 | The examples and perspective in thisdeal primarily with Western culture and do not represent aworldwide view of the subject. You mayimprove this, discuss the issue on thetalk page, or create a new, as appropriate.(March 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Familialism orfamilism is aphilosophy that puts priority tofamily.[1] The termfamilialism has been specifically used for advocating awelfare system wherein it is presumed that families will take responsibility for the care of their members rather than leaving that responsibility to thegovernment.[1] The termfamilism relates more tofamily values.[1] This can manifest as prioritizing the needs of the family higher than that of individuals.[1] Yet, the two terms are often used interchangeably.[2]
In theWestern world, familialism views thenuclear family of onefather, onemother, and theirchild or children as the central and primarysocial unit of human ordering and the principal unit of a functioningsociety andcivilization.[1] In Asia, aged parents living with the family is often viewed as traditional.[1] It is suggested that Asian familialism became more fixed after encounters with Europeans following theAge of Discovery. In Japan, drafts based on French laws were rejected after criticism from people likeHozumi Yatsuka (穂積 八束) by the reason that "civil law will destroyfilial piety".[1]
Regarding familism as afertility factor, there is limited support amongHispanics of an increased number of children with increased familism in the sense of prioritizing the needs of the family higher than that of individuals.[3] On the other hand, the fertility impact is unknown in regard to systems where the majority of the economic and caring responsibilities rest on the family (such as in Southern Europe), as opposed todefamilialized systems where welfare and caring responsibilities are largely supported by the state (such as Nordic countries).[4]
In theWestern world, familialism views thenuclear family of onefather, onemother, and theirchild or children as the central and primarysocial unit of human ordering and the principal unit of a functioningsociety andcivilization. Accordingly, this unit is also the basis of a multi-generationalextended family, which is embedded in socially as well as genetically inter-related communities, nations, etc., and ultimately in the whole human family past, present and future. As such, Western familialism usually opposes other social forms and models that are chosen as alternatives (i.e.single-parent,LGBT parenting, etc.).[1]
"Family as a model for the state" as an idea inpolitical philosophy originated in theSocratic-Platonic principle ofmacrocosm/microcosm, which identifies recurrent patterns at larger and smaller scales of the cosmos, including the social world. In particular,monarchists have argued that the state mirrors thepatriarchal family, with the subjects obeying theking as children obey their father, which in turn helps to justify monarchical oraristocratic rule.
Plutarch (46–120 CE) records a laconic saying of the Dorians attributed toLycurgus (8th century BCE). Asked why he did not establish a democracy inLacedaemon (Sparta), Lycurgus responded, "Begin, friend, and set it up in your family". Plutarch claims that Spartan government resembled the family in its form.[2]
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that the schema of authority and subordination exists in the whole of nature. He gave examples such as man andanimal (domestic), man andwife,slaves and children. Further, he claimed that it is found in any animal, as the relationship he believed to exist between soul and body, of "which the former is by nature the ruling and the later subject factor".[3] Aristotle further asserted that "the government of a household is a monarchy since every house is governed by a single ruler".[4] Later, he said that husbands exercise arepublican government over their wives and monarchical government over their children, and that they exhibit political office over slaves and royal office over the family in general.[5]
Arius Didymus (1st centuryCE), cited centuries later byStobaeus, wrote that "A primary kind of association (politeia) is the legal union of a man and woman for begetting children and for sharing life". From the collection of households a village is formed and from villages a city, "So just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)". Further, Didymus claims that "Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic".[6]
The family is in the center of the social philosophy of the earlyChicago School of Economics. It is a recurring point of reference in the economic and social theories of its founderFrank Knight.[7] Knight positions his notion of the family in contrast to the dominant notion of individualism:
"Our 'individualism' is really 'familism'. ... The family is still the unit in production and consumption."[8]
Some modern thinkers, such asLouis de Bonald, have written as if the family were a miniature state. In his analysis of the family relationships of father, mother and child, Bonald related these to the functions of a state: the father is the power, the mother is the minister and the child as subject. As the father is "active and strong" and the child is "passive or weak", the mother is the "median term between the two extremes of this continuous proportion". Like manyapologists for political familialism, De Bonald justified his analysis onbiblical authority:
Bonald also sees divorce as the first stage of disorder in the state, insisting that thedeconstitution of the family brings about the deconstitution of state, withThe Kyklos not far behind.[10]
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also connects family and monarchy:
George Lakoff has more recently claimed that theleft-right distinction in politics reflects a different ideals of the family; for theright-wing, the ideal is a patriarchal family based upon absolutist morality; for theleft-wing, the ideal is an unconditionally loving family. As a result, Lakoff argues, both sides find each other's views not only immoral, but incomprehensible, since they appear to violate each side's deeply held beliefs about personal morality in the sphere of the family.[12]
Familialism has been challenged as historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of actual family relations.[5] In modern American society in which the male head of the household can no longer be guaranteed a wage suitable to support a family, 1950s-style familialism has been criticized as counterproductive to family formation and fertility.[6][7]
Imposition of Western-style familialism on other cultures has been disruptive to traditional non-nuclear family forms such asmatrilineality.[8]
The rhetoric of "family values" has been used to demonize single mothers and LGBT couples, who allegedly lack them. This has a disproportionate impact on the African-American community, as African-American women are more likely to be single mothers.[9]
LGBT communities tend to accept and support the diversity of intimate human associations, partially as a result of their historically ostracized status from nuclear family structures. From its inception in the late 1960s, the gay rights movement has asserted every individual's right to create and define their own relationships and family in the way most conducive to the safety, happiness, and self-actualization of each individual.
