Reimagining the family
Today, on International Day of Families, Sophie Goddard considers the ethics of family structures. Drawing on her forthcoming chapter, Sacrifice and the Nuclear Family, in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and the Family (edited by Teresa Baron), Sophie critiques dominant ideas of the family. She argues that paving the way toward more inclusive, accessible, and secure forms of family life requires reducing the social, political, and cultural force of the nuclear family as well as increasing representation, support, and recognition of diverse family structures.
The nuclear family ideal
On the International Day of Families, many of us will instinctively picture one particular family model: the nuclear family. The nuclear family, a monogamous couple and their offspring living together in a single private household, is a culturally powerful ideal in Western societies; it shapes how many people imagine their lives and organise their commitments.
We can see the prevalence of this ideal in representations of the family in popular media. Most television shows, films and adverts portray some form of the nuclear family. It’s not just cultural influence; the state also reinforces this model through the distribution of tax benefits, inheritance, and immigration rights. In the UK, for example, immigration law treats living together, having children, and shared finances as evidence of a ‘genuine’ relationship (Rosa 2023).
Although studies show a gradual shift towards more diverse family structures, the nuclear family remains a common arrangement across Western societies.
Broken promises?
The ideal of the nuclear family promises us love, care and belonging. Families are often expected not only to fulfil basic needs like food and shelter, but also to ‘nurture our souls’and provide 'security, comfort and belonging in the world’ (Rosa 2023, 86). However, in reality, the nuclear family doesn’t always live up to its ideal. For many women, it can be a place where gendered violence occurs. For some children, it can be a site of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
If the gap between the ideal and the reality of the nuclear family is so wide, why do so many people continue to pursue this model? Aside from the special normative status the nuclear family is afforded by the state, one explanation might be the persistent and widely held belief that this type of family model is natural and universal.
However, critics challenge this assumption. Historical research shows that early American families were far from self-contained units. Instead, they were dependent on extended networks of neighbours, churches, courts, and government officials for support (Coontz 2016). The image of the nuclear family as an isolated, self-sufficient, and independent unit is a relatively recent invention that obscures the historical prevalence of extended family arrangements and communal interdependence.
Critiquing the nuclear family ideal
One strand of recent critique of the nuclear family ideal focuses on the way in which this ideal and associated practices exclude and marginalise certain communities. Some scholars argue that this gives us good reasons to abolish the family entirely (see for example Lewis 2022). Even if we are not on board with family abolitionism, there are still good reasons to be critical of the nuclear family ideal.
First, the nuclear family ideal is heteronormative and has contributed to the exclusion of queer families by society. Section 28, a UK law passed by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1988, prohibited the promotion in schools of ‘the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’ (Local Government Act 1988). By defining queer families as ‘pretended’, this law reinforced the idea that only heterosexual couples count as ‘real’ families. Although Section 28 was repealed in England and Wales in 2003 and in Scotland in 2000, LGBTQ+ families continue to face discrimination.
As well as marginalising queer families, the heteronormative nuclear family ideal reinforces traditional gender roles. Women perform a disproportionate share of domestic and emotional labour within the nuclear family. Emotional labour encompasses things like ‘the keeping track and anticipatory work that so often falls to women: knowing what is where, who needs what, the grocery list, the family’s budget, the family calendar, and so on – not to mention packing endless bags, from diaper bags to suitcases’ (Manne 2020, 124). Women also tend to perform more hermeneutic labour: the work of understanding and articulating emotions, desires, intentions, and motivations, as well as discerning those of others, and managing relational issues within interpersonal relationships (Anderson 2020, 177).
The nuclear family ideal is also mononormative: it assumes monogamy is the natural, superior, morally correct way to do relationships. This assumption becomes especially entrenched when children are involved; A common criticism of nonmonogamous relationships centres on the alleged unsuitability of nonmonogamy as a relationship structure for raising children. This is further reinforced by the bionormative family ideal, the assumption that the ideal family is one where both parents are genetically related to their children.
Philosophers have challenged these assumptions. For instance, Chalmers (2019) argues that there’s no evidence to support the assumption that monogamous relationships are better for children’s development. What children need most is love, support, acceptance and understanding, and additional parents can help to provide these things. Kalle Grill (2019) also challenges the ‘two-parent presumption’, arguing that more parents can be better in many respects: better logistics, more material, social and emotional resources, greater diversity of perspectives, and less stress on each caregiver. Luke Brunning (2018) argues that polyamorous relationships are more resistant to external shocks such as illness, breakups, and changes in financial stability, as there are more partners available for support, and also because the emotional work involved in polyamory helps with dealing with change.
