Abolish the family. A survivor’s perspective

Something is going wrong. It is hard enough to imagine the end of capitalism, but to abolish the family? Feminism, for a long time, seems to have abandoned this old feminist demand, and this year the LGTBIQA+ movement in Spain is going to celebrate twenty years of marriage equality, that is, its inclusion in this patriarchal institution of marriage and the family that marks a new ‘homonormativity’, which is mainly a copy of heteronormativity. We are in a bad place. We lack imagination, we lack visions of other forms of cohabitation and upbringing.

I write this article from my perspective as a survivor of the family. Survivor of sexual abuse, psychological and emotional abuse and neglect, abuses that have left me with a complex trauma that I am still learning to live with. To live, and not just survive, as I have done for decades of my life. To write from a survivor's perspective, in a way, is to write from a child's perspective, to put a counterpoint in the debate dominated by adult-centric perspectives.

When I think of family, the first words that come to mind are violence, (sexual) abuse, abandonment, mistreatment, emotional blackmail, ... Not for a millisecond of my life have I ever considered forming a family.

While I very much agree with the diagnosis of the role of the family in the economic and political order as put forward for example by Nuria Alabao in this article (in Spanish) or by Sophie Lewis in her book Abolish the family, in a way I don't really need this diagnosis. I only have to think about my own experience, look around me, at my friends, and what I see is violence, mistreatment, abuse, emotional neglect, ... with all the resulting traumas. Is it possible that so many of us have simply been unlucky? Perhaps there is a more structural problem, that it is not that just something is wrong in some (many) individual families, but that the family system is the problem?

The family, a system of abuse and mistreatment

The family is sold as a safe space, a place of love and mutual care. Above all, the family is said to be the best place for children. This could not be further from the truth.

According to a meta-analysis on physical violence suffered or witnessed in the family on a global level, in Europe 12.7% of children have been victims of physical violence in their family, with a higher rate for boys compared to girls (non-binary children are not included in the analysis), and 10.5% have witnessed physical violence in their family. Another global meta-analysis of more types of abuse comes up with even higher results: 14.3% of girls and 6.2% of boys had suffered sexual abuse, 27% of boys and 12% of girls had suffered physical abuse, 6.2% of boys and 12.9% of girls had suffered emotional abuse, and 14.8% of boys and 13.9% of girls had suffered neglect during their childhood. In general, boys suffer more physical abuse and neglect, and girls suffer more emotional and sexual abuse. Fathers perpetrate more physical and sexual abuse, mothers more emotional abuse and neglect.

Research in the UK found that 41.7 per cent of children were exposed to some form of child maltreatment - physical, sexual or emotional abuse or physical or emotional neglect. Some 19.3 per cent witnessed domestic violence between their parents or caregivers in the family setting. The famous 1998 ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) in the United States found prevalence rates of 11.1% for psychological abuse, 10.8% for physical abuse, 22% for sexual abuse, and 12.5% for exposure to domestic violence towards the mother. Often, children suffer more than one form of abuse at a time.

In Spain, it is estimated that 18.9% of the population has been sexually abused as a child (15.2% of males and 22.5% of females), more than half of them perpetrated by a family member. According to a report by Save The Children, more than 25 per cent of children in Spain have been victims of abuse by their parents or caregivers.

Despite considerable variation across research, all show the family as a site - the primary site - of abuse and neglect. Research that differentiates by sexual orientation, such as, for example, research in the United States, generally finds much higher prevalence rates of abuse in all categories for LGTBIQA+ people compared to heterosexual people. And children who exhibit behaviours that do not conform to their sex assigned at birth suffer even more abuse of all kinds.

Beyond abuse, some 40% of children never manage to build a secure attachment with a caregiver. According to research by the Sutton Trust in the UK, "many children do not have secure attachment relationships. Around 1 in 4 children avoid their parents when they are upset, because they ignore their needs. Another 15% resist their parents because they cause them distress". According to the same research, insecure parental attachment is the most important risk factor, i.e. insecure attachment is reproduced from generation to generation if insecurely attached parents do not work on their own attachment styles and traumas.

