Growing Strong
is a scam! Words by Katarina Kuo Art by Talia Meli
but also as a locus for economic production and redistribution, and gender and class struggle are often played out within family units.
It has long been a recognisable image - a married mother and father, and their two to three kids. As broader social change has led people to move away from the nuclear family, conservatives have begun to cling even more stringently to the narrative that this familial structure can offer an inherent good and, in spite of these changes, the pressure to fill the roles prescribed by the nuclear family persists. Placing these often heteronormative and rigid family values into an economic context is important to understanding why they are so difficult to escape. Historically, familial systems have played an important role in driving social and economic development. Families have existed not only as collectives based on kinship and connection,
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In pre-state societies, economic, and cultural change were predominantly affected by kinship groups and tribes – these groups made decisions about how to share resources, how to redistribute land, how to settle disputes, and how to build new settlements. Over time, power was drawn away from kinship groups and towards the state. As states grew to replace kinship groups as political and economic decision-makers, emerging states often sought legitimacy by atomising kinship groups and boosting patriarchs as the heads of their houses. A useful example of this is the process of state formation that took place in England and Wales between the 8th and 15th century. Emerging rulers in this period consolidated their power by
