It has been well over two millennia since Plato lingered on justice, virtue, work, and the city in his Republic. And yet, amidst the ever-changing era of modernity, his commentaries and proposals remain steadfast in their hold on the pulse of modernism and emerging radical impulses. His thoughts on familial and childhood norms specifically draw staggering, albeit extrapolated, connections to feminist and critical capitalist theory. Revisiting Plato’s ideal family type in light of more modern texts, especially those associated with radical feminism,  reveals a consistent undercurrent of historical resistance to the nuclear structure. 

“And all of them will be together, since they have common houses and mess, with no one privately possessing anything of the kind” (Plato, Republic, 458d)

In attempting to create their perfect city in speech, Glaucon and Socrates (Plato’s narrative tools)  reflect upon the type of family structures and the roles women ought to play within political society. They come to the conclusion that men and women technically possess the same potential to achieve the status of guardian, but that this potential must be developed through special training to avoid its corruption. It then becomes obvious that it is fitting for guardian-specific familial arrangements to be made in order to optimize the development of these individuals into the best possible guardians.

“With everyone he happens to meet, he’ll hold that he’s meeting a brother, or a sister, or a father, or a mother, or a son, or a daughter” (Plato, 463c)

Such an arrangement represents an anti-nuclear conception of family more than it does anything traditional, where long adhered-to parent-child relations cease to exist in favour of communal kinship structures.  This rejection of the private family expresses a renunciation of atomizing family-units altogether – Socrates goes so far as to claim that these built-in societal divisions foster greed, hostility, and conflict (Plato, 470c-e). In place of the private family, a publicly observed and community-focused approach cultivates a form of loyalty that is based on the common good of the city instead of genetics. This cultivation of extended kinship demands that people reimagine their conception of what family is,  creating an overarching culture and habitus of commonality. While Socrates’ particular argument may have only applied to the guardian class of the polis, in contemporary contexts of equity and equality one can learn much from his ideal-family theory. 

“The importance of the nuclear core increased, and the influence of the surrounding kin declined” (Stone, 13)

In the year 2024, the nuclear family remains a staple in humanity’s collective imagination and a standard of moral achievement, norms and expectations which only began cementing themselves a millennia after Plato challenged them (Stone, 13). As an example, in the early modern England, cultural shifts began taking place, leading to an increasing emphasis on loyalty to the nuclear core or conjugal unit (one’s immediate family) and to the state – as opposed to broader and more flexible senses of kinship akin to the one Plato defended (Stone, 25). Note here clear distinctions from Plato’s conception of loyalty to the state. For Plato, loyalty to the city demanded a collective embracement of the community and a devotion to it as to a family, whilst, in the formation of the early Euro-state, devotion to it became synonymous with the development of a private family unit. Plato suggests that one ought to reach beyond themselves and their immediate family for support and community, bolstering a value system based in mutual aid, rather than hyper individuality and societal division. This is contrasted with the modern state and family structure. En effet, the Western-constructed ideologies of modernity hold that a successful state is reliant on the successful formation of a familial unit – which ought to be rigidly nuclear. The impending era of imperial globalization and large-scale adoption of Western state forms would cement this familial norm worldwide. However, despite the prevalence of nuclear family ideologies in our contemporary era, familial structures are becoming increasingly fluid and malleable. 

“The systemic weight of the nuclear family remains strong” (Kessler, 65)

In a world of blended families, single-parent households, non-marital cohabitation, and queer-parent households, the heteronormative nuclear family seems to be becoming less and less representative of how families actually operate. Nonetheless, in both social and legal dimensions, the nuclear family endures as a normative pillar (Kessler, 53). And not without consequences, ast the denial of the ascription of external legitimacy to any communal parenting practices simply drives them further underground (Kessler, 72). However suppressed, divergent family systems retain a transgressive potential in subverting tradition and “undermining patriarchal family values” in their deflecting from theorizing children to be the private property of their parents (Kessler, 73). 

“[…]the family is the source of psychological, economic, and political oppression.” (Firestone, 108)

The historic transition from “a large, integrated society into small, self-centered units” is partly reliant on the birth of the idea that children are owned by their parents (Firestone, 86). Moreover, the suppression of children’s rights is entangled with that of women, the emancipation of women appearing to be conditional on the liberation of children (Firestone, 72). Indeed, a woman’s systematic delegation to the role of homemaker and mother intrinsically ties her identity and social position to her children – fostering co-dependence as well as an environment prone to the development of over-controlling tendencies. The modern family and society are structured in a way that links social value to one’s proximity to white men. This racial dimension is paramount, as the era of imperial globalization does not exist without white supremacy and patriarchy. Because white men (broadly) exist at the top of all social hierarchies, the rest of the world (the majority) are forced into a perpetual situation of making themselves fit into value systems predetermined by the dominant class. This creates a social landscape of wills that bend to the dispositions and biases of white men. As the nuclear family is made inextricable from its conjugal function, and has been made synonymous with modern ideals of morality – the dominance of white supremacy and patriarchy forge rhetoric that the particular sexuality of white men ought to be central to social structures. Through the consolidation of the conjugal unit, people become “pawns in the game of white men’s sexuality” where, in crude terms, the majority exist as collateral damage in serving someone else’s interests and desires (Firestone, 114). These considerations thus lead a significant number of radical feminist thinkers to the conclusion that global emancipation is (at least partly) reliant on a rejection of the heteronormative nucleus. 

Edited by Sofia V. Forlini

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.

Featured image by Franco Origlia

References:

Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for Feminist Revolution. New York : Morrow, 1970 

Kessler, Laura T. “Community Parenting.” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, 24,2007,pp.47-78.HeinOnline, https://heinonline-org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/wajlp24&i=51 

Plato. “The Republic of Plato”. New York: Perseus Books, 1968. 
Stone, Lawrence. “The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England: The Patriarchal Stage”. The Family in History, edited by Charles E. Rosenberg, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975, pp. 13-58. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512806328-002