For example, the glossary ofLGBT terms of Family Pride Canada, a Canadian organization advocating for family equality for LGBT parents, defines familialism as:
a rigidly conservative ideology promoted by the defenders of "Family Values," who insist, despite all the sociological evidence to the contrary, that the only real family is a traditional 1950s-style white, middle-class household with a faithfully married dad and a mom whose sex life is strictly yet blissfully procreative, and whose high moral standards are passed on like old china to their perfectly heterosexual children.[10]
Normalization of the nuclear family as the only healthy environment for children has been criticized by psychologists.In a peer-reviewed study from 2007, adoptees have been shown to display self-esteem comparable with non-adoptees.[11]
In a meta-study from 2012, "quality of parenting and parent–child relationships" is described as the most important factor to children development. Also "Dimensions of family structure including such factors as divorce, single parenthood, and the parents' sexual orientation and biological relatedness between parents and children are of little or no predictive importance"[12]
Gilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari, in their now-classic 1972 bookAnti-Oedipus, argued thatpsychiatry andpsychoanalysis, since their inception, have been affected by an incurable familialism, which is their ordinary bed and board.[13][14][15] Psychoanalysis has never escaped from this, having remained captive to an unrepentant familialism.[16]
Michel Foucault wrote that through familialism psychoanalysis completed and perfected what the psychiatry of 19th centuryinsane asylums had set out to do and that it enforced the power structures ofbourgeois society and its values: Family-Children (paternal authority), Fault-Punishment (immediate justice), Madness-Disorder (social and moral order).[17][18] Deleuze and Guattari added that "the familialism inherent in psychoanalysis doesn't so much destroy classical psychiatry as shine forth as the latter's crowning achievement", and that since the 19th century, the study ofmental illnesses andmadness has remained the prisoner of the familial postulate and its correlates.[19]
Through familialism, and the psychoanalysis based on it, guilt is inscribed upon the family's smallest member, the child, andparental authority is absolved.[20]
According to Deleuze and Guattari, among the psychiatrists onlyKarl Jaspers andRonald Laing, have escaped familialism.[21] This was not the case of theculturalist psychoanalysts, which, despite their conflict withorthodox psychoanalysts, had a "stubborn maintenance of a familialist perspective", still speaking "the same language of a familialized social realm".[22]
InThe Communist Manifesto of 1848,Karl Marx describes how thebourgeois ormonogamous two-parent family has as its foundation capital and private gain.[23] Marx also pointed out that this family existed only in its full form among thebourgeoisie or upper classes, and was nearly absent among the exploitedproletariat or working class.[23] He felt that the vanishment of capital would also result in the vanishment of the monogamousmarriage, and the exploitation of the working class.[23] He explains how family ties among the proletarians are divided by thecapitalist system, and their children are used simply as instruments of labour.[23] This is partly due to child labour laws being less strict at the time inWestern society.[23] In Marx's view, the bourgeois husband sees his wife as an instrument of labour, and therefore to be exploited, as instruments of production (or labour) exist under capitalism for this purpose.[24]
InThe Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, published in 1884,Frederick Engels was also extremely critical of the monogamous two parent family and viewed it as one of many institutions for the division of labour in capitalist society. In his chapter "The Monogamous Family", Engels traces monogamous marriage back to the Greeks, who viewed the practice's sole aim as making "the man supreme in the family, and to propagate, as the future heirs to his wealth, children indisputably his own".[25] He felt that the monogamous marriage made explicit the subjugation of one sex by the other throughout history, and that the first division of labour "is that between man and woman for the propagation of children".[25] Engels views the monogamous two-parent family as a microcosm of society, stating "It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied".[25]
Engels pointed out disparities between the legal recognition of a marriage, and the reality of it. A legal marriage is entered into freely by both partners, and the law states both partners must have common ground in rights and duties.[25] There are other factors that the bureaucratic legal system cannot take into account however, since it is "not the law's business".[25] These may include differences in the class position of both parties and pressure on them from outside to bear children.[25]
