A review by sinthomo
Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M.E. O'Brien

Despite calling for international communization, this book could not have more squarely aimed at a USamerican and largely white audience. It defines the target of family abolition as conformity to a singular white/bourgeois/nuclear/private ideal. It casts other kinship formations as counterhegemonic or aspirational or not "really" family. It falls back on the most conventional sentimental appeals to family love. In the hopes of making its message less threatening, it refuses to engage with the majority of familial domination that actually exists or has ever existed. The reader is left with few tools to counter the intense moralization of family ties that will inevitably rise to meet any reform, any revolution, and most individual resistance. 

My family is not on the margins of or a refuge from The Family. It is the very site of struggle. If I am a traitor to my culture, so be it.