By Sophi Seley
Artwork by 

What do anarchists mean when we say that we want to abolish the family? Anarchists want to abolish the family because the family is the site of the reproduction and reification of the hierarchical form. Let me explain.

Hierarchical systems function through the creation and proliferation of smaller units of hierarchical relations within the central hierarchy that mimic its values and enforce its structure. Essentially, people will only agree to allow others to dominate them if they rely on the hierarchical structure for their own power.

The concept of a “central hierarchy” is a bit reductive, as hierarchical relations overlap and interlock across identities, and one can argue that capitalism and class, structural racism and white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, or some other hierarchical social structure (like gerontocracy) constitutes the central hierarchy within our society, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to be considering the state to be the dominant social hierarchy. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I consider the destruction of those other forms of hierarchical social relations any less important or, but it’s an easy shorthand for the hierarchical form being reproduced by the family.

Even supposedly radical parents, as Emma Goldman writes, “though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and that they have the right to exercise their authority over it” (Goldman pg. 12). The State relies on this impulse. Through the complete and thorough domination of children by their parents, the family form ensures that parents teach their children to accept and defer to authority. In this way, the family produces perfect subjects of the State. This hierarchy is subsequently naturalized, through the construction of the child-subject as an inherently irrational and self-destructive form of inferior being, to be dominated and controlled for their own sake.

The justification for the domination of children by their parents forms the basis of paternalism, the practice through which people in authority restrict the liberty of and justify their domination over those subordinate to them by arguing that such domination is in the best interest of those being dominated. It’s not hard to find examples of how the justification for this domination serves to reinforce the broader hierarchical structures within our society.

Paternalism served as the ideological justification for imperialism, whether in the case of the supposedly enlightened rule of the colonial powers over their “uncivilized” subjects in the Global South, which the colonial rulers justified as bringing civilization to the childish and uncivilized savages. In fact, contemporary imperialists still use paternalism to justify “intervention” in Africa and the Middle East, arguing that such intervention is necessary to “keep the peace” and “spread democracy.” Paternalism justifies the destruction of social safety nets, from the stripping of unemployment benefits to “work requirements” to the ridiculous and dehumanizing restrictions on what one can buy with food stamps (the restriction on hot foods and prepared foods comes to mind), all because of this idea that people won’t contribute to society unless we force them to, so we need to coerce them into acting in their own self-interest. Paternalism was used to justify slavery, vagrancy laws, and still is used to justify the overpolicing of Black neighborhoods. The construction of women as some irrational, emotional, inferior form of being is a paternalistic justification for our subordination by the patriarchy. Paternalism, in some misguided effort to “protect the children,” justifies the marginalization of queer people, the erasure of queer history, and the destruction of queer community and queer spaces. Why do trans people have to deal with byzantine guidelines and restrictions and wait periods to access trans medical care? You guessed it, it’s paternalism!

Paternalism also justifies the reactionary dismissal of liberatory ideas and politics. Have you ever been told that you’ll grow out of your radical politics? Or, when suggesting that things maybe ought to change, have you ever been told that your hopes for a better world are childish, immature, or even infantile? The condescending rejection of “youthful” radicalism by the supposedly mature and serious moderates makes up the instinctive reaction of reformists, opportunists, and other defenders of the status quo when challenged by ideas and possibilities beyond the realm of what their ideology allows them to believe.

Since the family makes up one of the smallest and most foundational hierarchies within the central hierarchical system, the abolition of the family is deeply tied to the struggles for liberation from all of these other hierarchical structures. Only with the destruction of the family can we ever truly experience kinship.