The nuclear family and the patriarchal mold
MC99 & MC18
   
   The patriarchy wields sexual and economic power.  The 
manifestations of this power are encased in our lifestyles, 
especially the family.  The patriarchal family norm--with the 
nuclear family as its manifestation--supports the status quo:  
patriarchy.  Analysis below is primarily in reference to 
heterosexual relations.  I suspect that some of this is 
applicable to non-heterosexual relations, but I have made no 
attempt to include such relations in this analysis as yet.
   The hierarchy within the family is often the first 
experience of oppression.  It reinforces women's identity, 
but more importantly it is relied on as individuals' original 
(and therefore most "natural") experience with hierarchy.  
Children learn to accept male supremacy and the oppression of 
women.(1)  Women are taught that domination and submission 
are inherent to what they are.  The rules are:  a woman needs 
a man and is incomplete without one; women must produce 
children; and, although women have access to paid employment, 
they are be limited in both pay and types of work; working 
should be the woman's choice (to supplement her husband's 
income) and women who are required to work for subsistence 
have clearly failed in their duty to please a man who could 
support them.  Obviously, single parent families and 
homosexual families are pathological--they cannot be subsumed 
by this framework.
   
   Socialization at the micro level
   
   Within families, socialization under the patriarchal norm 
begins immediately.  Girls are given dolls to play with--toys 
representing helplessness--that require care and establishes 
the motherhood identity.  This teaches women to care for 
others before themselves, inhibiting women's ability to 
establish themselves as primary.
   Boys are encouraged to act and, by following through, 
receive attention and service.  They are encouraged to play 
rougher and with aggressive toys.  Toy guns are popular.  
They suggest the ability to take life; being violent becomes 
connected with being male.  Aggressive sports are introduced, 
and emotional expressions (with the exception of anger) are 
discouraged.  Girls learn that they must display emotion to 
receive attention, which creates tendencies toward irrational 
actions and illogical thinking.  These forms of socialization 
establish a power relation among siblings and between parents 
and children.
   
   Socialization at the macro level
   
   Society keeps the patriarchal family norm alive by 
creating identities and rewarding corresponding behaviors and 
appearances.  Television, both programming and advertising, 
is a significant factor in creating stereotypes.
   Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?  Judging 
by what Hollywood produces, bourgeois art has the role of 
reinforcing behavior and appeasing frustrations.  Viewers are 
exposed to ridiculous caricatures of individuals that conform 
to bourgeois social rules, and the scenarios are intended to 
appear universal.  Battering, inadequate and non-existent 
health care, forced sterilization, economic exploitation, 
neocolonialism and imperialism are not problems in this 
fabricated world.  Viewers are made to identify with 
characters who uphold social constructs of gender and ignore 
the real oppression of capitalist patriarchy to which women 
must daily submit.  Similarly, viewers are made to identify 
with people whose class interest lies in the exploitation of 
oppressed nations and women.
   The media manufactures identities that teach people how to 
interact in society.  People learn by watching and then adopt 
(consciously and/or unconsciously) behavior, because what 
works in TV Amerika is supposed to work in the "real" world, 
as long as we play the part. Men are socialized to dominate; 
women, to submit.  The operation of patriarchal socialization 
at the macro level greatly overshadows the implications of 
the socialization mechanism within individual families.  
Following only the micro approach--as Liberal feminists 
largely do--does not expose the systematic nature of 
patriarchy.
   
   Mass media and pornography
   
   The bourgeois media reinforce the gender hierarchy by 
objectifying women.  From the time they are infants, girls 
are primped and fussed-over until they look like dolls (and 
behave with about as much initiative as a doll).  As girls, 
women learn that if they want a "positive" response, they 
must maintain an appearance that reflects the objectification 
from the patriarchal norm, as well as the corresponding 
submissive behavior.
   
   Beyond the apparent phenomenon
   
   The nuclear family is a luxury of the bourgeoisie (and the 
"bourgeoisified worker").  "On what foundation is the present 
family, the bourgeois family, based?  On capital, on private 
gain.  In its completely developed form this family exists 
only among the bourgeoisie.  But this state of things finds 
its complement in the practical absence of the family among 
the proletarians, and in public prostitution."(2)  The 
proletarian nuclear family in the "patriarchal mold" does not 
exist.  In keeping with their economic situation relative to 
proletarians and the bourgeoisie, the first world workers' 
family structure is more like that of the bourgeoisie.  This 
is a privilege.  For the proletariat, the nuclear family in 
the "patriarchal mold" is an illusion.
   That is not to say that the proletariat does not revere 
the nuclear family type.  The bourgeoisie always works to 
convince the proletariat and the labor aristocracy that they 
should seek to emulate the bourgeoisie in all aspects of 
life--they should consume like the bourgeoisie, support 
bourgeois political structures, and model their families 
after those of the bourgeoisie.  First, this legitimates the 
bourgeois structures as best; second, it obscures the forces 
(and their effects) that shape the conditions of family life 
for non-bourgeois groups.
   Here we must distinguish between the bourgeois family type 
and the actual nuclear family as it exists in practice.  
Reverence for the bourgeois family type, especially in 
relation to monogamy, obscures the nature of the nuclear 
family in practice, even among the bourgeoisie. "Our 
bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of 
their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common 
prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each 
other's wives.  Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of 
wives in common...."(2)
   