For Engels, the obligation of the husband in the traditional two-parent familial structure is to earn a living and support his family.[25] This gives him a position of supremacy.[25] This role is given without a particular need for special legal titles or privileges.[25] Within the family, he represents the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat.[25] Engels, on the other hand, equates the position of the wife in marriage with one of exploitation and prostitution, as she sells her body "once and for all into slavery".[25]
More recent criticism from aMarxist perspective comes from Lisa Healy in her 2009 essay "Capitalism and the Transforming Family Unit: A Marxist Analysis".[26] Her essay examines the single-parent family, defining it as one parent, often a woman, living with one or more usually unmarried children.[27] The stigmatization of lone parents is tied to their low rate of participation in the workforce, and a pattern of dependency on welfare.[28] This results in less significant contributions to the capitalist system on their part.[28] This stigmatization is reinforced by the state, such as through insufficient welfare payments.[28] This exposes capitalist interests that are inherent to their society and which favour two-parent families.[28]
 | This section has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
| This article is part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Australia |
|---|
 |
Principles |
Related topics |
TheFamily First Party originally contested the2002 South Australian state election, where formerAssemblies of God pastorAndrew Evans won one of the eleven seats in the 22-seatSouth Australian Legislative Council on 4 percent of the statewide vote. The party made their federal debut at the2004 general election, electingSteve Fielding on 2 percent of theVictorian vote in theAustralian Senate, out of six Victorian senate seats up for election. Both MPs were able to be elected with Australia'sSingle Transferable Vote andGroup voting ticket system in the upper house. The party opposesabortion,euthanasia,harm reduction,gay adoptions,in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) for gay couples and gaycivil unions. It supports drug prevention, zero tolerance for law breaking, rehabilitation, and avoidance of all sexual behaviors it considers deviant.
In the 2007 Australian election, Family First came under fire for giving preferences in some areas to theLiberty and Democracy Party, alibertarian party that supports legalization ofincest, gay marriage, and drug use.[29]
Family values was a recurrent theme in theConservative government ofJohn Major. HisBack to Basics initiative became the subject of ridicule after the party was affected by a series of sleaze scandals. John Major himself, the architect of the policy, was subsequently found to have had an affair withEdwina Currie. Family values were revived underDavid Cameron, being a recurring theme in his speeches on social responsibility and related policies, demonstrated by his Marriage Tax allowance policy which would provide tax breaks for married couples.
| This article is part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in New Zealand |
|---|
 |
History |
Family values politics reached their apex under the social conservative administration of theThird National Government (1975–84), widely criticised for its populist and social conservative views about abortion and homosexuality. Under theFourth Labour Government (1984–90), homosexualitywas decriminalised and abortion access became easier to obtain.
In the early 1990s, New Zealandreformed its electoral system, replacing thefirst-past-the-post electoral system with theMixed Member Proportional system. This provided a particular impetus to the formation of separatist conservative Christian political parties, disgruntled at theFourth National Government (1990–99), which seemed to embrace bipartisan social liberalism to offset Labour's earlier appeal to social liberal voters. Such parties tried to recruit conservative Christian voters to blunt social liberal legislative reforms, but had meagre success in doing so. During the tenure ofFifth Labour Government (1999–2008), prostitution law reform (2003), same-sex civil unions (2005) and therepeal of laws that permitted parental corporal punishment of children (2007) became law.
At present,Family First New Zealand, a 'non-partisan'social conservative lobby group, operates to try to forestall further legislative reforms such assame-sex marriage andsame-sex adoption. In 2005, conservative Christians tried to pre-emptively ban same-sex marriage in New Zealand through alterations to theNew Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, but the bill failed 47 votes to 73 at its first reading. At most, the only durable success such organisations can claim in New Zealand is the continuing criminality of cannabis possession and use under New Zealand'sMisuse of Drugs Act 1975.
| This article is part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Russia |
|---|
 |
Literature |
Federal law of Russian Federation no. 436-FZ of 2010-12-23 "On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development" lists information "negating family values and forming disrespect to parents and/or other family members" as information not suitable for children ("18+" rating).[30] It does not contain any separate definition of family values.
