PATRIARCHAL FATHERHOOD

Patriarchal Fatherhood



Patriarchal Fatherhood

Introduction

"In America," declared Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830's, "the family ... in its Roman and aristocratic sense, no longer exists." He was referring to the patriarchal family, a family in which the husband and father had a measure of political authority and served as intermediary between the household and the polity. According to Tocqueville, this sort of family, which had been a mainstay of political order from time immemorial, was rendered obsolete by modern democracy. For its crucial feature, the father's political function, was precluded by a regime in which "the long arm of government reaches each particular man among the crowd separately to bend him to obedience to the common laws."' In the new regime, fathers are citizens like everyone else, just older and richer. As Tocqueville suggests, one thing that sharply distinguishes modern liberal societies from almost all other societies past or present is the family (Dubber, 2005).

Explain all the characteristics of this new family. How is it a departure from the old extended family structure?

In liberal policies, the family as such has no official political status. Insofar as we are liberals, we take our bearings from a state of nature in which all individuals are believed to be free and equal, and this means that husbands and fathers have no natural or divine claim to special political privileges. Practice falls short of principle, of course, but the massive consensus in modern liberal societies is that where one's familial status is not politically irrelevant, it should be, and such societies are in fact characterized by a historically unprecedented equality between men and women as well as by a historically unprecedented liberation of children from paternal authority (Jay, 1996).

These features stand out in sharp relief if one compares liberalism, whether in theory or practice, with aristocratic Europe, ancient Israel, Greece, or Rome, or with countries such as Saudi Arabia: these societies differ in many important ways, but none is liberal and all publicly support the patriarchal family. It appears, in other words, that the disappearance of the patriarchal family, or at least a radical transformation of it, is necessary for the emergence of liberal politics. But what precisely is the connection between these developments? Exactly what obstacles do the patriarchal family present to liberal politics? And, having rejected that family, with what does liberalism replaces it? This article considers these questions in the light of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government which is both a classic statement of liberal political principle and a relentless critique of patriarchalism. The Two Treatises is presented by Locke as a critique of and replacement for the political teaching of Sir Robert Filmer, who is notorious for arguing that the patriarchal family is the origin, foundation, and perfect model of political society.2 Even in the Second Treatise, which is not directly concerned with Filmer, the family has a tremendous and often unrecognized importance. The declared intention of the work is to explain what political power is by ...