   Economic roots of family transformation
   
   In 1848, Marx told us that the family structure of the 
proletariat would be destroyed by the competitive process and 
the increasing division of labor.  He said:  "by the action 
of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians 
are torn asunder...."(2)
   This same phenomenon in the United States, especially in 
the last few decades, is an effect of the immiseration of the 
proletariat (not a cause).  "What is the reason for the new 
inequality in income distribution?  The leading conventional 
wisdom claims that changes in family structure lie at the 
root of the new trend toward inequality.  There are more 
single-mother families at the low-income end, and more two-
earner families at the top end."(3)  The conventional wisdom, 
however, is not materialist:  "According to this conventional 
wisdom, then, it is not the economy that is generating 
inequality.... The decisions of Americans to live in 
different kinds of family groups have supposedly caused a 
redivision of income."(3)  Thus, in proper idealist fashion, 
they assume that the family structure is the root of the 
economic differences and not vice versa.  The first-world 
chauvinist implications of this are obvious:  broken families 
in the ghetto are a result of poor life choices; ergo, the 
victims are responsible for their own oppression.
   The heightened division of labor creates demand for lower 
and lower paid jobs with smaller and smaller requirements for 
skill.  This, the development of the division of labor under 
conditions of capitalist competition, is the primary driving 
cause of increasing inequality.  "Transformations in family 
structure, new federal policies, more women and young people 
in the workforce, economic fluctuations--none of these seems 
to be the major cause of the growing inequality in incomes 
and earnings.  What, then, is the hidden cause?  We suspect 
that the answer has to do with new corporate strategies in 
response to a profit squeeze.  Throughout the 1960s and 
1970s, corporate profits were squeezed by growing real wages 
and a growing social wage of government-provided benefits.  
In the mid to late 1970s, the problem was compounded by a 
sharpening of international competition.  Corporations 
reacted by relocating production, accelerating automation, 
contracting out work to small suppliers, attacking unions and 
demanding wage concessions, and replacing full-time jobs with 
part-time ones.  These strategies eliminated many blue-collar 
and even white-collar jobs in the middle pay range and 
created millions of low-wage jobs...."(3)  The parallel of 
this account to Marx's observations over a century ago are 
amazing:  "...as the division of labour increases, labour is 
simplified ... the more simple and easily learned the labour 
is, the lower the cost of production needed to master it, 
[and] the lower to wages sink."(4)
   The nuclear family was broken based on the requirements of 
capitalist competition.  An rising numbers of workers in the 
labor force serve the capitalists.  They cannot simply employ 
the unemployed, since that would create a seller's market in 
the labor market, driving up wages.  Capitalists have two 
requirements: first, lower-skilled workers to do more menial 
tasks based on an increasing division of labor; and second, a 
growing reserve army of labor to keep labor power costs down.  
Breaking the nuclear family type (in practice) served both 
functions.  Capitalism preserved the nuclear family only so 
long as it was valuable, and only to the extent that it was 
valuable.  The patriarchy also serves a function of keeping 
costs of women's labor down.  This function of the nuclear 
family type will probably be preserved.  The death of the 
nuclear family will not herald the death of the patriarchy, 
although the requirement that the nuclear family be broken 
among the labor aristocrats does indicate a state of 
heightened competition, consistent with contradictions that 
herald social decay in the capitalist system.  But breaking 
the nuclear family does not imply that the "patriarchal mold" 
is destroyed--the nuclear family was an illusion for the 
proletariat and the "patriarchal mold" is an element of the 
false consciousness of the proletariat.  It is therefore 
quite possible for the "patriarchal mold" to persist without 
having a basis in proletarian nuclear families any longer.  
This, in fact, is the situation today.
   
   Notes
   
   1. John Hodges, "Dualist Culture and Beyond," in FEMINISM 
      FROM MARGIN TO CENTER, ed. by Bell Hooks, 19XX, p. 36.
   2. Karl Marx, "the Communist Manifesto," MARX-ENGELS 
      READER, Norton & Co., 1972, pp. 349-350.
   3. Chris Tilly, "U-Turn on Equality," DOLLARS AND SENSE, 
      May 1986, pp. 12-13
   4. Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital," MARX-ENGELS 
      READER, p. 188