually mean the former, it’s going to cause confusion and derail the entire conversation into a cul de sac of definition, rather than addressing the actual topic we want to address.
I just made a comment realizing that I was arguing with someone that just was using a hard definition of “abolish” in their mind. Though in the context it is clearly using the and more systems based definition.
(1) to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law)
(2) to completely do away with (something)
Honestly, it’s an important thing to realize how reactionary thought is so good at connecting to emotional reactions that they truly redefine words or their contextual meanings. Every word becomes a “hard” definition if it is ever used by the left to explain structures. It becomes a hard definition that can invoke emotion.
In this case it comes from “Abolish the Police”. Even some people on “the left” have adopted the right wing definition since. By either being an anarchist or a “no I don’t mean abolish” liberal.
No, we mean abolish. We didn’t stutter. We know what words mean and will not adopt the frame of the reactionaries.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to “be careful” with language. The reactionaries in society will pervert the definition of whatever word one attempts to use to invoke an emotional response to defend the current structures.
The correct thing to do is to educate those that are willing to ask “what do you mean by abolish”?
If we could have anarchist not reinforcing the reactionary definitions that would help as well… But that’s a whole different story.
Certainly not in the sense that “we take away your children and raise them separated from you” but more in the sense of “it takes a village to raise a child”. This can mean anything from extended family to patchwork to an active and engaged neighborhood to queer constellations of open relationship or poly or what ever. There is a quote from Thatcher “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”
Nuclear families, more than other forms of family and relating to each other, are isolating and making the people dependent on each other, most often making women financially dependent on men and men emotionally dependent on women. Abolishing the nuclear family doesn’t mean that you can’t live in a healthy monogamous relationship with a good connection to your kids. It means that you don’t have to but can leave a toxic relationship and that your kids have other caregivers to complain about you and, if need, can leave. Or to live in other ways together that don’t fit the model at all. To get back to Thatcher, it’s not about taking away the little connection the individuals have but about strengthening the society, she denied exists.
I hope that helped. Sometimes I’m too much in my bubble to realize that implications aren’t obvious. I specified “nuclear family” but I see that that’s not enough. Thanks for pointing it out. Family Abolition is an interesting topic you can look deeper into if that interests you.
I am learning from these comments that some people have very strong negative associations with the term “nuclear family,” and equate it with not only the strict definition of “a family consisting of parents and children” but also rolling all the associations of cis heteronormativity and abusive marriages and pressure to confirm etc etc etc all rolled into just “nuclear family.” But yeah while I am aware of all those dimensions, that complex of oppressions and abuse has never been explicitly loaded straight into the term “nuclear family” for me in a way that I can recognize in the middle of a sentence.
I really think that the word “abolish” is causing problems of understanding here. For most people, “abolish” conjures up the word “abolition,” as in the abolition of slavery. That was not a movement that made slavery optional for those who wanted it but kept it in place for those who still wanted to maintain the practice; it was emphatically a movement to make the very concept of slavery illegal (we could have a conversation about how successful it was in the context of the private prison complex, but that’s a whole other can of fish).
When we talk about abolishing something, we generally aren’t saying we’re going to reduce it as an obligation or pay less attention to it; we mean we’re going to do everything in our power to make it not exist anymore. If people assume you mean the latter when you actually mean the former, it’s going to cause confusion and derail the entire conversation into a cul de sac of definition, rather than addressing the actual topic we want to address.
I just made a comment realizing that I was arguing with someone that just was using a hard definition of “abolish” in their mind. Though in the context it is clearly using the and more systems based definition.
(1) to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law) (2) to completely do away with (something)
Honestly, it’s an important thing to realize how reactionary thought is so good at connecting to emotional reactions that they truly redefine words or their contextual meanings. Every word becomes a “hard” definition if it is ever used by the left to explain structures. It becomes a hard definition that can invoke emotion.
In this case it comes from “Abolish the Police”. Even some people on “the left” have adopted the right wing definition since. By either being an anarchist or a “no I don’t mean abolish” liberal.
No, we mean abolish. We didn’t stutter. We know what words mean and will not adopt the frame of the reactionaries.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to “be careful” with language. The reactionaries in society will pervert the definition of whatever word one attempts to use to invoke an emotional response to defend the current structures.
The correct thing to do is to educate those that are willing to ask “what do you mean by abolish”?
If we could have anarchist not reinforcing the reactionary definitions that would help as well… But that’s a whole different story.