Finally, the nuclear family is amatonormative: it encourages us to prioritise romantic connections over friendships and other caring bonds. This devalues the many forms of love and care that exist outside of romantic relationships. Elizabeth Brake (2012) argues that amatonormativity in marriage law amounts to wrongful discrimination, because the state supports only romantic relationships and no other kinds of adult caring relationships. She also suggests that the nuclear family encourages the organisation of society into small units, and these family units can become isolated from wider community relationships.
Reimagining the family
If we are to move away from the nuclear family ideal, how else might we imagine forming families?
One possible answer comes from practices within queer communities. In the 1990s, a researcher called Kath Weston coined the term ‘chosen family’ to describe the alternative family relationships formed by LGBTIQ+ communities in the United States. These communities have historically faced, and continue to face, prejudice and rejection within their biological families and families of origin. As a result, many have formed alternative family bonds, including with friends, lovers and ex-lovers.
Weston’s research found that chosen family bonds were grounded in ‘sentiment and emotion […] material aid, conflict resolution and the narrative encapsulation of a shared past’ (1997, 115). Love formed the foundation of these relationships, along with practices that established and reaffirmed mutual, enduring solidarity. In many cases, these relationships provided help, protection, and care equal to or greater than those offered by biological families or families of origin.
Chosen families are characterised by several distinctive features. They involve fluid boundaries between relationship categories, with kinship ties emerging from bonds originally defined as friendship. They are not restricted to dyadic or person-to-person ties; entire circles of individuals may be incorporated into one’s chosen family. They resemble networks that cross household boundaries. And finally, they are often expansive in scale, with some interviewees describing how they envisage chosen families as encompassing potentially hundreds of people.
Importantly, Weston’s participants did not see chosen families as imitations or derivatives of the nuclear family. Rather, they described the difficulties and excitement of building kinship in the absence of ready-made models. The concept of ‘chosen family’ and examples of chosen family relationships can provide us with models for reimagining the family.
Another place we can look for alternative visions of family is among people who practice relationship anarchy. Relationship anarchy is an approach to relationships inspired by anarchist ideas about ‘family relationships, solidarity, support, mutual aid, fellowship, commitment, and companionship; institutions like marriage; and the gender roles and power dynamics that underpin all these ways of relating with others’ (Pérez-Cortés 2022, 29).
A key feature of relationship anarchy is its rejection of prescriptive norms for relationships. Relationship anarchists reject category-based norms, such as the assumption that a romantic relationship should involve sex, physical affection and emotional intimacy (Moen and Sørlie 2022). They also reject prescriptive escalation norms, the idea that certain types of relationships should follow a standard trajectory from dating to marriage and cohabitation.
Instead, relationship anarchists see every relationship as unique. They do not enter relationships with a pre-existing set of expectations, nor do they rank relationship types in terms of importance.
In theory, this approach could avoid many of the constraints of the nuclear family. Labour within an anarchic family structure would be explicitly negotiated, not implicitly assumed. Decisions about coparenting would not automatically prioritise romantic partners. There would be no ‘two-parent presumption’; families could be built around collective child rearing. Many of the assumptions embedded within the nuclear family ideal would be challenged, leaving space to radically reimagine family relationships.
Barriers
Despite these possibilities, there are significant barriers to reimagining the family in these ways.
The state provides extensive support for normative family arrangements. In the United States, for example, marriage can grant access to shared health insurance, disability and life insurance benefits, pension plans, joint property ownership and automatic inheritance rights (Brake 2012). Those who live in chosen family arrangements often lack this support and recognition.
This seems unfair on the face of it; however, many people legitimately choose not to marry, and relationship anarchists in particular may be wary of state interference with intimate relationships. The reformation of marriage laws to encompass a broader definition of family may therefore not be appealing for all.
Social attitudes also contribute to the security and comfort of the nuclear family ideal. Sara Ahmed (2014) argues that norms reproduce themselves partly through comfort: those who inhabit a norm feel at ease, while those who do not may feel discomfort and exclusion. People in nuclear families benefit not only from material advantages but also from the social comfort of having their family form recognised by others as legitimate.
Although the nuclear family arrangement is no more inherently secure than alternatives, a sense of security is afforded by social recognition. Take, for example, the ‘two-parent presumption’: Grill (2019) notes that parents may feel like ‘less of a parent’ in group co-parenting arrangements, not because it harms the child, but because of the internalisation of the norm that ‘real’ families only have two parents.
To make alternative approaches to family life more accessible and secure, we should consider how we can reduce the cultural force of the nuclear family ideal. Increasing representation of diverse family forms through media, education and public discourse is an important step.
The promise of security is something most of us desire and seek. But security - whether that is financial, legal, medical, or in the form of social comfort – should not be available only to those who conform to the nuclear family model. Security should be afforded to all forms of the family.