| This article is part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Singapore |
|---|
 |
Organisations |
Related topics |
Singapore's main political party, thePeople's Action Party, promotes family values intensively. Former Prime MinisterLee Hsien Loong said that "The family is the basic building block of our society. [...] And by "family" in Singapore, we mean one man, one woman, marrying, having children and bringing up children within that framework of a stable family unit."[31]One MP has described the nature of family values in the city-state as "almostVictorian in nature". The government is opposed tosame-sex adoption. The Singaporean justice system usescorporal punishment.[32]
The use offamily values as a political term dates back to 1976, when it appeared in the Republican Partyplatform.[33] The phrase became more widespread afterVice PresidentDan Quayle used it in a speech at the1992 Republican National Convention. Quayle had also launched a national controversy when he criticized thetelevision programMurphy Brown for a story line that depicted the title character becoming a single mother by choice, citing it as an example of how popular culture contributes to a "poverty of values", and saying: "[i]t doesn't help matters whenprimetime TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman—mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice'". Quayle's remarks initiated widespread controversy, and have had a continuing effect on U.S. politics.[citation needed]Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family history and the author of several books and essays about the history ofmarriage, says that this brief remark by Quayle about Murphy Brown "kicked off more than a decade of outcries against the 'collapse of the family'".[34]
In 1998, aHarris survey found that:
The survey noted that 93% of all women thought that society should value all types of families (Harris did not publish the responses for men).[35]
Since 1980, theRepublican Party has used the issue of family values to attractsocially conservative voters.[36] While "family values" remains an amorphous concept,social conservatives usually understand the term to include some combination of the following principles[citation needed] (also referenced in the 2004 Republican Party platform):[37]
Social and religiousconservatives often use the term "family values" to promote conservative ideology that supports traditional morality orChristian values.[citation needed]Social conservatism in the United States is centered on the preservation of what adherents often call 'traditional' or 'family values'. Some American conservative Christians see theirreligion as the source ofmorality and consider thenuclear family an essential element in society. For example, "TheAmerican Family Association exists to motivate and equip citizens to change the culture to reflect Biblical truth and traditional family values."[41] Such groups[which?] variously opposeabortion,pornography,masturbation,pre-marital sex,polygamy,homosexuality, certain aspects offeminism,cohabitation,separation of church and state,legalization of recreational drugs, and depictions ofsexuality in the media.[42]
Although the term "family values" remains a core issue for the Republican Party, theDemocratic Party has also used the term, though differing in its definition. In his acceptance speech at the2004 Democratic National Convention,John Kerry said "it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families".[43]
Otherliberals have used the phrase to support such values asfamily planning, affordablechild-care, andmaternity leave.[44] For example, groups such asPeople For the American Way,Planned Parenthood, andParents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays have attempted to define the concept in a way that promotes the acceptance of single-parent families, same-sex monogamous relationships and marriage. This understanding of family values does not promote conservative morality, instead focusing on encouraging and supporting alternative family structures, access tocontraception andabortion, increasing theminimum wage,sex education, childcare, and parent-friendly employment laws, which provide for maternity leave and leave for medical emergencies involving children.[45]
While conservativesexual ethics focus on preventing premarital or non-procreative sex, liberal sexual ethics are typically[quantify] directed rather towardsconsent, regardless of whether or not the partners are married.[46][47][48]
Population studies have found that in 2004 and 2008, liberal-voting ("blue") states have lower rates ofdivorce andteenage pregnancy than conservative-voting ("red") states. June Carbone, author ofRed Families vs. Blue Families, opines that the driving factor is that people in liberal states tend to wait longer before getting married.[49]
A 2002 government survey found that 95% of adult Americans had premarital sex. This number had risen slightly from the 1950s, when it was nearly 90%. The median age of first premarital sex has dropped in that time from 20.4 to 17.6.[50]
TheChristian right often promotes the termfamily values to refer to their version of familialism.[51][52][53]
Focus on the Family is an AmericanChristian conservative organization whose family values includeadoption by married, opposite-sex parents;[54][55][56] and traditionalgender roles. It opposes abortion, divorce,LGBT rights, particularlyLGBT adoption andsame-sex marriage,[57] pornography,masturbation, andpre-marital sex. TheFamily Research Council is an example of a right-wing organization claiming to uphold traditional family values. Due to its usage of virulent anti-gay rhetoric and opposition to civil rights for LGBT people, it was classified as ahate group.[58][59]
Questions about family values have generally included issues concerning the current diversity of family structures.
Late Victorian culture assumed that family was the basic model for society and that the relationships and values of the family, which were based on complementarian gender assumptions, ought to be extended into social ...
The new right put a positive spin on anti-pluralist morality. They weren't just against sinners and feminists; they were the "pro-family" and "pro-life" champions of wholesome "family values." Still, defense of the family meant battling the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), abortion, pornography, gay rights, and gun control.
Founded at the same time that the evangelical pro-life movement was gathering stream, Focus was politicized from its inception. In the 1980s Dobson became more involved in politics, focusing on a cluster of issues related to family matters, including abortion, pornography, and the women's movement.
.svg)