To these figures of child abuse and neglect we can add the high prevalence of intimate partner violence, gender-based violence or domestic violence. Witnessing such violence also has negative consequences for children.

The family as a safe, loving and caring place? These figures debunk this myth. We can say that for children, the least safe and most dangerous place is their family home. With these figures - a prevalence of abuse between 15% and 40% - how can we think that something is wrong at the individual level, that the problem is not the structure (the family), but a lack of education, resources, etc.?

I invite you to a thought experiment. Let's imagine that a society wants to choose between several models of cohabitation and upbringing: upbringing in a tribe or community, other models that I have no idea what they might be, and upbringing in the family. We estimate predictions of child maltreatment for each model. Can we imagine that a model with a predicted maltreatment rate of 25% would be chosen? I doubt it.

Child abuse: lifelong damage

Child maltreatment leaves lifelong damage - I know this from my own experience. For example, complex trauma refers to early negative experiences involving neglect, and/or abuse, occurring in an attachment relationship with the primary caregiver, implying that the figure who is supposed to give affection, love, and protection to the child is, at the same time, a source of anxiety, threat, neglect, and/or abuse, of distressing experiences such as verbal abuse, abandonment, bullying, emotional invalidation, neglect, abandonment, etc. Because of their ongoing nature, such abuse generates a stress reaction that leaves its mark on the brain. Moreover, these are situations that go unnoticed externally and have a cumulative character. In many ways, complex trauma is related to “non-events”, the things that did not happen when they should have - a look, a smile, being noticed or a comforting hug. These non-events have an important impact, although they do not retain memories beyond emotional sensations.

All this I know very well. It is estimated that up to 7.7% of adults suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD or complex PTSD), up to 20% from post-traumatic stress disorder. To me, these figures seem too low. However, it has to be taken into account that it is not a simple binarism - you either have PTSD or complex PTSD according to the strict diagnostic criteria, or you are fine. Problems with emotional regulation, forming deep relationships, behaviour, trust, negative self-image can be present and can cause considerable problems without meeting all the diagnostic criteria for PTSD or complex PTSD.

Complex trauma - often also called complex developmental trauma or developmental trauma - in the vast majority of cases is a consequence of prolonged emotional abuse and neglect in childhood and adolescence. Here we see many of the 15% of children who avoid their parents because they cause them distress, survivors of sexual abuse and other forms of prolonged maltreatment.

There are also other consequences for mental and physical health: eating disorders, depression, other mental disorders, substance use and abuse, and so on. From the ACE study in the United States we know that adverse childhood experiences have a profound impact on many areas of adult health.

Abolish the family: Towards other models

So, we abolish the family. Now! But what do we put in its place? Sophie Lewis, in her book Abolish the Family, says ‘nothing’. Perhaps too simple an answer.

It is true that in the current system the family fulfils functions for which the best answer is this ‘nothing’. As Nuria Alabao says, ‘The family is not a neutral institution: it is still sustained by hierarchical relations of gender-age and race/migrant origin subordination (...) As an institution, the family has a central economic function, it has always been essential for the reproduction of classes in capitalism - to allocate inheritances, transmit property or guarantee the payment of debts’. These are the functions we do not want to replace. Sophie Lewis's ‘nothing’ is enough. We don't need a gender police, we don't need an institution that reproduces patriarchy and prepares creatures to function well in capitalism.

However, there are other functions of the family in the current system - for example, upbringing and care - which the family fulfils rather poorly, as I have shown above, but which are necessary. We need other models of living together, of relating to each other, of parenting and of organising care.

Today, mainstream feminism has nothing more to offer than promoting ‘co-responsibility’ in parenting, i.e. equal participation of fathers in parenting. Where are the more radical visions?

According to Nuria Alabao, ‘In 19th century socialism linked to the workers' movement, and later in the 1970s, class feminism called for the socialisation of social reproduction: soup kitchens, 24-hour nurseries, or invented experiences of upbringing or support on the margins...’. However, even these proposals do not question the family itself in a deeper way. They are more focused on enabling women to participate in the labour market. At the end of the day, they are adult-centric proposals. And, with regard to the miserable numbers of securely attached children, I fear that these proposals could even worsen the situation for children if the nuclear family model is maintained. By this I do not mean that children need their biological parent, but they do need adults who allow them a secure and stable attachment.

