A review by labyrinth_witch
The Anti-Social Family by Michele Barrett, Mary McIntosh

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Barrett and McIntosh provide a very succinct theoretical explanation of the family as ideology as opposed to the family as institution. Taking on the conservative and socialist arguments of the time (1981) to show how the ideology of familialism supports oppression, they nevertheless note that the concept of “patriarchy” doesn’t fully capture the social processes at play. Nevertheless, by critically engaging with leading psychoanalysts and socialist pundits, they demonstrate that the family defined as bourgeois nuclear Christian form is anti-social. By this, they mean this it is anti-socialist in the sense that it is a barrier to collectivism and shared responsibility by emphasizing the privatization of care, which is really a collective responsibility. At the end they offer some clear strategies to fight towards collectivism and ways to support social experiments constructively. 

There are some portions of the text that date itself. Though the postscript, written in 1991, offers a great example of reflexivity and academic humility by noting the limitations and their growth since the original publication. Interestingly enough, certain arguments are now being asserted on tiktok- nearly 45 years later. I wish this material was more widely disseminated and critically engaged with so it doesn’t feel like we have to constantly start over.