Evelina Johansson Wilén is an associate professor of gender studies at Örebro University in Sweden. She serves on the editorial board of the Marxist theoretical journal Röda Rummet and is the author of a forthcoming book on family abolition, to be published by La Fabrique in 2026.
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.
Family abolitionists see the family as the beating heart of capitalist social reproduction. But this view of the family misunderstands both the structure of capitalist reproduction and the complexity of how people survive within it.