In this sense, perhaps it would be good to ‘de-centre’ biological parents, to think about care and upbringing in community, in tribe, models of upbringing that include a network, a community of adults in the lives of children. The African proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ goes in this direction. Children need more secure and stable relationships with adults beyond their parents - a ‘village’.

There is some research on the perspective of children being raised in consensual non-monogamous relationships. According to Elisabeth Sheff, "the presence of more than two adults in the family environment provides several advantages for children, such as receiving more attention, care and time from significant adults, receiving more gifts at special events, and being exposed to a greater number of positive role models. It also allows them to create family bonds with other children beyond biogenetic kinship and to have more siblings."

Other recent research with children states: "Children living in a polyamorous home tend to view their parents' romantic partners as resourceful, which fosters the development of a positive conception of these adults in the child. Many children explained their affection for their parents' partners by highlighting how these adults cared for them and supported them, emotionally and materially. This echoes studies conducted with CNM parents, who described their extradyadic romantic partners as supportive, loving and understanding, not only for them, but also for their children".

Thinking further, in the concept of the ‘village’ or community, the parenting network need not be limited to the sexual bonds of the parents. I am thinking of networks of relationship anarchy, networks that decentralise love and the couple (or couples).

This is not so simple. Myriam Rodríguez del Real and Javier Correa Román say in an article in El Salto: "The central question is to understand that friendship has been emptied of its material content in order to centralise the couple. Societies construct systems of kinship and affinity that determine which bonds are recognised and which remain on the margins. The monogamous heterosexual couple is constituted as the centre of these systems, and all other relationships (including friendship) are reconfigured according to it". And: "Therefore, it is not simply a matter of ‘giving more importance to friends’, but of rejecting the current configurations of both the couple and friendship in order to create new relational forms. We need to ‘disorientate’ (...) normative notions of affection in order to imagine other forms of relational habitability. Only to the extent that we think of other forms of friendship, does the couple cease to make sense as the organising centre of our lives".

In a talk on abolishing the family by Nuria Alabao in Seville two years ago, thinking about alternatives to the family, Nuria Alabao talked about building relationships with a reciprocal obligation (to be able to assume care), and that such relationships need time to build. Obligation already exists in today's family, and I doubt very much that it contributes to adequate care - neither for children, nor for adults or elders. For me, obligatory care is not care, but rather a sacrifice. And, nowadays it is mostly women who have to make this sacrifice in order to care for their parents or other family members.

Personally, I think more about making commitments, i.e. voluntarily making a commitment in a relationship (of any kind), which does not even require reciprocity. It's more about trusting the network (of relationship anarchy, of my community), that when I need care or support, there will be a person in the network (or several) who can take it on, and it doesn't have to be the same people who have previously received support from me. I feel that this is something that we are already trying to practice in my network.

Hil Malatino, in their book Trans Care, offers this minimal definition of community: people who are reweaving. And when I look back over my experience of the last nine years, coping with my family traumas, it has been a permanent reweaving of my networks. Some people dropped out of my networks, others joined in. Perhaps, we should leave behind the idea of a stable, lifelong mutual support network that should take over the care and support - emotional, financial, parenting, when we are ill - that the family today takes over (often badly), and instead rely on our networks, always fragile, always reconfiguring, but capable of sustaining us when we need them? I don't know. I myself am still afraid, but, at the same time, my networks have sustained me over the last few years, and continue to sustain me.

How do we bring our experiences of mutual support networks to the centre of society? How do we change our imaginaries so that we see ourselves as able to rely on these networks? How can we strengthen them?

I don't have the answers. I think it's about building by walking and experimenting. This is just a start. And, for me, building alternatives to the family, new structures of mutual support and care, is a question of survival. I have survived my family, and I have come this far thanks to my networks.