Families Aren’t the Problem — Insecurity Is
Some argue that the nuclear family is the principal obstacle to a freer, more loving society. In reality, it’s economic insecurity that traps people and universal care is what makes relationships voluntary and free.
“Abolish the family” rhetoric distracts from the urgent work of building a society where care is a public good, not a private burden. (Lambert / Getty Images)
Feminist calls for “abolishing the family” are having a moment. The idea raises some sharp questions about how capitalism organizes care and reproductive labor, but it also carries some big blind spots. Too often, its advocates lean on a kind of functionalism — reducing the family to an ideological machine for producing compliant workers and citizens — while overlooking the messier realities of living with others: love, dependency, generosity.
It also downplays something more basic: how family life requires people to be in contact with those outside their comfort zones, across generations, and beyond ideological “safe spaces.” Absent abuse or other noxious pathologies, that heterogeneity — however uncomfortable — looks a lot more like the real world than the “chosen families” celebrated by abolitionists, and is often more instructive and healthier. Abolitionists will say such encounters only enforce harmful social norms, disregarding the fact that this is also how people learn to live with difference.
From there, the critique often drifts into utopianism. Abolishing the family is imagined to overturn not only social hierarchies, but to sweep away life’s ordinary struggles — offering a hopeful vision, reminiscent of Charles Fourier, the nineteenth-century utopian socialist who thought that reorganizing society would guarantee true love and even turn the oceans into lemonade.
Still, family abolitionists don’t just target the role of the nuclear family in reproducing capitalism — they also highlight the sheer arbitrariness of being born into one household rather than another. Life under capitalism is a lottery: some draw parents who are able and willing to care for them, while others get neglect, abuse, or crushing obligation. In this sense, the abolitionist critique is a charge against an entire system in which love itself is distributed unevenly and unjustly. As M.E. O’Brien argues early in her book on family abolition: “Behind its closed doors, the household is a gamble.” Or as Sophie Lewis says in her confrontation with critics of family abolition:
In the meantime, if your kneejerk reaction to the words “abolish the family” is “but I love my family,” you ought to know that you are one of the lucky ones. And I am happy for you. But everyone should be so lucky, don’t you think?
Politicize Care, Not Love
Another common critique of the family is that it’s rarely a matter of genuine choice. Some people stay with their relatives out of love, sure — but many do so because of economic necessity. Stagnant wages, precarious work, and sky-high housing costs make leaving home less a decision than a necessity. In these conditions, what looks like familial loyalty often masks a lack of alternatives. True choice requires the freedom to walk away – and without that freedom, commitment becomes a function of survival, not affection. As O’Brien puts it, “If one cannot easily leave, one cannot truly choose to stay.”
Family abolitionists are pointing to very real problems here. Many people grow up in unloving or harmful households and, for them, leaving isn’t just emotionally difficult — it’s often practically impossible. But the idea that abolishing the family would somehow give people more freedom or guarantee equal doses of love is, as Anca Gheaus observes, somewhat naive. People vary in their capacity to love, and some of life’s most meaningful goods aren’t things that can be redistributed. Luck, not policy, often determines whether we find them.
If we shift the focus from love to care, though, the argument becomes both more concrete and urgent. Society should ensure that no one is wholly dependent on their family to access basic support. People must be able to leave harmful or dysfunctional households without facing economic ruin, whether that means being unable to pay rent or secure stable housing. Care shouldn’t be conditional on staying in damaging relationships, nor should fear of poverty block personal autonomy. A just society would ensure that care is not tied exclusively to private, often unevenly distributed households.
Toward a Pro-Family Politics
Of course, love has economic and political dimensions, too. While love itself resists the logic of redistribution, it is nonetheless reasonable to argue that a more just society could foster conditions under which love and care are expressed more freely and equitably. When economic pressures and social obligations drain people’s energy, it becomes harder to reach outward — even to those they love.
But abolishing the family wouldn’t fix this. It would not bring us closer to our relatives, nor would it correct the unequal distribution of genuine affection. As Gheaus rightly observes, “Absent the family, children would continue to be exposed to caregivers of different levels of ability, investment in childrearing, and beneficial partiality.”
The political reforms necessary to reduce reliance on the family and to collectivize care don’t have to be anti-family. On the contrary, such policies could be presented as pro-family, insofar as they support healthier, more voluntary relationships by removing coercive economic dependencies. Housing security, universal childcare, elder care, and stable wages, for example, makes it easier for people to live together without outside pressures.
More broadly, these reforms are part of a political commitment to enabling individuals to live the lives they genuinely want — lives marked not by obligation or economic necessity, but by dignity, and, ideally, happiness. The family itself isn’t necessarily an obstacle to this. It can flourish when freed from the pressures of private, unequal care.
The relationship between love and justice is undeniably important. But family abolitionist thought largely sidesteps it, leaving behind a flattened conception of justice — one unable to grapple with the emotional and psychic complexities of intimate life. To promise love for everyone risks imagining a world that is far more idealized than achievable — a vision no less improbable than swimming in a sea of lemonade.