Masking Dependency: The Political Role of Family Rhetoric

36 Pages Posted: 4 Jun 2012 Last revised: 22 Jun 2012

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Date Written: 1995

Abstract

Despite widespread changes to family structure and the increase of women in the workforce, the vision of a traditional family consisting of a male breadwinner formally married to a female homemaker who cares for the couple’s biological children continues to pervade contemporary political and legal discourse and drive policy decisions. Such a vision masks the nature and extent of individual dependency and the costs of providing care for dependents. Dependency has been privatized, with the family expected to serve as the repository of dependency without assistance from the market or state. This Article argues that continued adherence to unrealistic and unrepresentative assumptions about family thwarts society’s ability to effectively address persistent problems of poverty and social welfare and obscures the reality that women, whether acting within a nuclear family or as single mothers, largely assume responsibility for dependents. Family policy should instead provide social and economic subsidies that reflect the family functions that society should protect and encourage. Because of the inevitability and universality of dependency, the Article asserts that a just society requires that the community provide for its weaker members and grant resources to those caretakers who fulfill the societal need for caretaking at substantial cost to themselves.

Keywords: family, traditional family, dependency, dependent, inevitable dependency, derivative dependency, caretaker, privatize, welfare, poverty, private family, nuclear family, egalitarian family, mothering, feminist theory, vulnerability theory, patriarchy

Suggested Citation

Fineman, Martha Albertson, Masking Dependency: The Political Role of Family Rhetoric (1995). Virginia Law Review, Vol. 81, p. 2181, 1995, Emory Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12-207, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2076174

Martha Albertson Fineman (Contact Author)

Emory University School of Law ( email )

1301 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30322
United States
404-712-2421 (Phone)

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