Perspectives on the nuclear family: Marxism and feminism

Engels argued that the need for the family arose when societies started to value private property. With the rise of private property an organised system of inheritance became neces­sary ‑ fathers needed to know who their offspring were in order to pass their property down the family line. With this, argues Engels, the need for monogamy arose ‑ one man married to one woman ‑ and hence the family was created. Therefore the family serves the interests of the economy ‑ in this case the creation of ownership of property – while subjecting women to unequal power relations in the home.

Zaretsky suggests that the family serves capitalism by offering emotional security from the oppressive world of work, thus allowing such oppression to continue. However, in reality, it only provides emotional warmth to encourage its members to con­tinue to live another day under the harsh realities of capitalism.

Althusser and Poulantaz suggest that the family can be seen as serving the functions of an ideological state apparatus by socialising both pro-capitalist ideology and its own familiar ideology in order to maintain such family patterns over time. For example the family socialises its members into accepting gender roles, into accepting that it is 'natural' for men and women to get married and engage in separate roles and jobs in the home: an atti­tude that is passed down from generation to generation. 

Marxist‑feminists suggest that the nuclear family meets the needs of capitalism for the reproduction and maintenance of class and patriarchal inequality. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the working class and women. The Marxist‑feminist, Margaret Benston (1972), argues that the nuclear family provides the basic commodity required by capitalism, i.e. labour power by reproducing   and rearing the future workforce at little cost to the capitalist class. It maintains the present workforce's physical and emotional fitness through the wife's domestic labour. Finally, women in families can be used as a reserve army of labour to be used in times of economic growth and pushed back into the home during times of economic slow-down.

Radical feminists such as Kate Millett (1970) see modern societies and  families as characterised by patriarchy ‑ a system of subordination and domination in which men exercise power over women and children. They argue that the family is the root of all women’s oppression and should be abolished.  The only way to do this is through separatism – women must live independently of men. Diana Gittens refers to the concept of age patriarchy to describe adult domination of children, which may take the form of violence against both children and women.  Similarly, Delphy and Leonard see the family as a patriarchal institution in which women do most of the work and men get most of the benefit.  Moreover, this patriarchal ideology stresses the primacy of the mother‑housewife role for women and the breadwinner the family as legitimating violence against women.